All of My Family is Dead. No Big Dill.

On page 116 of Maus II, by Art Spiegelman, Art is asks about the whereabouts of Vladek's family after hearing about his mother's. This page contains a mixture of "moment-to-moment" transitions when Art is positioning himself more comfortably on his father's couch to listen to his father's story and a section of "aspect-to-aspect" transitions on the left side of the page which focuses on different parts of Vladek sitting down and breaking him up into different panels. In this way, it "sets a wandering eye on different aspects of a place, idea, or mood" (McCloud 72). By doing this, Spiegelman adds emphasis to his father's sorrow when he has to rethink about the family he has lost in the Holocaust for the sake of Art's book. Because Vladek is broken up into different panels with "gutters" in between, it seems as the choice to do so metaphorically represents the man the Holocaust created; a broken individual. This also applies to all of the victims of the Holocaust who have survived the tragedy but have lost their love ones. The only memories he has of his family are from his own recollection which may also be why the remaining pictures he has are scattered on the floor and are being given to Art. They mean nothing to him and only offer as a painful reminder of the people he lost.

Furthermore, when Spiegelman illustrates his course of action in the story in "moment-to-moment" transitions of getting comfortable on his father's couch, he somewhat critiques himself in a way that it seems like he is not particularly proud of being apathetic to what his father was feeling at the moment. This occurs throughout the story as he pesters his father for more information about his experiences during the Holocaust without acknowledging how painful is must be for Vladek to recall those memories. In showing himself in this light after his father's death, he is reflective of his actions and displays the shame in what he did by emphasizing Vladek's sorrow. This also may connect to the point that he writes in Maus I of his father and him not being close. His insensitivity and obsession in completing his story made him fail to realize that Vladek genuinely enjoyed his son's company and may have only relived his painful history in order to spend time with his son.

Time is an Illusion? How Dillightful.

I guess one way I can start this blogpost, but greatly anger my audience (hi, Ms. Smit), is to talk about how both novels The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, and Maus, by Art Spiegelman, are both war stories. But to evade getting a zero, I will choose to write about how both novels play with time which I hope is a little more profound. In effort of telling these war stories, both writers choose to interject the present within the act of relaying the past which is not usually done in other books that I've read. They typically tend to stick to one time period which is probably always the go-to method when writing a novel. The clashes between time periods, however, seem to add complexity to the novel's plot and be more than just another war story. In Maus, Spiegelman begins his story with a brief anecdote of his childhood and then carries on to the beginning events of gathering his father's war story. In a way, the comic develops into a frametale. As the reader continues and learns about Vladek's experience in the Holocaust, he is exposed to Vladek of the past and present. This also occurs in The Things They Carried where the reader is living in Timmy's experiences and seeing how these events formed Tim who is brought in when the story shifts into the present. Both characters are obviously afflicted from the war with their similarities of an inability to be truly content and habits formed from the war (Tim O'Brien evidently carries a detached tone throughout the novel and Vladek refuses to throw things away which may stem from him having to be resourceful in the war). These effects are greatly enhanced with the juxtaposition of time and also offers the narrator to inject their own personal feelings about their history and layers two stories into one which is, in a way, interesting. (it's especially interesting in Maus with the cliffhanger of Art calling his father a murderer in anger of him destroying Anja's journals, a great resource for different viewpoints of the Holocaust).