After his father’s death, Art’s perspective drastically differs from any other part of the graphic novel. Although his first volume of Maus brought him much success, his desolation and sorrow radiates throughout this portion of the comic strip as he remains overwhelmed by the past and stuck in the present with no future to look forward to. In the second volume of Maus, the first panel of page 42 introduces a new point of view but also emphasizes recurring elements in the graphic novel.
In this section, Spiegelman utilizes masks for a greater purpose than occasionally concealing the true identities of a select few. Instead, in this portion, he chooses to have every character wear an animal mask to illustrate their race and nationality while the back of their heads show that they’re all just people. This sudden change illustrates how Artie’s world in 1987 barely resembles his father’s. Throughout Vladek’s life, race and nationality were the basis for everything, creating multiple stereotypes and sources of discrimination. Previously, Spiegelman expressed this by characterizing everyone as animals with pigs as Poles, Jews as mice, Germans as cats, etc.. When Artie is interviewing him in the 1970’s and 1980’s, his father still categorizes others and makes assumptions based on their ethnicity. In 1987, however, Artie lives in a nation which is coming to accept everyone as the same, humans. The masks emphasize how they are not just their “animal”, or ethnicity, but the characters are not fully depicted as identical which demonstrates how others continue to discriminate.
Another prominent feature of the panel is the giant pile of dead, naked mice which are made up of just skin and bones. These mice clearly represent all of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. By illustrating a pile of them rather than a few, Art emphasizes the great scale of death during the time period but, more importantly, how difficult it is for individuals to ignore and wave away this era of mass killing. Specifically, Art’s striped mouse face expresses the prominent guilt he feels not only in this scene but the rest of the novel. At the edge of the panel, the German reporter also has a sad expression on his catlike face while he is being enveloped and dragged down by the dead. This exemplifies many Germans’ guilt in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. On the other hand, many have avoided thinking about the Holocaust. The dead bodies are all white, making the pile blend into the white background easily but also sharply contrast with the reporters’ black attire. The Americans are enveloped in black which demonstrates how they are completely oblivious to the Jews’ struggles and can’t even begin to fathom them, but the Germans have a tint of white in their clothing, illustrating that they have some idea of the Jews’ troubles since they were essentially the problem. By combining the murdered with the white background, Art also stresses how easy it is to push the Holocaust into the back of your mind and forget about it. Additionally, the bodies are being stepped on by an American reporter, emphasizing how ignorant individuals can easily ignore and evade the tragedy completely. Lastly, flies are swarming around the bodies in this specific panel as well as the rest of the scene. They symbolize change and recovery that is comes from the Holocaust. From different parts of the world, individuals are achieving a new, less biased view and recovering from a tragedy that affected millions.
Comments
Post a Comment