A great deal of time has already been spent discussing the use of the animal metaphor in Maus, and rightfully so. I want to go a different direction, just as the metaphor did in Maus II. In the beginning of Chapter 2, Spiegelman pulls the reader back into "reality", drawing the characters as humans wearing masks. Masks had previously been used as well, but in a different context (Jews trying to pass as Poles, for example). He even makes a direct observation about his animal metaphor when he notes that his therapist's house was "overrun with cats and dogs". Why would he draw the character back from the animal metaphor, choosing instead to show them as masked humans? Furthermore, what does this passage suggest about Spiegelman's own thoughts on his metaphor?
At the end of Chapter 2, he plays with the animal metaphor yet again. Art and Francoise are sitting on the porch after Vladek has gone to bed, discussing what to do now that Mala has left him. During the scene, Art is shown swatting at mosquitoes and hitting them with a comically large cloud of bug spray before relenting and going back inside. I consider the timing of this anecdote rather interesting, given the content of the rest of the chapter. What do you think Spiegelman is showing with this plot point? Furthermore, do you think this might have been an actual memory of his?
Finally, it is interesting to read the content of these memories when one considers that Art likely had more notes and recordings than he could possibly fit in these two books. Given that line of thinking, it becomes even more interesting that Vladek is placed in such a positive light throughout the novel. Art consistently pushes his father away, yet the way Vladek is portrayed seems to suggest something different, almost an admiration. What do you make of this? What about the fact that neither book contains a dedication to him?
This part did confuse me for a moment (I thought I was reading the wrong book at first,) but I think some of the motivation might be as simple as trying to pull the reader back into the story. It felt like there was a pretty big gap in the story when we jumped back in, so it was nice to get a little of the TV show treatment..."Last time on Maus," and all that. But it did feel like there was something more to it. It did feel random and out of place because the characters always seem so up-front and transparent so the idea of portraying himself and everyone else around him as wearing a mask didn't quite connect.
ReplyDeleteThis scene stuck out like a sore thumb and I'm absolutely positive Spiegelman meant for it to do that. I think it was definitely a play on the Germans gassing the Jews in the ovens.
As for the question of memory (and coming from a journalist) this whole thing has felt straight up like a profile piece mixed with an autobiographical piece written in the form of a comic. So I would say, while it's an unreliable narrator (first person perspective=bias=unreliable narrator), it definitely seem based on memory, with perhaps some embellishment or quirks (like the bug spray) to emphasize points.
To be honest, I really don't know what to make about Spiegelman straying from the animal metaphor or the gassing of the bugs. I just though that he was breaking his style so that it wouldn't compromise the addition of the real animals. As for the gassing of the bugs, he either was using a metaphor of the Germans gassing the Jews, or just comic relief. I'm still unsure.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that Vladek has been put in a positive light, and the reason for that is because of how he has handled the situation of the Holocaust. Art has been pushing his father away because he didn't agree with the decisions his father made even though they were tough. This story was based on memories and only had quirks to emphasize important point that made this story a winner.
Spielgelman brings people back from the animal reference to remind them that this is all real. Staying as full animals gives the story a whimsical fictional theme that gives the reader an easier time to digest a serious topic like the Holocaust. Then once the audience is captivated enough, Spiegelman made the switch.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like a typical father-son relationship. Well the kind of relationship where the father has pushed his family way in the past when he was trying to teach his son ideas and tactics that would have been useful when he was in the Holocaust. The tactics that kept him and whatever family he could alive but also could have saved the ones he couldn’t. But since the son was never put in the situation he has to adapt to his own ideas and society. His father seems to be on the side of the fence with people Spiegelman does not enjoy and used as a resource.
I gotta say, this threw me off a bit at first. Coming into what I was expecting to be just another chapter, I suddenly saw this "new" character. Very confusing. And yet, I really liked this bit. Up to that point, I really hadn't like Art's character much at all. This brought me a little closer to him. It showed us how he realizes that yeah, he was kind of a dick to his dad. And it showed in a way the sadness he felt about it, and really the sadness he just felt in general. And most importantly, I think it just re-emphasized the weight of everything he was talking about. This is serious stuff, and it can be downplayed a little bit when everybody is a talking mouse. But he shows how it is still affecting him. And I liked that.
ReplyDeleteI found the gassing of the bug to be a very eerie and appropriate way to end this section. It's ironic, really, how we rely on all that stuff now for comfort, and yet similar gasses were what the nazis used during world war II. I think it's used to show a further disconnect between Art and Vladek. And I think Art knew this, that there was this disconnect. He doesn't like it, but he acknowledges it and realizes that it's probably gonna stick. It's weird that he doesn't dedicate the book to his dad, but he clearly had some issues with his dad. At the same though, the book is about his dad. Isn't that a dedication in and of itself? Their relationship is very strange, but man is it intriguing.
A theory for the use of masks in parts of Maus II could be that Artie had pulled himself away from the story for so long that he was trying to put himself and the people around him into the roles of the story. He placed a mouse mask on his face to pull himself back into the atmosphere of the story and put those around him into their own masks for his use in the story. This is a way for Artie to use humans to represent reality but also to keep the theme of animal identity. Earlier, the mice would wear the pig masks to disguise themselves as Poles; now, Artie is disguising humans as literary figures for his novel. It has a similar concept.
ReplyDeleteI think the section with the flies as the end of chapter has a few meanings. One being that Artie just hits, gases, and thinks very little of an entire race of creatures just for existing and trying to live how they do. It also could be a hyperbole used to make himself feel less guilty; he enlarges the flies and uses an absurd amount of spray on them because this is how his mind has increased the annoyances of staying with Vladek. He hated it so much, but perhaps the flies weren't this bad - he has just made them seem worse to use them as another excuse to not stay with Vladek all summer. However, it could also be Artie's guilt increasing the effect of the flies on his days with Vladek. Perhaps he feels SO bad for not staying with Vladek that Artie made the house seem even worse than it was as a tool of pathos on the audience; we would now think "Wow, that house seems awful, how could Artie just leave his dad to stay there all alone?" Guilt tripping himself.
A dedication would have been redundant because the entire book shows Vladek's importance in Artie's life. Instead, having the book dedicated to Anja and Richieu (which I realized after seeing the dedication that I've been spelling "Richiev" THIS ENTIRE TIME, so my apologies!) shows a previously untold respect for them both. These are two people who have had the biggest impact on Vladek's life, other than Artie and Hitler, so it seems appropriate to use them as the reasons for the book's existence rather than Vladek himself. I think guilt drove a lot of this novel; I think a lot of the reasoning for how Vladek is portrayed - in both positive and negative light - is rooted in Artie's guilt for many things: using his father's story to launch a career, not listening to him talk about his current life, for not spending much time with him, etc etc. I think there is a lot to say about Vladek and Artie's relationship, but there is too much for me to express in a blog post. I've covered a lot, if not all of my theories, and love reading about others' theories as well.
The gassing of the mosquitoes was a brilliant conclusion to chapter 2, especially after we see the Nazis using the pesticide Zyklon B to exterminate the Jews. For me this did a number of things; I enjoyed the creativity and irony Spiegelman employs here, while simultaneously disturbed by the parallel he sets up with the gassing of the prisoners.
ReplyDeleteI don't put any stock into book dedications - to me, "Maus" itself is a dedication to Speigelman's father.
The first chapter of "Maus II" works as a sort of intermission. Art reestablishes the setting and the story. The first half ended with a conflict between father and son and by starting the second half in a rather neutral territory (his studio room as opposed to a concentration camp or a scene with Vladek), Spiegelman can begin to slowly build tension back up. The use of masks allows the author to keep the reader planted in the anthropomorphic animal metaphor.
I agree with you point about the lack of book dedication to Art. I think the book itself is the dedication. The care he took in telling Vladek;s story as attentively and accurately as he could indicates his great admiration of his father's story.
DeleteI greatly appreciate the use of masks. Not only is it kind of funny, but it grounds us in reality. In the first book, we were not as aware of their real human appearances. As the narrative becomes darker and more gruesome, we see Art and other mice as masked humans more and more. I think Art is slowly taking us back to reality so we believe the horrors he is showing us. He doesn't want it to be portrayed as something distant and simple. I think the mask also indicate that the animal metaphor isn't capable of completely relating the complex situation surrounding racial tension and outright genocide. The holocaust is not that simple, and not some distant fairy tale. I think this is what the masks are telling us.
ReplyDeleteThe gassing the bugs may be alluding to the gassing of the Jews, but I don't think Art is trying to take it much farther than that. I think he keeps the reader aware of the real story he is trying to tell by adding details like this in the stories not directly relating to the story of Auschwitz. It's a very clever way of keeping us connected to his intended narrative.
I think the masks (and in fact the metafictional elements as a whole) which appear in volume two are an important lesson for anyone who creates anything. A significant amount of time had passed since he had started writing the first volume of Maus by the time he started the second volume. Volume two is, unequivocally, played way less ‘straight’ than volume one in terms of its story elements. This speaks volumes about the evolution of a creator over time. The reason that volume two of Maus is so different from volume one is that Art Spiegelman was very different when he was making volume two. He alludes to this at the beginning when he has a fairly standard ‘complaining about fame’ scene (these are a pet peeve of mine, so excuse the negative connotation). In terms of studying Maus, this is a great lesson for creators, because sometimes you’re just different and you have to let the work be different, even if it means a ‘lack of continuity’.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people don’t really like the sequel to Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. They were expecting a book that was going to be in the same spirit as the original. And Frank Miller sat down to write/draw such a book: in New York, shortly before September 11, 2001. Because his life so drastically changed, he decided that making another Dark Knight Returns didn’t really make sense anymore and he had to respond to the world around him. I think a very similar thing is going on here with Spiegelman, but the stimuli are more internal (his neuroses about telling the story of his father) rather than external.
The author’s choice to draw back on the animal metaphors was an interesting choice that brought a whole new dynamic. This dynamic reveals the masks that everyone wears to define who they are and how they want to be perceived by others. He may have done it this way for many reasons: 1.) He could have been having doubts about using the metaphors. 2.) The trauma of his dad dying, and the gap between part one and two. 3.) The guilt of success because he made money off of the Holocaust. The transition to people wearing masks brings me in closer to Art himself because he was really breaking the fourth wall, and lets the audience in on all his fears and struggles while writing the comic.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the bug spray plot point is a play on the Jews being gassed by the Germans. This creates yet another metaphor, which I believe is used to show the audience how easily the German’s killed the Jews with no hesitation or effect to their conscious. It could also be a play on the title of the chapter, which is “Time Flies” so as the chapter ends, so must the flies.
I don’t know that it is necessary to actually dedicate a section of the story to his father because the whole story, for the most part, is based off his life and perspective. Art may be frustrated with his father at times, but he still choose to write the story about him, which shows that he really does admire him because otherwise he could have chosen someone else.
Man, Time Flies threw me off big time. I spent a lot of time thinking about why Art could've pulled back and illustrated the characters as humans with masks on. I've come up with a general idea that maybe he drew them with masks on to remind us that nationality is made up, and underneath our nationality, race, ethnicity or whatever we're all people (John Lennon's Imagine is playing in my mind right now). You can see the strings on the back of the masks, and it really makes you pause and rethink the whole use of animal heads. He talks to his wife about what kind of animal she should be drawn as and it seems like he changes his mind about drawing the characters as different animals, and wants us to see that the metaphor isn't perfect.
ReplyDeleteYes... I was also a little confused by the "Time flies" portion of the book. I think it was a segue in the story because Vladek died and Art was now writing book two by tape recording only. No chance to go back and ask Vladek a follow up question. I think Art was also feeling the pressure of creating another award winning book, without the personal help of Vladek. He may have drawn himself wearing a mask at this point because this portion of the book is his story about the frustrations and insecurities of writing it and not Vladek's story. As soon as Art starts telling Vladek's story again, he goes back to animals.
ReplyDeleteThe reference to mosquitoes is interesting because Art is essentially gassing a pest that he finds irritating, even though this pest is just trying to survive. This could be a reference to the Germans gassing the Jews in Auschwitz... not that Art considers killing mosquitoes and killing Jewish people even close to being the same thing... but it may be that since the Germans didn't consider the Jewish people human, they gave as little thought to gassing them as Art did to gassing the mosquitoes. It was foreshadowing the chapters to follow.
I think that Art loved and admired his father but I'm sure Vladek wasn't easy to get along with. Art shows us how irritated he gets with Vladek throughout the book, but he also shows us how much he admired his strength and courage by writing this book in the first place. It also shows tremendous strength on Art's part to "put the ugly side out there" for everyone to read and see. I think Vladek's little idiosyncrasies that Art finds annoying are far outweighed by the respect shown to Vladek in his remembrance of this story. Art gave him every respect that was due, while giving us a little piece of Vladek's peculiarities as well.
I think that Art found himself in perhaps an unexpectedly difficult place with the production of Maus. I mean, it's important to understand that the comic was originally released in bite-sized sections in the magazine Raw over the course of eleven years (from 1980-1991). That's a long time to work one something, especially something that is so emotionally close to the core of who you are. I think that leaves room for negative things to begin to cluster in grow. Things like doubt, or anger.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the deconstruction of the animal metaphor that occurs in "Time Flies" seems indicative of a creator who is trying to reorient himself over the subject matter. It's possible that with working on the project for so long, Art lost sight of the characters as being based on real human beings, and thus felt the need to push that human aspect to the forefront once again. I also think that it was possible that Spiegelman felt that perhaps the audience had lost sight of that element of the story as well. Eleven years. That's more than enough time for the narrative to overtake the message. So, I think that the introduction of the humans wearing masks is a means of drawing attention to the heart of what Maus is: a true story about real people who survived one of the worst horrors in history. Key words: real people.
The gassing of the mosquitos is an uncomfortable scene, because although I understand what Spiegelman was trying to say with it, I think that the execution was a little clunky. It kind of feels like Art was straining to make a metaphor happen, here.
I think that for Art personally, Vladek was probably a somewhat difficult person to deal with. I think that there was probably a lot of personality clashing between the two men, and probably more than a few hurtful things said to one-another throughout their lives. However, I think that Art without a doubt respects Vladek for what he went through, and how he survived coming out on the other side. And it's that man - the survivor - that Art is honoring with Maus. Whatever other troubles that the two men might have had with one another, there is no denying Vladek's bravery and perseverance. And that's where the glowing admiration comes from, I think.
The Time Flies chapter is probably my favorite chapter. Art uses this chapter as a way to mentally work through his own personal and artistic problems within the work. It is a great destruction of normal story telling formats while also a great view into Art as more of the creator rather than fictional character that his mouse often makes us believe, with the slight destruction of the animal metaphor and use of Pavel as a creative back board within the story. Ideas are often thought out best when you exucute them, so I think this chapter is Art problem solving his ideas and concepts of the story within real time of the story. Really pushing the boundaries of storying telling and the story teller.
ReplyDeleteAs for the flies, I agree with Traci that it could viewed as an hyperbole of Art's current life annoyances, while at the same time he could be possibly showing the obvious metaphor of gassing of the Jews, trying to draw a parallel between him and his father. Simply showing that Art's annoyances are not only small but dealt within a bad manner as well.
I too agree with the dedications of Maus has been done in the best manner possible. In the world of comics, there is a lot you have to say with out going into every detail, otherwise it'll never be finished. Spiegelman obviously wanted the book to a dedication to his father, his story and his achievements. While the extra dedications, to his mother and brother, were necessary as well. They bring in other aspects of Art's feelings of the story, but ones Spiegelman couldn't go into great detail about.
I think that Art's drawing away from the animal metaphor conveys an interesting concept about the person we are and the person we show/the person we allow others to see. It could be argued that we all wear masks, different faces that we wear among certain groups of friends or peers. Art Spiegelman could be using this image to portray how Vladek only shows people so much of who he really is, who he has become because of the holocaust. In the same way, Art only shows people, especially his father, so much of who he really is. He is distant and disconnected from almost every one except for his therapist and his wife, Francoise. This portrayal of the characters as humans wearing animal masks is an interesting portrayal of this idea.
ReplyDeleteI find a lot of the panels depicting Art in reality to be quite humorous, albeit a sort of dark humor. The cloud of bug spray is clearly reminiscent of the gasing of the Jews in the concentration camps, and Art knows this. While this instance of bug spray is humorous, it also calls to mind an interesting parallel.
It seems like Art has a definite admiration for Vladek as a survivor, but he often finds him to be quite a difficult man to deal with. He has mixed feelings for his father; love and respect on the one hand, and anger and frustration and even some resentment. It seems that Art holds Vladek to some blame for his mother's suicide, and he also detests his father's habitual conservatism of material goods and wealth. This makes their relationship a difficult one, but still filled with love and admiration.
Everyone has brought up good ideas and points. After reading other entries, I have started to wonder if the cartoonist style (not the animal aspect) is also some sort of metaphor about the story or about how Art feels about his father's story. There are many different kinds of drawing styles that could have been used for this story. So I wonder why he picked this messy Sunday Comic strip style of drawing out the story.
ReplyDeleteTo start this is one of my favorite parts of the book, aesthetically and narratively. The play on human animal relation and showing that the animals are merely facades of humans, not only reiterates the fact that these animals are real humans, but shows a reflective aspect and reminding the viewer of the story's events being a reality that happened.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a definite admiration for his father, he wrote two books about him! The books are basically his story, if that isn't a dedication I don't know what it is. I think there are moments where Art writes about the distance between him and his father as more of a hindsight. With the idea of how he almost regrets it.
At the end of Chapter Two on page 234, the bug spray scene reminds me of the story Vladek told of the pesticides in the gas chambers. This definitely plays with the animal metaphors and could be described as a moment of “meta-fiction.” Rather than a real memory, Spiegelmen could have included it to stir up larger questions of life and death encountered every day. Jewish peoples’ lives were treated like the lives of bugs during the Holocaust. The Nazis extinguished so many lives as systematically and carelessly as people spray mosquitoes.
ReplyDeleteI would say that it emphasizes what is really going on behind the mask. That the characters really are different people in spite of looking the same as they do in their animal counterparts in the book. Perhaps he felt guilty going for the animal angle and that people did not take him seriously. In panel an interviewers asks him what animal he would have made Israeli Jews, others want to make movie deals, and in the last panel on page 202 in my edition a reporter asks if he feels better after making the first book. None of these people grasp but Art was aiming for which wasn’t to be super deep – the metaphor is pretty straight forward once you research it – or to make money or be asked dumb questions about what kind of animal he would make other groups but to show the horror of the Holocaust. When he’s attacked on all sides like this he feels like he failed or that he should have handled the visuals for the story differently.
ReplyDeleteIt could have shown how easy and expendably a life can be when using things like gas. People use bug spray indiscriminately with the idea that it didn’t matter how many of the bugs die because there are plenty more where those came from. It could be a sort of reflection on how the Nazis were so quick to gas their prisoners and dispose their bodies without a second thought. The gas was a quick way to kill large amounts of people without the mess of blood and it would be viewed as clean and orderly which the Nazis were apparently fond of. To them it didn’t matter how many they gassed because there were still more Jews and others prisons left to put to work. The Nazis did not think in terms of humans but expendables.
It likely shows how Art now saw that despite of his father’s constant tension and ability to make those around him uncomfortable Vladek really did care for the people he loved especially Anja and Art. He probably did want to spend more time with his son and was not aware of the effect he had on Art thus Art drew him in a well-meaning light rather than focus on how easily his father could irritate him. In a way it portrays the idea that they had a strain relationship no matter how amiable Vladek seemed or meant to be.
The lack of a dedication is interesting when one considers that the only dedication made in either of the books was to Art’s brother, Richieu. Art had no personal connection to his brother and even admitted that he felt haunted by some unspoken standards his brother sowed into his parents. Yet despite claiming to hate him the book is for him. I wonder if it was to show that he felt wrong about his feelings towards Richieu and that he reconciled them. The lack of a dedication to Vladek I feel is justified in the fact that Maus itself was a dedication to his father, to have his memories preserved and shared with others. However, it is odd that no dedication is made for Anja. It’s hinted that Art a somewhat closer relationship with her than he did with his father and that in many was he wished he had gotten her story rather than Vladek’s. But within the comic we get a comic made him mentioning how much he resented her for killing herself and for him being blamed. It shows a very complex family relationship between all of them.