Prompt Debrief

Prompt: In an interview concerning the depiction of the pain and suffering during the holocaust in his graphic novel, Maus, Art Spiegelman said that although there were reviewers that "wanted less", the strips in the graphic novel are "exactly what they are".

   Examine the visual rhetoric and structure of the frames that Spiegelman created in the excerpt below as he articulates the horrors that the Jews faced on the train. Then write an essay analyzing the different strategies Spiegelman uses to convey the theme of pain that the Jews experienced. Support your claim and analysis with specific references to the images and the relationship between the theme and the images.


   I chose this page to write my prompt about because I thought that the images were very powerful and truly showed the desperation of the Jews at this time.
   One example is the last two boxes on the page, most of the mice are shaded black, but the one that remained unshaded and looks clearly dominant is the mouse with the sugar. This symbolizes how small things could make someone seem very powerful. All that this mouse had was sugar, yet people were begging and negotiating for it, something so small could make people desperate and possibly save their lives.
   Another example is the bars on the window that is shown on the panel with the hand sticking out of the window. The bars make it seem as if they are in prison, which also can be symbolized through the stripes on the sleeve of the arm reaching out of the window for snow.  These two pieces of evidence show the theme of helplessness and entrapment.

MAUS

Page 106.

   In class, it was brought to everyone's attention that perhaps the shading of the pictures meant something to the plot and were actually a symbol. In this comic, I think that the shading of the Jews is also used as a symbol.
   In this specific picture, all of the Jews are shaded and no distinguishing characteristics are shown, while the Nazis are not shaded and can be clearly seen and distinguished. I think that this symbolizes that the Jews were not treated as people, and were instead just pushed around as if they are not individual beings, and were instead just being categorized as one big mass of people. The fact that the Jews are not actually drawn as individuals really shows how inhumane the entire situation one, and how the Nazis lost their feelings of empathy and guilt because they no longer saw Jews as human beings, and instead saw just as a mass that they had a mission to kill.
   The shading of the Jews also makes it seem like they are just part of the background and not the main point of the picture, this symbolizes that the treatment of the Jews did not seem like a huge deal, and was instead just something happening in the background of the lives for many of the Nazis.

On the Topic of Mulan and Warrior Woman...

   There definitely is some correlations between Mulan and story from the Warrior Woman, no doubt about it. But let's look at the differences:

- Mulan: A man needs to come to the rescue in the end, and save Mulan, because although she is a warior, she needs a man to help her.
- Warrior Woman: Independent, and finishes the job without someone rescuing her.

   Obviously, the story in the Warrior Woman got some inspiration from Mulan, but the story is tweaked so that the woman is really the hero in the end. She did meet her husband, but she led her husband to war by her side, she was truly the one that defeated the enemies and gained the glory.
   I'm not saying that either way is better or worse than the other, in both stories, I think girls will be able to find inspiration, but during our class discussions, people continuously called the story in teh Warrior Woman "Mulan", and what I'm trying to say is, that was not Mulan, Mulan is a different story with a similar plot and morals.
   Someone also said in class that the baby that is born during the fighting is a symbol of the strength of a woman. I strongly agree with this!!!!!!!!!! This is something else that was not in the original Mulan story that I think really adds a sense of empowerment to women.

It's not a game...

"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong..." (On the Duty of Civil Disobedience)

   Thoreau says that voting is somewhat a game to people, but the reality is that to some people, everything is just a game. I will never understand people that go through life with no moral conscience.. All of your actions mean something in the bigger picture, I truly believe that everything you do will have an affect on someone out there, and that someone could be a stranger, a friend, an acquaintance, someone you are romantically involved with, or that someone could simply be yourself.
   What I'm trying to say is, don't treat your life as a game, you are worth so much more than that, there are wonderful things that each and every person on this earth can do but simply don't realize the magnitude of their actions.
   Sometimes I get too wrapped up in petty things that don't really matter in the bigger picture and I forget to appreciate the things that really are important and really do matter. The truth is that your life is your chance at making a difference, each life is an opportunity, why waste your opportunity to make a difference? I myself am still trying to teach myself to not live in fear of judgement from the societal norm, live a life that I can look back at when I am 90 and be proud of my accomplishments.