Maus II Chapter 3-5

Maus II Chapters 3-5

The concluding three chapters are indeed the most powerful ones readers encounter while reading Maus. In these three chapters alone the readers have to read about how Vladek is released from Auschwitz, how they are saved by the Americans, how he is reunited with Anja, how Artie finally comes to peace with his father and in the end, when Vladek dies.

Chapter three however, begins with Vladek talking about how the Nazis, after hearing that the Americans were closing in, vacated Auschwitz and forced the Jewish prisoners to walk for several days and hundreds of miles. They also destroyed Auschwitz to cover up any evidence of what they had done. Vladek describes this march as a horrible death walk as the Germans shot anybody who even attempted to run away or the ones who did not march quickly enough. Then the prisoners were forced onto a train ride where even more died after being suffocated, starved, and crushed to death by the hundreds of prisoners crowded onto a train made to transport cattle. Even if they survived this, they Nazis refused to give the prisoners any food if there were lice on their clothes, something that was virtually impossible to avoid. Even the ever lucky Vladek almost dies as he is stricken with a common prisoner disease—typhus fever. Miraculously though he regains his strength and is able to be exchanged as a prisoner of war. Although we see Vladek once again escape death on several occasions in this chapter, it does nothing to change the kind of man he is in present day. As Francois, Artie, and Vladek are driving home from the grocery store Vladek is enraged that Francois picks up a black African-American. This shows that no matter how harshly the Jews were treated in the Holocaust because of racism, Vladek still discriminates people unjustly.

Chapter four is a joyous one as Vladek is finally liberated and meets the Americans for the first time. But before this happens he is forced to escape from the Nazis one last time and hide in a barn while a battle rages on outside. It is here that the Americans find him and his friend. Vladek says that the Americans treat them very nicely, always calling him “Willie” and giving him chocolates and lots of food. The chapter ends in a sad note, though, as Vladek shows Artie several pictures of his family and then sadly describes how most of them were killed in Auschwitz.

Chapter Six is the final chapter of the Maus series and it really does end in a bittersweet manner, just as I thought it would. Artie receives a phone call from Mala saying that Artie is very sick. After transferring from different hospitals Vladek is finally released and is allowed to go home with Artie. It is here that Artie finishes his tale after being liberated and saved by the Americans. Vladek describes that after the Americans saved him he transferred from town to town until he found out that Anja was still alive and living in Sosnowiec. Vladek rushes to Sosnowiec and is finally reunited with his wife after being separated for almost a year. The book ends here though as Vladek says that he is done talking and goes to sleep. The entire book ends with a gravestone showing Anja and Vladek buried next to each other, reunited eternally at last.

I really did enjoy reading this book on the Holocaust. I can never even imagine having to go through one day of what Vladek had to endure for several years. The constant fear of being captured, constantly seeing death all around you at Auschwitz, and starving for 10 months straight are things I will only be able to read about in books because I will never understand it firsthand. This really was a powerful book for me and it put a lot of things in perspective as to what is really important in life. It taught me that like should never be taken for granted and that I should cherish my family above all else because they are the ones that will stand by me through thick and thin. The Holocaust was a terrible, horrible time for everyone. I think by reading about it we are helping not only those who had to live in this cruel time period, but ourselves as we learn what we should really value in our lives.

Maus II Chapter 1-2

Maus II Chapter 1-2 Summary

Chapters one and two of Maus II dive even deeper into the relationship with Artie and his father Vladek. We also get our first glimpse of what life is like inside of the concentration camp, Auschwitz and how Vladek and Anja struggle daily to survive. It seems as if relations with Artie and his father are getting worse at an even greater rate as Vladek cons Artie and his wife Francoise into living with them after Mala has allegedly “stole his money and left him.” We get a real glimpse into why Artie has such negative feelings toward his father on his way there. He says that he feels as if he can never live up to his ghost-brother, Richeiu’s, reputation as Richieu is only remember in a photograph, a perfect, flawless photograph. Artie describes out underachieved he feels in comparison to his father as everything that Artie accomplishes is nothing in comparison to Vladek’s surviving the Holocaust. It seems that everything that Artie does while living with his father sets him off. From not eating enough food to using more matches than necessary, Vladek shows just how stingy of a man the Holocaust has made him. Finally though, Vladek continues his story after he and Anja had been sent to the concentration camp, Auschwitz and how Vladek miraculously found different ways to survive. It all starts off as Vladek uses his lingual skills to tutor the kapo, an official who assists the Nazi’s with the prisoners, in teaching him English. This really ends up benefitting Vladek on numerous occasions as he gets to have full meals to eat, a warm place to stay in, better clothes for himself and his friend, and most importantly, the kapo tells him how to survive random selections. After this, Vladek takes up a job as a tinsmith because kapo can no longer protect him with Vladek being his tutor. Vladek takes this job, never having any experience before, but picks it up very quickly. It is in this time that Vladek describes how the food given to the prisoners was never good and it was just enough so that if you ate it you would die more slowly. Fortunately for Anja and Vladek, they find someone who goes to both of the camps so Vladek and Anja are able to communicate to each other through letters until Vladek is transferred to the bigger version of Auschwitz so he can be with Anja. It is here that Vladek picks up a new profession as a shoe maker, one that allows him to stay indoors and work instead of being outside in the cold weather. Then, Vladek described how the gas chambers worked and the brutality of how the Nazis would mercilessly slaughter the prisoners. He also described that some prisoners were burned alive with dead corpses to make the burying easier. Artie is of course horrified by the brutality of how the prisoners were terminated. The entire chapter really gives you a good personal glimpse not only into the terrors of prison life in Auschwitz but the personal struggle that Art Spiegelman had in creating Maus. We as the readers learn that the entire story is from a true, first person view as Art Spiegelman is Artie in the actual story. In this section of the story we see the personal struggles that Art Spiegelman has with writing Maus, and how no matter how hard he tries, he still cannot get a full grasp of what the Holocaust was like. This is why he sees a psychiatrist to council him about the pressures he is under in telling his and his father’s story and to get a better grip on the Holocaust as his doctor too is a survivor.

These two chapters do a lot to advance the story, both in the concentration camp and in Artie’s personal life with his father. What I like so much about this Holocaust story is it actually tells the day-to-day struggles some of the survivors face after the imprisonment. Normally we would not think about things such as this but Maus lets its readers know just how difficult it is to “survive the survivors.” I have really enjoyed reading it thus far and I am excited to see how the story concludes.

Maus I Chapter 4-6

Maus I Chapters 4-6 Summary

I found these three chapters of Maus to be more confusing than the previous chapters for several reasons. First of all, there are several more characters that are introduced into the story and it is very difficult at times to keep track of who is a member of which family. Also, I found it difficult to see how and why some Jews were hauled off to concentration camps while others are allowed to walk around almost like free men. But I saw even greater, more passionate, and especially more emotional moments in both Vladek’s story and the relationship between Vladek and Artie.

Chapter four starts off with several family members gathered to show how some of the problems are developing for the Jews. For example, it is getting harder and harder for them to freely purchase necessities like food because of restrictions placed on the Jews by the Nazis. The family members also discuss the options of where they should flee to, and if they should even flee, if things became even worse. In the chapter, Vladek mentions a scenario of seeing four of his friends hanging in the town square as being of the most painful sights in his life. He says that it still makes him cry to think of it presently. The first familial deaths occur though in chapter four when Anja’s grandparents are forced out of their home and sent directly to the gas chambers. Following this, Vladek tells of how all Jews are forced to get their papers updated and how some Jews are allowed to go free, while the majority are sent to Auschwitz. We see as the readers just how unhappy the marriage between Mala and Vladek as simple searching for some journals leads to Mala once again pointing out the flaws of her husband.

Chapter Five is very similar to Chapter four in that once again, Vladek and Anja are fleeing from the Germans looking for new hiding places in different areas. We see just how miserable Vladek is without Anja when he finds a comic book written by Artie that describes his Anja’s suicide and how both he and his father took it. Vladek continues to describe how he and his family moved from place to place, always hiding from the Nazis. He tells how he is forced to separate himself from his son, Richieu, so that the children can be safe but this does not do any good as his guardian, Tosha, forces herself and the children to take poison so that they would not have to die in Auschwitz. The family continues to deteriorate as Anja’s parents are not spared either and shipped off to the concentration camps where they too are gassed.

Chapter six is very similar to the other chapters as we see Vladek and Anja continuing to hide and flee from the Nazis. Fortunately for them, some kind Poles take them in to protect them from being discovered. But of course, they all will readily kick them out if they fear being convicted of conspiring with the Jews by the Nazis. While all of this is occurring, however, Vladek continuously expresses his desire to flee to Hungary so that they can hopefully escape the Nazi threat for good. Anja is fearful of this though, but after a lot of convincing from Vladek they decide to try to escape to Hungary by train. Sure enough, Anja’s fears are affirmed as they are captured by the Nazis on the train and shipped off the Auschwitz.

It is easy to see how these three chapters have an even greater impact than the first three chapters do. The fear that Vladek and his family have to live in is a constant theme on almost every single comic frame. Also the brutality of the Nazi soldiers is more clearly manifested in the way they so readily slaughter the Jews, something that we do not see so commonly in the first three chapters. But most of all we see the relationship between Artie, Vladek, and Mala continue to evolve. It seems as if Artie has to keep playing the mediator role as he listens to Artie complain about Mala and vice-versa. Maus really shows strong emotion in every single page. I find myself beginning to have connections and empathy for each individual character; something I know will continue to evolve the more I read.

Conveying Atrocity in Image Summary

Conveying Atrocity in Image Summary

This article is about how images were used in The Holocaust to convey the horror and utter atrocity of what the Nazis did to the Jewish victims. As the article put, people did not always believe what textual evidence in the war. They needed to be provided with factual photographs; and provided they were. These images did not capture the images of the Holocaust itself, but of the depiction of the final phases: starving sacks of skin that were excuses for human bodies, corpses laid in heaps like bales of hay, and American soldiers gazing in horror of the Nazi’s cruel work. The article talks about how the placement of these factors led to different meanings that the photograph is able to convey. A second factor that changes the meaning of the picture has been the number of bodies in the picture. Some pictures have a starved man staring at the camera in agony, while others have mass piles of bodies where it is hard to tell which limbs belong to which body. These pictures, using number, show both the personal terror and agony of the Holocaust and the monstrosity of the genocide by showing the numerous bodies. A third practice used by the photographs of the Holocaust was gaze. The victims in the photograph always stared directly at the camera or beyond the camera so that they appeared to “see without seeing.” All of these pictures, regardless of how they are used depict a level of horror that that manifested the true evil and atrocity of the Holocaust. Personally I think that pictures, as opposed to textual evidence, leave the deeper impression on its viewers of the two. Pictures, like the ones in the article of the Holocaust, capture the feeling and emotion that words cannot always describe. The horrible images of starving or dead bodies show just how despicable Hitler’s work was in the genocide of the Jews. It gives the 6 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust a face, an emotion and a personality.

Maus I Chapter 1-3

Maus I Chapters 1-3

Maus Chapter One starts off with Artie visiting his father, Vladek, and his new wife, Mala in Rego Park. Artie finds out immediately that Mala and Vladek do not get along very well. Artie tells his father that he wants to draw a comic book about his father’s experience while he was in the war. Vladek is reluctant at first but then dives in the story saying that in his youth he was a very attractive man and that girls chased him all the time. One girl in particular though, Lucia, stuck around him a lot, something that Vladek was not too happy about. One day he meets his cousin coming off a train who tells him that she wants to introduce him to a new girl, Anja, the girl that Vladek would eventually marry. It seems that Vladek immediately falls in love with Anja because he describes that they spent much time together and that she sent him letters written in beautiful Polish. All of this was much to Lucia’s disappointment and she tries to sabotage the eventual marriage by sending Anja a letter saying how bad of a reputation that Vladek has. This has no success as Vladek and Anja eventually get married. It was after they were married that the anti-Semitic relations with the Nazi’s began to get worse. Anja is responsible for conspiring with her communist friend, and the police find out and arrest the seamstress, the person who Anja hides the package with. All appears to be going well as Vladek opens a textile factory with the help of his father-in-law and Anja gives birth to their first son, Richieu. But then Anja becomes very depressed and Vladek and Anja are forced to move to a sanitarium for three months until Anja gets better. Upon their return, Vladek finds out how much worse the relations with the Nazis have gotten while he was away. A year later Vladek finds out that he is drafted by the Polish army because he is currently in the Polish reserves. It is not much longer that Vladek is marching away to fight the Germans and Anja is fleeing to Sosnowiec. The story then continues as Vladek says that after a few days of basic training he is on the frontier against the Germans. Artie is surprised that it only took a few days but then Vladek explains that he was in the army for a year and a half when he was 21 and went to training every four years so not much extra training was required for him. Vladek then describes how is in a trench war fighting the Germans and he is ordered by his commander to start shooting. Vladek shoots at what appears to be a moving tree but, as Vladek later finds out, is a Nazi soldier. Vladek is soon captured by the Nazis and is taken to a Prisoner of War camp where he soon finds out that the Jews there are segregated by being given extra work and are forced to live in cold tents while the rest of the prisoners get to live in cabins. Over a month later, Vladek and his friends volunteer to be transferred to a new site where they are forced to do hard work but also receive warm beds in return. It is here that Vladek has a vision of his grandfather telling him that on the day of Parshas Truma, a specific Jewish reading, that he will be freed. Sure enough on that day, which turns out to be a very special day for Vladek for other reasons, they are released but sent to another prison camp. However, with the help of some officials, Vladek is able to escape the prison and eventually reach his parents. Then, disguised as a Pole, Vladek eventually makes it back home to his wife and child. It is here that Vladek finishes his story for a time.

I think that these three chapters do a great job of telling what life was like for an average Jew leading up to the Holocaust. It gives them a human personality that people seldom associate with some of the victims and survivors of that time. This is what I like most of all in reading Maus. I especially like how Art Spiegelman manifests the relationship with Artie and his father, Vladek. As of right now, it is rather evident that the effects of what happened during the war and the Holocaust have taken their toll on poor old Vladek. He is rather irritable, constantly bickering and blaming others for faults that he clearly causes, like when he spills his pills and blames it on Artie. These three chapters set up a relationship between Artie and his father that I know I will enjoy reading more about in the chapters to come.

The Vocabulary of Comics

The Vocabulary of Comics

McCloud starts off again by talking about how icons are used in comics and just what an icon does. Icons are used in comics to represent a person, place, thing, or idea. There are both pictorial and textual icons. Words, even, are very abstract icons. The icons that most resemble their real-life counterparts are said to be the photograph and the realistic image. It is here that McCloud introduces the main point of his argument involving icons: the cartoon. He poses the question of why we are so enthralled with something that has miniscule, if any, detail that is in a cartoon. McCloud believes that we are so obsessed with the cartoon because of its blankness of detail because it allows us to relate to the cartoon to our own image more easily. If the image has too much detail, it will take on a personality of its own, and not allow us to relate to it.

Stackelberg Handout Summary

The basic gist of this essay is a basic summary of the events that lead up to and include the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. I learned a great deal about the persecution of Jews before they were actually hauled off to the concentration camps. For example, I learned about the two Nuremburg Laws that Jews were reduced to the status of alien subjects under the first Nuremburg Law and were prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Germans with the second. These laws were imposed for the “Protection of German Blood and German Honor.” While reading about how the Jews were persecuted I was reminded of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s. Although the African-Americans were not completely exterminated like the Jews were, it did remind me of how a group of people were slowly but surely stripped of their rights and privileges because of something they could not even control. I think it is absolutely sickening how just because of the Hitler regime had come to power that people are persecuted and even killed for what they believe.

Understanding Comics and Lakoff

Understanding Comics Summary

This description of the art and history of comics is presented in a creative manner by presenting everything in a comic book-like manner. The narrator is Scott McCloud, someone who describes himself as a comic lover who feels that pejorative attitude toward comics is due to people defining comics too narrowly. After much deliberation, McCloud is able to define comics as being “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence intended to convey information and/or produce and aesthetic response in the viewer.” Of course this is a very broad definition for an art normally thought to be limited to newspaper sections or small books about superheroes. The author goes on to describe how the history of comics closest to started when certain glyphs were discovered by Cortés in 1519 in Mexico. The sequential images, which have meaning for words, describe a story that is interpreted as a summary of a certain war. McCloud goes on to describe how even older sequences that fit the provided definition of comics include the Bayeux Tapestry which details the Norman conquest in England in 1066 and some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. McCloud concludes that he does not know the exact origin of comics but he does underscore how the advent of printed text was a huge advancement in comics because it provided comics to everyone, rich and poor. McCloud then describes how modern comics began in Rodolphe Topffer employing of cartooning and panel borders. It was the first interdependent combination of words and pictures seen in Europe. Caricatures such as these gave rise to what we know now as comics in the 20^th Century. McCloud says that audiences perceive comics to be juvenile because they do not encompass all the genres, artistic masterpieces, and beauty that fit under the definition of a comic. People fail to realized that comics can encompass visual art that is beyond the average comic book and newspaper and that comics can and has manifested essential occurrences in history. Comics, like any other form of literature, can indeed make a statement, an argument, and an impact.

The Power of Words in Wartime

Comprehension #3

I see this essay primarily being about language that just happens to be focused on how language is used to dehumanize the opponent in a war setting. Language is a powerful tool that is used to propagandize different ideas. In this essay, Lakoff describes how simply calling the opponent by a different name makes them appear more evil, and in some cases, less than human, thus making it justifiable and honorable to exterminate them. War is a terrible action but in this essay Lakoff describes how language is the fuel that keeps the war machine churning.