Mrs. Hefele's Social Studies Classes | World History, AP ...



Maus I and II: For all questions, please use specific textual examples to support your arguments. These are general, whole text analysis questions. To answer these you will have had to read the text(s). The close analysis of specific sections of the book(s) follows. N.B. There are a couple different ways to get this book. You can get them as 2 individual texts, or as one combined text called “The Complete Maus.” The contents are the same. Page numbering will be different. Please pay attention.Speigelman uses animals to depict specific groups. Which animals did he use? Why do you think he specifically chose those animals? How would the story change if Spiegelman used human characters instead of animal characters?Spiegelman depicts himself as a man wearing a mouse mask. Why do you think that is? To what extent does Anja survive the holocaust?In what ways has the past affected the present for Vladek and Art?Explain Vladek’s racism when Fran?ois picks up the African American hitchhiker.What does Spiegelman gain from learning the horrifying details of his father’s story?What do you think causes Art to feel a kind of rivalry with his long dead brother, Richieu?Discuss the role of luck and faith in Vladek’s story of survival. To what degree was Vladek’s survival based on luck, and to what degree was his survival based on his considerable resourcefulness?Though the author was born in Sweden after the end of the Holocaust, the events have nevertheless had a profound effect on his life. Discuss the nature of these effects and why the Holocaust remains such a formative event.Maus?is written in the rather unconventional form of a graphic novel. Is this format an effective means of telling a Holocaust narrative? How might it differ from a more conventional Holocaust narrative??To what extent are Vladek’s aggravating personality traits a product of his experiences during the Holocaust?Discuss Art’s portrayal of his father. Is it a fair portrayal? What feelings does Art have about this portrayal??Throughout?Maus, Art is consumed with guilt. Discuss these different forms of guilt. How do they relate to one another? How do they differ??The second chapter of Book II of?Maus?begins with a third level of narrative, which takes place in 1987, nine years after Art began working on?Maus?and five years after the death of his father. What is the purpose of this narrative, and what does it tell us about the author’s relationship with his father and with the Holocaust??Compare Vladek’s marriage to Mala with his previous marriage to Anja. Why is Vladek’s relationship with Mala so contentious, while his relationship with Anja was so filled with love?Though?Maus?focuses largely on the Jewish people, the narrative generally avoids issues of religion. To what extent are the major characters religious? What role does religion play in their lives?Where is Hitler in?Maus? ‘The story of Maus could only have been told as a graphic novel.’ Do you agree?To what extent are Vladek’s personality traits a pitiable product of his experiences during the Holocaust?‘Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn't the BEST people who survived, nor did the best ones die. It was RANDOM?’ How is this view reflected in both the action and themes of Maus? ‘Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.’ To what extent can Maus be seen as responding to this suggestion?‘Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.’ Examine the difficulties of memory and the portrayal-of-self for both Artie’s and the reader’s ability to know the truth?Close Analysis: Read the specified pages closely and answer the following questions. N.B: The page numbers may be off. These are from my combined copy of Maus I and Maus II. If you are usinging individual copies you will need to be more aware that the pages may not line up. Also, I have a first edition, the copies you are using may be from later print editions, so again. Pay more attention to the specific questions if the pages don’t seem to make sense to you. Analysis 1:?Maus I, page 47. “Bridging Decades”The title of?Maus I’s Chapter Three, “Prisoner of War”, echoes which other, later, section of the graphic novel? What parallels can you detect between the two sections?How does Art visually use himself to “bridge decades” between his father’s story and the present moment?How does breaking through the separate panels on the page work to both emphasise the interruption of the story and propel the narrative forward?The position that Art occupies in the remaining panels on the page is referred to as the “witness position” in film analysis. Why would that be?Why does Art depict this aspect of his father’s story in a static series of Vladek sitting in a chair instead of “dramatising” the action?Analysis 2:?Maus I, page 53. “Hands”Spiegelman has described comics as “a vital and expressive language that talks with its hands”. How does this page call attention to "handwriting" as a theme in?Maus?In the conspicuous corner panel on the bottom left of the page — an iris diaphragm — focusing in on two hands, how can you tell which hand belongs to whom? Describe the differences between the two hands.What is the pointed comparison that Vladek makes between Art and himself and what is the point of the comparison?Vladek tells Art, later on in the book but fairly early on in his narrative, that he “didn’t want to put my hands where Jews were being taken”— an odd sentence accompanied by an image of the latter-day Vladek, hands up in the air demonstratively (86). How does Vladek later use his handwriting in particular and his hands in general to aid his survival?Comment on the shifting perspective used by Spiegelman on this page. What different "camera shots" do we see and what purpose do they serve?Analysis 3:?Maus I, page 112. “Pirandello Comics”On this page Spiegelman draws Vladek drawing for Art, and then Spiegelman draws Vladek’s diagram — a side view of a bunker where the Spiegelmans hid — for readers. He showcases it in a panel that is drawn as a page of Art’s spiral notebook. How does the diagram panel visually call attention to itself? What effect is created by the depiction of the diagram?In a 1994 roundtable on Schindler’s List — a panel in which Spiegelman was an active participant — experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs details his criteria for historical representation, referencing the film’s last scene, its only in colour, in which actual Schindler Jews walk with the actors portraying them at Schindler’s gravesite in Israel. Jacobs claims: “In this scene I felt he was making a movie for me. If only throughout the film, he had shown these people guiding and instructing the dedicated actors, placing their hands, ‘Okay, now you do this, as was done when I was young, this happened this way.’ But how many people turn out for a Pirandello cinema?” Look up Luigi Pirandello. What might Jacobs mean by "a Pirandello cinema"? In what way is this page as a Pirandello comic?Analysis 4:?Maus II, page 211. “Mapping”This page recalls Spiegelman’s comment “I grew up with parents who were always ready to see the world grid crumble”. Describe how the geography of Auschwitz replaces the order and implied grid of the page here.How does the black sun-umbrella pole in the panels function as a dividing line, literally and symbolically, between father and son?How does Art’s cigarette smoke connect with the central image? What might Spiegelman be suggesting through this visual connection?Is there a visual parallel between the smoke in the central image and the umbrella pole? Does this suggest anything about the nature of the barrier between Art and Vladek?Analysis 5:?Maus II, page 231. “Defamiliarisation”What is the effect of the juxtaposition of the stylized animal characters, drawn in a simplified cartoon style, with meticulously realistically drawn props and locations — such as the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz?How do these pictures of Auschwitz’s awful spaces differ from the illustration in the rest of the book? Why might Spiegelman have drawn them in this way?How does the layout of the page, with its rhythm between open and closed, action and stillness, work to convey a message about Auschwitz?What does the closed door in the top right-hand corner suggest?Analysis 6:?Maus II, page 275. “Frames and Snapshots”What effect do the cluttered visuals of this page have?How and why do the photographs, with their own visually similar white panel borders, disrupt the present-day panels? What do they suggest about the relationship between the past and the present?What is the larger significance of photographs in?Maus?As with several other pages in?Maus?that rupture their frames, this one is unnumbered? Why might this be?Analysis 7:?Maus II, page 294. “A Souvenir Photo”The photograph of Vladek Spiegelman at the end of the text, dated from 1945, is the final of the three photographs in?Maus. What does it suggest about?Maus’s status as fiction or nonfiction?Why does Speigelman show us the actual photograph, after his earlier painstaking and conspicuous drawing of dozens of photographs?Spiegelman first shows us Anja first looking at it in 1945 (“and here’s a picture of him!” she cries out); and he shows us Art looking at it in 1981: “Incredible!” he exclaims. Why is it so incredible?How would you interpret Vladek’s expression and stance in the photograph?“I’m literally giving a form to my father’s words and narrative,” Spiegelman observes, “and that form for me has to do with panel size, panel rhythms, and visual structures of the page”. What does Spiegelman’s use of the word “literally” suggest about the ability of comics to show as well as tell? What extra resonance does the word "literally" have on this page? ................
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