Maus II - styles and technique
There is an old saying that a picture says a thousand words. Art Spiegelman's series Maus II: A Survivors Tale/And Here My Troubles Began proves this saying to a tee. Added to the dialogue, a million possibilities arise. The series is a autobiographical/biographical comic book about his father's experiences during the Holocaust. It uses cats, mice, and other animals to present this very delicate subject. The first book in the series received tremendous adulation and received the National Book Critics Circle prize in biography. However, the critics involved in this prize were forced to ask two questions. 'Does a comic book represent the World Wars well or not?' and 'Was Spiegelman right to use the humor of a comic book to express the Holocaust?' I will attempt to answer these questions by focusing on Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began. Using artwork combined with pictures serves many purposes. It allows the author to develop characters with a visual reference. It serves to fill in the blanks by cutting down the necessity to read between the lines to understand the big picture. These can be seen as pros and cons. So Spiegelman attempted to reduce the gap between the dialogue and the pictures. "I didn't want people to g
Obviously, he is trying to show the Americans as more powerful than the Germans and the Germans more powerful than the Jewish. This direct quote from an unknown interview done with Spiegelman shows that he meant to use the pictures only as a tool to express his ideas. Instead, there are still things left to the reader's imagination. " In essence the cartoon lets Spiegelman show a distinct metaphor. It operates somewhere between the words and the idea that's in the pictures, which is in essence what happens in a comic". This was also probably the biggest con that Spiegelman experienced while trying to describe the Holocaust as a comic. This eliminates any disparity between what he wants the reader to see, and what the reader will actually believe. Expressing the events with humor can be a very dangerous endeavor. This shows how Spiegelman used the analogy to express the stratification that was present during this period of time. With pictures, he was able to show more than any novel ever could. To decide whether Spiegelman has correctly shown the Holocaust and the atrocities associated with it, you must weigh the above arguments. "If too much emphasis were put on the pictures, then whole story would not be shown. The humor and the story line distract people from the horror experienced. Instead of using the drawings as a medium to show expression, he uses the drawings also help him to express ideas that he does not want left to the imagination.
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Acceptance Essays
