Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

1 of 4

Narrative Forms in Maus
Riveted to both the cadences of language and the rhythms of the visual, Maus walks
many fault lines
...
While
Maus is composed with an "architectonic rigour" that moves each page forward in
time, it also disrupts its own surfaces layering temporalities, violating the grid of the
page
...
In my Further Oral Activity,
I focus on instances where the narrative strategy of the page is revealed tellingly
through its form
...
Maus is about Spiegelman’s
father’s archive, and testimony, and Spiegelman’s own creation of an archive
...
This is clearly seen on page 47 of ‘The Complete Maus’
...
In Spiegelman's
suggestive panelization, Artie's legs bridge decades: looking up at his sitting father,
and facing "forwards" towards the direction of the unfolding narrative, Art’s legs are
yet mired in the past
...
This scene also elucidates the
discursive nature of the graphic novel as Artie's body spills over between frames, thus
disrupting the "setting apart" of Vladek's history from the present timeline
...

Spiegelman drops the panel borders of the second frame, visually propelling the
reader forward through the page (in the direction that Artie’s body and tail point to)
and out from the implied containment or sanctity of historiography
...
This can be clearly understood
by analysing the frames on page 14 of ‘The Complete Maus’
...


2 of 4

Vladek does not actually move forward; his movement in suspension
...
In spite of a progression in frames, his body is shown to
be locked in the same position, connoting that Vladek is held captive by the
memories and events of the Holocaust, even after the progression of time, i
...
, end
of the war
...
Artie, a symbol or object from the
present, is locked into Vladek’s hands with the tattoo from the past, suggesting that
Vladek’s present life is held captive by the past
...
It suggests
that the past - articulated (spoken), inscribed (tattooed), and documented (the
photograph of Vladek) is closing in on both Art and Vladek
...
As for Artie, later on we see several instances
of Artie being affected by his mother’s unexplained suicide and his dysfunctional
relation with his father
...
What was then revered as quick-witted and sharp, is now demeaned as
irksome
...
As mentioned earlier, Vladek’s present lies in
the clutches of the past; he continues to practice the same strategies of being
parsimonious
...
Rather than showing
empathy, we see him being highly irked by his father’s behaviour
...

This crucial page of Maus II is dominated by a bird eye view map of Auschwitz
...

These rows show a black sun umbrella pole here figured as a literal dividing line separating father and son, who are seated, facing each other, as Vladek first starts
explaining the geography of Auschwitz
...
In each individual

3 of 4

panel on the page, the sun umbrella pole is an evident marker of the obstacle between
father and son
...
And while Vladek,
who lived through the camps, is on the other side of the dividing line from his
information seeking, order imposing son, he still cannot simply "access" history, even
his own
...
Though the map is partially enclosed by the two L-shaped rows, there is no
grid system of frames in the Auschwitz map, thus connoting the non-graspability of
the past
...
It
then connects back to the black sun umbrella poles, which are drawn in a manner that
resembles the crematorium chimneys
...
This is further reinforced by the absence of
gutters as it suggests that there is no distinction between the past and the present i
...

the depiction of Auschwitz and the present day conversation
...
This is
suggested through the axial symmetry in the first column, where frames from row 1,
2 and 5 depict Artie interviewing Vladek
...
He is unaware of the deep emotional and mental
impact of the Holocaust on Vladek which is represented by pole, as mentioned
before
...
Vladek recounts an incident in which a German soldier
barks at him, "Show me your hands! You never worked a day in your life
...

Vladek ends this anecdote with a pointed comparison in the very next panel
...
In including a discussion
of his own artisanal and "delicate" hands, Spiegelman calls attention to the enterprise

4 of 4

that marks and differentiates him from his father, whose hands went on to lose their
"delicacy" in the tin shops and shoe repair sessions of Auschwitz
...

We can also consider this to be suggestion of Vladek’s oblivion to the effect of the
Holocaust on his own life
...
By placing the two contrasting temporalities, Spiegelman introduces the
idea of Vladek himself being unaware of the changes or rather lack of changes that
the Holocaust instilled in him
...

To commemorate his father’s memory and to recompense his lack of regard for his
father, he inserts a real-life souvenir photo of Vladek Spiegelman
...
Behind it, where it
jostles out of its neat position, we see dark blank space
...

Through the use of narrative forms, Spiegelman effectively points to the ability of the
form of comics to not only tell but to show, and to not only show, but to sculpt how it
shows, out of the space of time, out of the space of the page
...




---