Spiegelman
portrays every race/occupation as a different animal. I found it
interesting that he chose a frog for the french, a dog for the doctors. I
am wondering what everyones opinion in this is? What do you feel
the symbolism is that is hidden behind these animals? Throughout the
story Spiegelman makes references of animals, specifically when he
compared a dying dog to a dying human mentioning that everyone and
everything dies the same. Do you feel as though that was
some sort of hint at his choice for animals?
In Maus II, there is less
actual story telling of the Holocaust and more story telling of the
authors relationship with his family. Why do you think this is? In some
way this is a self reflection on not only the
author himself but also his father especially.
Finally, thoughts on Mala?
Valued was so in love with Anja- why did he feel the need to remarry?
Nevertheless someone like Mala? Why do you think Anja killed herself?
She seemed to find her strength in Vladek who
loved her very much it puzzles me.
I feel that the choices for animals were all based on stereotypes of the time. The French being depicted as frogs has long been a stereotype. I don't know if the animal choices go any deeper than that, but it is of course possible that they do.
ReplyDeleteMaus is not so much a story of the Holocaust as it is a story of Spiegelman's family. As the war ended, the effects of the Holocaust of the family did not, so the story continued. One could even say that Spiegelman is still suffering from the events to this day.
Vladek most likely remarried simply out of loneliness rather than out of a real love for Mala. It is also possible that he is simply afraid of expressing that love after Anja's suicide. Maybe deep within he really does care for Mala but fears that he may lose her as well.
I feel like all the characters are portrayed as animals for symbolic reasons. They are all based on stereotypes but maybe spiegleman was trying to show that there is some truth in stereotypes. I'm not sure though.
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely more of a focus on the relationship between Vladrk and Artie then the actual halucaust, which is good, because I find there relationship rather interesting. It's not perfect, and they have there issues, but at the same time you can tell they love each other.
Mala and Vladeck are both always complaining about each other. It is sort of weird that they married in the first place, and even weirder that they stayed together. To me, there has to be some love under all this hatred, or at least some respect. They both went through similar experiences, so even though they don't understand each other all the time at least they both understand how tough their pasts were.
Anja did suffer from post-partum depression and mental health care wasn't the best then. It is possible the experiences in the holocaust were too much for her to bear. Her sister-in-law was forced to kill her first son so the horror she had to live with carrying that knowledge around would be pretty debilitating for anyone. I feel like Vladek remarried because he was lonely, but didn't realize he didn't have the emotional or mental capacity to truly love someone else other than Anja. It seems like the animal choices are based on stereotypes and perhaps thought the continuity of people as animals was too central to the story so he kept it constant with all the varieties of characters.
ReplyDeleteThe conversation between Art and Françoise at the beginning of Maus II reveal some of Spiegelman’s concerns with depictions of race. The large panel on page 11 depicts a number of possible versions of Françoise. The depictions of possible and eventually scrapped depictions invites the reader to consider how these constructions, while not arbitrary (Art’s conversation with Françoise reveals some of his concerns, wrong connotation, doesn’t fully account for x or y) are artificial. Françoise’s conversion from French to Jewish and the accompanying change in animal representation point to a loose rather than rigid construction of identity, one that can change over time and be changed by the individual to suit their needs or under pressure to perform a certain identity from an outside agent.
ReplyDeleteThe copyright information indicates that these chapters appeared in a slightly different form from 1980-1985 (Maus I) and 1986-1991 (Maus II). The serialization of this work might account for how self-aware it is. There is a different sort of relationship between the writers and consumers of a TV show than a movie. Consumer response is much more important to serialized content and serialized content can better adjust to shifting demands, problems, and questions raised by consumers.
Mala is a survivor of the Holocaust and also someone who I don’t like very much, as I think Spiegelman intends. I think that’s a wonderful humanizing thing for Spiegelman to do. The message seems to be that being a victim doesn’t make you a nice person. Because Spiegelman shows such awareness for the politics of representation I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that Spiegelman wanted to dispel boiled down, inaccurate, positive depictions of Holocaust victims as well as the negative depictions.
I think the alliteration between "French" and "frog", as well as "dog" and "doctors" could be part of the reason why Spieglman portrayed them the way he did.
ReplyDeleteI think that Maus II focuses more on family ties because we are getting further into the story and thus need to make these connections with the family and have characters that we are focused on and have empathy towards.
My thoughts on Mala weren't that prominent when reading; I can't say she was my favorite character. She and Vladek don't have the best relationship and therefore I thought very little of her because I was drawn towards his character more.
The animals share stereotypical attributes as the animals they are depicted by. I feel like most characters were caricatures of their actual selves.
ReplyDeleteI think in a sense Maus reads as a coming of age story in the sense that it starts out being about the holocaust and evolves into a story within itself. Thats why Maus II focuses more on the story in the present. Art and his relationship with his father and Mala.
Mala was an interesting character to me. She seemed just so resentful of everything that happened in the story. I felt in a sense her character was parallel to Vladek. They share similar stories, attitudes and they're both insufferable characters. Unlike Vladek, she is not a sympathetic one. I feel like that is directly related to Mala's relationship with Artie.
The symbolism behind all of the species in Maus have direct ties to popular stereotypes of the time. The polish were commonly called pigs, the Jewish were referred to as vermin by anti-Semites, and the German cats can be seen as symbolic of their predatory nature at the time of the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteWhile Maus focuses alot on Speigelman and his family, I don't think it is fair to say that it is any less focused on the Holocaust. The story digs into how the Holocaust affected their family and relationships. It just gives more insight about what the Holocaust actually was to survivors instead of examining the event in a more clinical way.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe depictions of animals throughout the two books I think are based on symbolic representations of animals and their characteristics. Like many have already stated, they are also based upon stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteI think it is really important that Speigelman shows us the relationships outside of the told story of Artie's father during the Holocaust. We often create a sort of martyrdom of Holocaust survivors, or at least we see no faults in them since they are victims. Being able to see Vladek's character change from the younger man he was as a victim during the war, to the stingy, paranoid older man that many loved ones around him can barely stand for long periods of time. He becomes more human, with more faults, which show how tragic the Holocaust can be to victim's personalities.
I can only assume Vladek and Mala married out of loneliness, and because they both have had similar pasts that they can sympathize with one another. But it also puzzled me why Anja committed suicide since the comic ended with them being reunited and happy. I wish we were given a little more information about that, but then again, this comic was more about the father's tale as well as the father-son relationship.
I also thought it was interesting that he decided to use different animals for different jobs. I think in some way there is some symbolism with some of the animals, but I feel like some of them were also just random animals. I do agree that may have been a hint at his choice of animals, but there is no way to know for sure.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the purpose of the story was to simply tell the tale of his father and his experiences in the Holocaust, while also telling it in an interesting way. I think the beginning of the comic he even said that the comic was going to be focused on his father and not just the holocaust.
I honestly did not care much of Mala, but I think that ultimately Vladek didn't want to be alone. I definitely would have liked to find out more about Anja and why she killed herself, but I feel like it happened the way it did for a reason.