This one had a bit of a twist ending for me. But I'll get to that in a bit. First, the style: It's simple, but colored, generally very likable and cartoony. The language built with the paneling and breaking up chapters (especially between three different stories) reads very easily and quickly. I could hardly believe when I had reached the end of this book from it moving so quickly and easily.
[More to come....]
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Maus
Art Spiegelman's Maus...heart-breaking and real without the offense of those underground comics. At least, the offense isn't coming from the comic itself, but rather from history. Of course those Holocaust stories really hit hard; they always do. After so many, though, they start to blend together. My generation has just been bombarded with this stuff again and again, and I'm afraid the result is that we've gotten a bit numb to it, despite knowing the awfulness of it all.
Maus, however, digs deeper. What was really interesting is seeing how the medium interacts with the story. The comic has a lot of text. A lot. At first glance, you don't even need the pictures. They're so simple, rarely overpowering the text itself. However, the imagery of the separation of different cultures into animals plays some really important roles in relation to the story. First, that the simplification helps us to take in another Holocaust story. Second, that it shows how simple-minded, paltry, and down-right stupid separating people is based on things like race and religion. Third, of course, is the symbolism of the cats vs. mice, where cats are the evil, aggressors and mice the vulnerable, hated ones. (Personally, I found it funny that the Americans were depicted as dogs, of course chasing cats away. When Swedes were briefly shown as deer, I was kind of glad that part of my background got such a neat animal.)
More than all that symbolism and all that terror and tragedy is the story of learning to deal. The fact that this story is biographical/autobiographical makes it both harder and easier to connect for myself. On the one hand, the behaviors are very real, not over-the-top cheesy or at all romanticized. On the other, their still drawn so simply. For that moment when we see the author working at his desk and later with his therapist, where we can see the mice masks that they wear over their human faces...it nearly melts the barrier between story and reality. And the questioning of Art's relationship with Vladek is completely understandable and heartbreaking. What makes a hero? Surviving a war? What really survived? Who was left when it was done, and what was really left of them? And then, was the life that Vladek was living by the end of the story really worth it all? It's fairly classic old age, but with such extreme amounts of tension and frugality, making him a pain to everyone around him. It gets rather depressing, thinking about what it means to live and such. But the ending, where Vladek is reaching the end of his story, and we know that he has died, it doesn't seem so worthless. Obviously, his son lived on. He was able to share this story. And maybe that's what life is about, sharing stories--connecting with others so that you know that the separation between frogs and cats and dogs shouldn't have anything to do with humans separating themselves from one another.
Maus, however, digs deeper. What was really interesting is seeing how the medium interacts with the story. The comic has a lot of text. A lot. At first glance, you don't even need the pictures. They're so simple, rarely overpowering the text itself. However, the imagery of the separation of different cultures into animals plays some really important roles in relation to the story. First, that the simplification helps us to take in another Holocaust story. Second, that it shows how simple-minded, paltry, and down-right stupid separating people is based on things like race and religion. Third, of course, is the symbolism of the cats vs. mice, where cats are the evil, aggressors and mice the vulnerable, hated ones. (Personally, I found it funny that the Americans were depicted as dogs, of course chasing cats away. When Swedes were briefly shown as deer, I was kind of glad that part of my background got such a neat animal.)
More than all that symbolism and all that terror and tragedy is the story of learning to deal. The fact that this story is biographical/autobiographical makes it both harder and easier to connect for myself. On the one hand, the behaviors are very real, not over-the-top cheesy or at all romanticized. On the other, their still drawn so simply. For that moment when we see the author working at his desk and later with his therapist, where we can see the mice masks that they wear over their human faces...it nearly melts the barrier between story and reality. And the questioning of Art's relationship with Vladek is completely understandable and heartbreaking. What makes a hero? Surviving a war? What really survived? Who was left when it was done, and what was really left of them? And then, was the life that Vladek was living by the end of the story really worth it all? It's fairly classic old age, but with such extreme amounts of tension and frugality, making him a pain to everyone around him. It gets rather depressing, thinking about what it means to live and such. But the ending, where Vladek is reaching the end of his story, and we know that he has died, it doesn't seem so worthless. Obviously, his son lived on. He was able to share this story. And maybe that's what life is about, sharing stories--connecting with others so that you know that the separation between frogs and cats and dogs shouldn't have anything to do with humans separating themselves from one another.
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