maus paper 2

ch4 analysis

• Imagery: The panels with crowded apartments, black walls, and silent suffering show that the noose isn’t just physical—it’s psychological.

• Irony: The Nazis constantly trick people into participating in their own deportation, which adds a devastating layer of emotional betrayal. (fences: rules and burmese colonisal hypocrysiy)

• Symbolism: The false walls symbolize fragile safety, built on denial.

• Minimalist reaction: The understated narration of Richieu’s death makes it more haunting. It reflects how trauma is sometimes too big for words—just like Troy’s cut off dialogue in Fences or emotional suppression in Burmese Days.
  

ch 5 analysis

• Animal allegory deepens: The "mouse holes" aren't just physical—they symbolize psychological hiding, fear, and dehumanization.

• Tension in panels: You’ll notice very cramped, claustrophobic panels. Spiegelman compresses the visual space to make you feel trapped, too.

• Morality under pressure: Good people act selfishly. Betrayal happens. It’s not “good guys vs. bad guys”—it’s humans vs. impossible choices. Even family members like Haskel will put themselves first for survival

analysis ch6

• Irony - Vladek calls ARtie richieu, showing he is trapped in the past. perhaps art cant live up to richieu or vladek is seeing him as a replacement

• contrast with past and present - jumping between memories to show how trauma echoes generations (cory burdened by troy’s emo)

Visual Symbolism: Animal Masks & Racial Coding (authorial choice)

Spiegelman’s most famous authorial move — depicting characters as animals — becomes a tool for satirizing racial essentialism while showing how identity is externally imposed.

masks used in later scenes

• effective - simple but powerful across a wide range, easily understoof

• it literalizes how race/ethnicity perceived and taken advantage under oppression - mask motif of Vlad being a pig also reflects performative identity for the sake of survival

Indirect/direct characcterisation thru narrative voice + framing

Spiegelman blends indirect and direct characterization to construct Vladek as a contradictory figure — survivor, father, manipulator, and miser — but filters everything through Artie’s lens to complicate what we trust.

There are moments where Vladek is directly praised or described:

• “He could fix anything.”

• Artie’s narration: “He was amazingly resourceful.”

SHOWS COMPETENCE AND ADMIRED SKILLS AS A SURVIVOR

But a lot of his character is constructed thru his dynamics with others and what he chooses to share

Artie draws himself smaller and overwhelmed in scenes with Vladek — visual framing reinforces indirect critique

• His obsessive hoarding, racism toward Black people, emotional distance → never directly condemned, but we infer discomfort.

• Vladek burns Anja’s diaries — indirect reveal of guilt/control, never explained in full

• withholding judgment makes us form our own impression, seeing how complicated it is

EFFECTIVEl mimics emotional experience of memory and trauma, through what they make others feel or theri actions

• Vladek is many things in the eyes of different people - Spiegel man shows that all can be true - hero or coward or father EMOTIONALLY HONEST while BD internalizes

“It would take many books, my life, and no one wants anyway to hear such stories.” — Vladek

memory, trauma, power

• early on when Artie asks Vladek to tell him about the war for book

• Vladek minimizes the act of storytelling, claiming disinterest from others — a deflection.

• Spiegelman uses this to show that power over memory is power over meaning: Vladek controls what gets told. HE SURVIVED BUT NOW FILTERS TRUTH TO MAINTAIN AUTHORITY OVER THE PAST

fences - troy’s dominance over cory’s sense of the past like a weapon

“Sometimes I don’t feel like a functioning adult.” — Artie

theme: post-memory, IDENTITY

• simple devastating confession = invisible trauma: artie didnt experience auschwitz but suffers its effects inheritance

• Generational contrast with Vladek - action vs hesitation, survivor mentality shaped by trauma dn pragmatism vs modern struggles shaped by guilt and distance

“To die, it’s easy... but you have to struggle for life!”

Theme: Power, Identity

• the absolutism of equating surviving with moral superioroity and dying with weakness, Spiegelman does not add extra judgment to Vladek’s words saying he was wrong to let him speak for himself

• reveals why Vladek so controlling now. he believes survival justifies his behaviour. downplays Art’s struggles

• traume hardens into authority, the trauma controls how Vladek sees himself and others

Troy: born with two strikes, both mean weaponize survival as a way to control others.