ART SPIEGELMAN’S MAUS I April 1, 2014 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

McKenzie Lynn Tozan
Cara Beth Heath
Allison Boike
Catherine Kyle

ART SPIEGELMAN’S MAUS I
April 1, 2014

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. “Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History” is a significant moment in the text for many
reasons. On the one hand, it is what we know as an “embedded” comic. We get pretty meta here
with the Spiegelman’s representation of one of his own comics within another of his comics. On
another hand, these are the only pages in the text that represent people as humans… caricatures or
cartoonish humans, sure… but definitely humans. Why does Spiegelman choose to represent the
entire short comic here? Does the actual photo of his mother, in combination with the cartoon
representation of human figures, strengthen or weaken the use of animals throughout the text?
Examine the pages of “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” and come up with a few reasons that
Spiegelman might have included this in the text.

2. One topic our group continuously returned to while discussing Maus was Spiegelman’s careful
nature in constructing these panels, the images, and the selection of information. Because of this,
we felt the discussion of the chapter images (and their titles) deserved a certain level of attention.
When compared back-to-back, how do the chapter images and their titles function—in what they
focus on from the chapter, how the images are at times juxtaposed with the titles, and what they
leave out? Do these assist in constructing the arch of the story, or do they become misleading?

3. Why do you think Art Spielgleman uses mice, cats, and pigs as characters in Maus I? Investigate
why he uses these animals as characters. Which animals represent which nationalities? Provide
examples of how did you come to that conclusion.

4. In her introduction to Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics, Hillary Chute
asks, “[W]hat does it mean for an author to literally reappear—in the form of a legible, drawn
body on the page—at the site of […] inscriptional effacement?” Keeping this question in mind,
how do Spiegelman’s representations of Artie direct, repel, or otherwise affect readers’
sympathies? Readers’ understanding of the text more broadly? How do these representations
compare to those of Bechdel/Alison and Barry/Lynda? *

5. In “The Orphaned Voice,” Bosmajian explains, “In the course of [Vladek Spiegelman’s]
narrative, Artie Spiegelman reveals through words and behavior what it means to be a survivor’s
child. This double-autobiography of a son’s relation to his father and the father’s survival in one
of history’s most horrendous nightmares is depicted through the unconventional genre of the
‘commix,” a comic book that is literally a graphic autobiography” (1). How do these two levels of
story line—Art’s relationship with his father, and with his father’s survival—function in this
comic? And how does Art’s two relationships compare or contrast with Alison Bechdel’s Fun
Home, in Alison’s relationship with her father, with his sexuality, and with her own (as well as
the parallel of writing these stories about fathers)?

6. In the final moment of the text, Art calls his father a “murderer” because Vladek confesses that he
actually burned Anja’s old diaries. This equates text with human life. Examine Maus for a few
minutes and find examples of how Maus represents survival. For Art, his mother’s diaries would
have meant that she still lived in a way, but for Vladek the physical reminder of the diaries was

McKenzie Lynn Tozan
Cara Beth Heath
Allison Boike
Catherine Kyle

too painful and Anja lives on in his thoughts. Find a few examples of the many ways Maus says
you can “survive.”

7. Would you teach this book in a secondary education classroom as an introduction to a Holocaust
unit, making history real in the class? If so, which grade levels would you present this graphic
novel to and how would you go about that? Are there other literary aspects of Maus I that you
would use to teach in a lesson plan? If so, give examples of which panels you would focus on/ use
and why?

WORKS CITED:

Bosmajian, Hamida. “The Orphaned Voice in Art Spiegelman’s Maul I and II.” Literature and
Psychology 44.1/2 (1998): 1-22.

De Angelis, Richard. “Of Mice and Vermin: Animals as Absent Referent in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.”
International Journal of Comic Art (1531-6793) 7.1: page 230.

Flory, W.S. “The Search: A Graphic Narrative for Beginning to Teach about the Holocaust.” Shofar 29.2
(2011): page 34.

Hathaway, Rosemary V. “Reading Art Spiegelman’s Maus as Postmodern Ethnography.” Journal of
Folklore Research 48.3 (2011): 249-267.

Hirsch, Marianne. “Mourning and Postmemory.” Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autbiography and
Graphic Novels. Ed. Michael A. Chaney. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. 17-44.
Print. *

Rifkind, Candida. “Drawn from Memory: Comics Artists and Intergenerational Auto/biography.”
Canadian Review of American Studies 38.3 (2008): 399-427.

McKenzie Lynn Tozan
Cara Beth Heath
Allison Boike
Catherine Kyle

ANSWERS TO DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

Question 1 (Cara Beth)

The embedded comic contained on pp. 100-103 tells the story of the suicide of Art’s mother. It
depicts him as a prisoner, dressed in stripes like traditional jail uniforms. The comic also
investigates Art’s feelings of guilt about the last interaction he had with his mother, how trapped
he feels by that guilt, but also how trapped he felt before her death anyway. He is a prisoner either
way… Including this short comic in the middle of Maus does multiple things for Spiegelman’s
longer comic. First, it portrays Art as the prisoner, rather than Vladek and Anja, who are typically
thought of as the “prisoners” or “survivors” of the holocaust. “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” plants
the thematic seed of “survivor’s guilt” in Maus, that being the child of a holocaust survivor
carries its own burdens. More than that, though, the comic lets the reader know that Art’s
relationship with his mother was just as strange as his relationship with Vladek. Though Maus
often positions Art and Vladek in opposition or shows Art to feel distant and bitter toward his
father, “Prisoner” reveals that Art felt stifled by his mother as well. How can we trust this narrator
now that we know he tends toward bitterness in relationship with both of his parents? How does
this effect how the reader feels for him when he blames his father for Anja’s “murder” in the end
of the text?

“Prisoner on the Hell Planet” also portrays humans as human rather than animal in form,
a departure from the style of the rest of the text. This is interesting because in other
representations of representations, Spiegelman changes the representation to animal form. For
example, on p. 17 Spiegelman draws the photograph of Anja as a mouse rather than representing
the photograph true to the human form. When he represents the photo and characters on pp. 100-
103, however, they are humans, not mice. Why? The shock of the human figures in the middle of
a world of mice adds, for me, to the shock of Anja’s suicide, as does the black background behind
the comic’s pages. This interruption of the text’s overall style highlights the interruption that
Anja’s death was for Art and Vladek.

Question 2 (McKenzie)

One of the first things I really found myself sinking my teeth into were the chapter images and the
titles selected—particularly the image selected for the Contents page (5), the decision to focus on
Lucia for Chapter 1 (9), and the horrible juxtaposition of the honeymoon with the swastika in
Chapter 2 (25) and the heartbreak and terror of Chapter 4 (71). When focusing purely on the
images and titles of each chapter, we are faced first with the potential of loneliness and fear via
Lucia, followed immediately with the looming terror suggested by the swastika, only to watch as
these mice-faced characters are plunged deeper and deeper into the depths of the Holocaust—the
noose growing tighter (71), the holes the mice found themselves hiding in just to survive, with
very few succeeding (95), only to end with the greater-inevitability of the mouse trap (129). In
viewing these chapter headings alone, if anything, we are presented as readers with the horror,
dread and hopelessness that surely Art’s father (and countless others) similarly felt, and even the
earlier chapters that focus on Vladek’s relationship with Lucia and the earlier introductions of the
swastikas (prior to full invasion) suggest that heightening possibility.

Question 3 (Allison)

Art Spielgleman uses a unique cartoon style in order to characterize humans as animals to

McKenzie Lynn Tozan
Cara Beth Heath
Allison Boike
Catherine Kyle

illustrate the disturbing story of his parents’ Holocaust survival, his father’s ongoing pain, its
impact on family relationships, and his own artistic struggle. Throughout this graphic novel Jews
are represented as mice, while Germans are represented as cats, and other animals are used to
portray other nationalities, religions, and races. On the contrary, characters derived from a single
nationality were drawn identically using slight details in their clothing to distinguish their
differences.

Question 4 (Catherine)

Question 5 (McKenzie)

This ended up being my favorite topic of the comic—Art’s relationship with his father, his
relationship with his father’s survival, and the writing down of these conversations (and even the
potential differences between writing the memories down, versus recording them). When the
comic remains in the present, and we are able to observe Art’s interactions with Vladek and Mala,
I found some of the most authentic moments to be when Art was asking questions about the
Holocaust but was similarly interacting with his father as an individual, rather than as a survivor.
This included discussions of the Holocaust and of Anja—such as the moment in the bank when
Vladek collapses in sheer grief at the loss of his wife (127). In a similar way, Alison’s
interactions with her father seemed to be at their most authentic when they talk about books rather
than sexuality and experimentation, which appear to close down their conversations. Then there is
the connection via writing and even journaling—the importance of recording events, how letters
and diaries begin to function as a physical manifestation of certain characters.

Question 6 (Cara Beth)

There are many examples of various forms of “survival” throughout Maus, but some that might
come up in discussion are as follows: On page 17, Anja sends Vladek a picture of herself, which
he frames, and that picture becomes her presence while he is away from her. Her presence
through the photo is so strong that it causes an argument with Lucia, an argument that is
portrayed as dramatic and visual—all this from a photograph. Through this moment, the power of
a photographic representation as presence/survival is established. Next, on p. 28 a package of
documents is enough to get a seamstress arrested, confirming the power of a document. On page
34, Anja and Vladek receive a photo of Richieu with a letter, and they speak about him as if he is
there—the photo brings him into their presence. Next, on p. 45, the top panel depicts Art writing
down the stories of his father. The act of documenting his father’s story, in combination with his
declaration that the burning of Anja’s diaries (p. 159) is murder, is the act of preserving Vladek’s
existence after death, ensuring his survival. Thus, the resulting text, Maus, the one we are talking
about in class, is survival itself because it holds so many people’s lives within its pages, bringing
them into the room with us, into the presence of the reader.

Question 7 (Allison)

I would use Maus I, written by Art Spiegelman, as an introduction to a Holocaust unit in a
secondary education classroom. Reading this graphic novel, it took me back to memories of my
family members reminiscing of their war experience, making WWII more surreal to me. I believe
that if we share real stories with adolescents about the war, they will be more inclined to take it
seriously and learn from it. Maus I is a memoir of one man’s Holocaust experience and personal
account, which reflects on his specific circumstances, age, personality, and country of origin,

McKenzie Lynn Tozan
Cara Beth Heath
Allison Boike
Catherine Kyle

providing insight of pre-war Jewish life, the layout and working of Auschwitz, the language in
this area, survival and resistance, liberation, and the war’s aftermath. There are various topics I
would touch on in class when teaching this graphic novel, while teaching subjects such as social
studies, language arts, and visual art. Maus I offers an opportunity to explore the history of the
Holocaust though Valdek’s experiences of segregation, hiding and deportation, the workings and
specialized language of Auschwitz, resistance, liberation, and the aftermath of war. On the other
hand, language arts plays a vital part in this story because it is an autobiography expressed
through the conversations between father and son, bringing up character development and the use
of metaphor. In addition, there is much visual art that contributes to this graphic novel, as a comic
book there is much opportunity to explore style, the artistic process and contemporary cartooning
as it relates to issues of social justice.

ANALYSIS OF SELECTED SPREAD (pages 60-61):

McKenzie / A Look at the Three Levels of Story in Spread

In looking at this particular spread, we are able to see the various levels that Maus offers—and in this
spread, we are able to see three: the present, the past, and an embedded narrative of the past. In the
present, we see (as we often do in this story) Vladek sharing his story with his son; in the past, we see
Vladek traveling by train (hopefully) to Sosnowiec; and in the embedded past, we see the story of the 600
people killed two days previously, told by the Jewish authorities to Vladek. Each of these levels of story
are differently-depicted, as Alison will discuss, but we also see a varying amount of visual “time” spent
on each of these layers. In the present, we only see two panels, in which Art interjects a question. We
spend the most time in the past, on page 60, when we move from moment to moment, as Vladek watched
Sosnowiec come and go. Finally, the embedded past is represented in a series of panels but focuses
specifically on one panel, represented in the middle of page 61.

Allison / Visual Contrast between Past & Present

On the last panel of this spread we see the father and son sitting down talking, back to reality. It is
interesting going back and forth from the father’s story of the Holocaust and the reality of the
storytelling. The father and son are both cleanly/ neatly drawn as oppose to the larger picture
above, which is dark and full of thick lines. The larger picture demonstrates death, a second hand
story, and distant memory.

Catherine / Floating Panels & Break in Format

Cara Beth / Map of Poland & Break in Format

On 60, one panel is dedicated to the map of Poland, which is of interest to us for two reasons.
First, it is an example of when Spiegelman occasionally breaks his standard panel format for
Maus. When Spiegelman chooses to slant or offset one of his panels, he highlights that panel’s
significance. The significance of the map is clear on this spread, consistent with the use of the
same technique in similar moments throughout the text (see p. 17, 22, 31, 110). Second, the map
itself reminds us of the real world in which Vladek’s story exists by showing where he was
travelling during his years enlisted in the military. It places us and the story in an area we could
identify on any map, thus connecting Maus with the world of the reader and with every holocaust
story.