Prisha's Bizarre Takes on Lit

Bizarre Take #10: Final thoughts on Maus! Finally finished reading Maus this week! What a rollercoaster of emotions, this was. There were so many instances filled with nostalgia that really gave us a personalized view of Vladek’s life, and allowed us to learn a bit more about his character dynamic. For example, when Archie deep dived into Vladek’s backstory, we can see the drastic impact it had on his father. Vladek acquired a lot of trauma from these horrific events that Archie emphasized throughout both volumes. He lost his first son, Richeu, lost his wife Anja in a terrible tragedy, and was left to live with the horrifying survivors' guilt. For example, in one of the panels, we can see Vladek describing to his son in detail how he was drafted into the army and was forced to fight on the sidelines. He is shown lying down on the ground, and in a similar panel, Artie is also shown lying down in the same position. These two ideas parallel together very well, and emphasize the interg...

For this blog, I decided to write about a section of the comic that I found particularly interesting, and prompted me to continue exploring this concealed issue that suddenly came to light on pages 87 to 88. These pages highlighted the idea of a power dynamic and how apparent it was throughout Spiegelman’s writing. Throughout Maus, Spiegelman makes an argument centered around power, and how its slow takeover over large groups of people can cause a huge divide, specifically between the “mice” and the “cats”. Starting off, on page 87, we can see Vladek explaining his experiences with the German police, and how his family was forced to give up their grandparents and send them to Czechoslovakia, shown when they said, “If the Kamios don’t turn up in 3 days, YOU will be sent in their place!” (Page 87). This obviously caused a major ripple within their family, as they were all very interconnected and didn’t want to separate. This shows the power that the Germans had over the Jews, and how the...