To open a novel and find pictures can be quite strange and something that the reader is not used to. To open a graphic novel and find it to be about a serious and devastating time in history can have the same effect. The reader then begins to question these images, illustrations and new visual devices and tries to understand what their relationship with the story is. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is a novel whose narrative is interpreted, quite frequently, by visual devices. The novel follows Oskar as he deals with the trauma of losing his father in 9/11, as well as the trauma his grandparents are still dealing with after surviving the bombing of Dresden. Maus by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel that “dramatizes …show more content…
a series of interviews which Spiegelman conducted with his father, Vladeck Spiegelman, an Auschwitz survivor” (Smith, 2015, pg. 499). Maus deals with Vladeck’s trauma after the war and Art’s guilt of not truly understanding what his parents went through at the time, as well as Art’s process of creating Maus. Both books focus on very serious topics and issues, and both books use images to help get their idea across to the reader. Images “can lend shape to histories and personal stories…They also possess the capacity to capture the unattainable” (Struken, 1997 pg. 1). For these two books, the unattainable is the trauma and difficulties that the characters face. In this essay, I will discuss the relationship between text and image, as well as the importance of image in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Maus. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close comes to terms with multiple character’s traumas. The novel lays out Oskar and his grandfather’s stories and tries to express how past events are still affecting their lives in the present. The narrative structure of the book: contains red underlining, which indicates grammar and orthographical mistakes and emphasizes information. Blank pages occur when characters are lost for words and black pages when there is not enough space on the page for everything the characters have to say. Business and file cards are reprinted when characters look at them. (Siegel, 2009, pg. 1) All of these visual devices are significant if they are being read as a part of trauma theory. Traumatic events overwhelm a person’s ability to cope. Someone that is traumatized could be taken over by hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviours and be fully consumed and controlled by this event. Just like how Oskar and his grandfather struggle with things that happened in the past. “The images are a disruptive means which convey the inability to articulate the traumatic experience not only of 9/11 but also of the other historical events featured in the novel” (Siegel, 2009, pg. 1). To the reader, these meta-textual representations may seem disruptive or repetitive but in understanding how trauma has affected these characters, they make sense. The images illustrate the characters trauma. The readers must looks very closely at the visual elements because they can tell the reader things that cannot simply be expressed in the written narrative. Take Oskar’s grandfather, who writes unsent letters to his son after abandoning him and his mother. He: has not spoken since serving the bombing of Dresden. He communicates to others by writing in journals, often referring back to the past conversations for immediate sentences (Atchison, 2010, pg. 363) and in the novel, the reader can look into his journals and see each line, on its own page just how he would have wrote it. The “Grandfather’s words literally become materialized tactile images that have the capacity to demonstrate outwardly his emotional-cognitive state” (Atchison, 2010, pg. 363). He attempts to write a letter as a way to cope after Oskar play’s his father’s message that he left while trapped inside the World Trade Centre on 9/11, but the end of the letter becomes over written until the last page is complete blackness (pg. 281-284). The reader will never know what the grandfather was trying to express at this moment, instead they are given the impression that this is an effect caused by his trauma. The grandfather is unable to express everything he wants, showing the struggles of trying to represent or talk about something traumatic, something he struggles with through the whole book, not having the words to explain what he is going through or what happened to him. Novels that try to express a true account of trauma must show a “personal struggle in responding to and representing” (Atchison, 2010, pg. 360) things relating to their trauma. “The reader must take on the role of co-creator of the text by filling in the absent spaces usually found within the novel’s meta-textual representations” (Atchision, 2010, pg. 360). Marita Sturken believes that “memory is often embodied in objects-memorials, texts, talismans, images” (pg. 1). Photographs are known to hold memories and tell stories. Jonathan Safran Foer has been quotes to describe 9/11 as: the most visually documented event in human history. When we think of those events we remember certain images. That’s how we experience it, thats how we remember it. (Siegel, 2009, pg.2) Foer made the conscious decision to use the image of The Falling Man in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a real photo from 9/11 capturing a man falling from one of the Twin Towers (Pg. 59). “Foer was perhaps the first to actually incorporate an image of a body in free fall into a novel” (Vanderwees, 2015, pg. 183). After the attacks, images of falling bodies were removed from American sources of media because many people were uncomfortable with their use in news stories. These photos found their way into virtual form instead, where they could be shared and copied onto internet sites that freely publish images of graphic violence and death (Saal,2011, pg. 175) In searching for information about people who died in the World Trade Centres, Oskar finds videos of these falling bodies on a Portuguese website. Oskar who is desperately looking for a way to come to terms with his father’s death, tries to identify the bodies, because if one is his dad, Oskar can then find peace in knowing what truly happened to his father. “However, the more he magnifies the pixels, the less the figure in the video looks like a person” (Gleich, 2014 pg. 168). The photo of the Falling Man is not only used to represent Oskar’s need to find out what happened to his father, but also shows Oskar’s overall thoughts about the events of September 11th. At the end of the novel, Oskar takes stills of the video and places them in reverse order, creating a flip book at the end of the novel. As the reader flips the pages, they watch as the man floats back up. The flip book represents Oskar’s wish to reverse the whole day, to have the people back in the buildings, to have the planes out of the towers and to have his father back at home. Ending on this flip book gives the reader the idea that this is something that is going to continue to effect and traumatize Oskar. Many readers had a problem with the visual devices used by Jonathan Safran Foer in the novel.
Most of these problems come from his use of the stills of the falling bodies, feeling that the man’s death was being exploited. People had issues with the use of the images even in news stories. There is an “ethical and political relationship between Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and the photographs of those who fell from the World Trade Centre” (Vanderwees, 2015 pg. 174).
The images of people jumping were the only images that became by consensus, taboo- the only images from which Americans were proud to avert their eyes. (Vanderwees, 2015, pg.
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175) The image is not printed in the novel for a sort of decoration, but to instead show how Oskar looks to this image and others from that day in a search to find his father and to know what happened to him. Foer “encourages us to seek both emotion and knowledge from images” (Gleich, 2014, pg.163). Using real images from an extremely tragic event will bring up some issues, but he uses the images to try to bring emotion to the readers. In a novel, these real images stand like a reminder that this happened to someone and that people had to live through this event and deal with losing people, just like the characters. The graphic novel seems like an odd medium to use to represent a story about the Holocaust but that is not the only unusual feature of the book. Maus is: drawn in a stark black and white line style and the characters are represented as human figures with animal heads. The Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, the Poles are swine, the Americans are dogs and so on (Kunz, 2012, pg. 83). In a graphic novel, there is no space for long descriptions or explanations, the images must give the reader the information that the words cannot. The animal metaphor allows the reader to distinguish characters and to visually see the mistreatment of one kind of people, or in this case: mice. It is easy to tell the Jews and Germans apart, in the frames, the reader knows right away who is the bad guy and who gets their sympathy. “The mice faces, unlike the cats, are almost featureless” (Smith, 2015, pg. 501) so the reader is “primed to find the mice easy vessels for projection and sympathy (Kruger, 2015, pg. 359). The Nazi campaign was about certain kinds of people being better than others. It is important that Spiegelman separated and labeled his characters like so, being reflective of how these people were thought of during the war. By making the Jews wear mouse masks, Spiegelman shows the reader how Jewish people were actually treated and killed like vermin. In the present time panels, Spiegelman still illustrates himself and his father as mice. He still connects and identifies with those who experienced the Holocaust and the Nazi’s exterminator ways. Maus is a historical graphic novel.
Art Spiegelman takes his father’s, Vladek Spiegelman, account and memories of the Holocaust and illustrates them as well as Art’s struggles with handling his father’s past. The graphic novel can even be seen as semi-autobiographical as Art represents his life as well showing the reader the struggles of communicating with his father, the troubles of dealing with his mother’s suicide, and information about his romantic relationship and success with the first part of Maus. “The moments set in the past are intertwined with present time moments” (Kunz, 2012, pg. 83) so the reader has access to both Art and Vladeck’s anxieties and troubles. Art wants to understand this part of his family’s life, the part he only understands through what his parents have told him. “The Artie of Maus can be understood as a paradigmatic case history of the subject whose life and very identity is dominated by post-memory (Smith, 2015, pg. 502). Post-memory is how the people of a generation after a major trauma comes to terms with what happened to the generation before them. Their ‘memories’ of this event come from stories and images passed down to them. Art’s connection to the past, weighs heavily on him. On page 204, Art explains “no matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz”. By illustrating his anxieties, the reader is unconsciously empathetic towards Art as he deals with the guilt of not surviving what his parents did.
Art takes the reader along as he struggles to decipher Vladeck’s memories (pg. 174), questions what he is doing (pg. 176) and as he struggles to represent characters (pg. 171).
During 1925, Mein Kampf was published by the Nazi Leader Adolf Hitler. In this autobiography, where Nazi racist ideas originated, he depicted his struggle with the Jews in Germany. These ideas sparked World War 2 and the Genocide of the Jews. The tragedy of the Holocaust inspired authors, such as Art Spiegelman who produced a Graphic novel, where both the text and images helped him convey his own ideas and messages. In fact, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus is an effective medium for telling a Holocaust narrative and specifically his father’s story of survival. Through this medium, he is able to captivate the readers while providing interesting insight into the tragedy of the Holocaust by using the symbols of animals, the contrast between realism and cartoon imagery and the various basic elements of a graphic novel.
Art Spiegelman's Maus II is a book that tells more than the story of one family's struggle to live thought the Holocaust. It gives us a look into the psyche of a survivor's child and how the Holocaust affected him and many other generations of people who were never there at all. Maus II gives the reader a peek into the psyche of Art Spiegelman and the affects of having two parents that survived the Holocaust had on him. Spiegelman demonstrates the affects of being a survivor's child in many ways throughout the book. Examining some of these will give us a better understanding of what it was like to be a part of the Holocaust.
“I'm not talking about YOUR book now, but look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.” These words were spoken by author Art Spielgelman. Many books have been written about the Holocaust; however, only one book comically describes the non-superficial characteristics of it. Art Spiegelman authors a graphic novel titled Maus, a book surrounding the life a Jewish man living in Poland, named Vladek. His son, Art Spielgelman, was primarily focused on writing a book based on his father’s experiences during the Holocaust. While this was his main focus, his book includes unique personal experiences, those of which are not commonly described in other Holocaust books. Art’s book includes the troubles his mother, Anja, and his father, Vladek, conquered during their marriage and with their family; also, how his parents tried to avoid their children being victimized through the troubles. The book includes other main characters, such as: Richieu Spiegelman, Vladek first son; Mala Spiegelman, Vladek second wife; and Françoise, Art’s French wife. Being that this is a graphic novel, it expresses the most significant background of the story. The most significant aspect about the book is how the characters are dehumanized as animals. The Jewish people were portrayed as mice, the Polish as pigs, the Germans (Nazis in particular) as cats, and Americans as dogs. There are many possible reasons why Spiegelman uses animals instead of humans. Spiegelman uses cats, dogs, and mice to express visual interests in relative relationships and common stereotypes among Jews, Germans, and Americans.
By means of comic illustration and parody, Art Spiegelman wrote a graphic novel about the lives of his parents, Vladek and Anja, before and during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II delves into the emotional struggle he faced as a result of his father’s failure to recover from the trauma he suffered during the Holocaust. In the novel, Vladek’s inability to cope with the horrors he faced while imprisoned, along with his wife’s tragic death, causes him to become emotionally detached from his son, Art. Consequently, Vladek hinders Art’s emotional growth. However, Art overcomes the emotional trauma his father instilled in him through his writing.
What if you were a holocaust survivor and asked to describe your catastrophic experience? What part of the event would you begin with, the struggle, the death of innocent Jews, or the cruel witnessed? When survivors are questioned about their experience they shiver from head to toe, recalling what they have been through. Therefore, they use substitutes such as books and diaries to expose these catastrophic events internationally. Books such as Maus, A survivor’s tale by Art Spiegelman, and Anne Frank by Ann Kramer. Spiegelman presents Maus in a comical format; he integrated the significance of Holocaust while maintaining the comic frame structure format, whereas comic books are theoretically supposed to be entertaining. Also, Maus uses a brilliant technique of integrating real life people as animal figures in the book. Individually, both stories involve conflicts among relationships with parents. Furthermore, Maus jumps back and forth in time. Although, Anne Frank by Ann Kramer, uses a completely different technique. Comparatively, both the books have a lot in common, but each book has their own distinctive alterations.
The Holocaust is one of the most horrific and gruesome events in world history. It took a great toll on millions of lives in one way or another. One person in particular is Vladek Spiegelman, a Holocaust survivor. Maus, by Art Spiegelman, consists of two main narratives. One narrative occurs during World War II in Poland, and the other begins in the late 1970s in New York. In relation to each other these two narratives portray the past and present.Throughout the novel, we often see Art Spiegelman questioning why his father acts the way he does. Although the war is over, the events of the Holocaust continue to influence the life of Vladek. Why do we allow the past to effect the present? Vladek's personality is largely influenced by his Holocaust experience. In Maus I and II, Vladek was stubborn, selfish, and cheap because of his experiences in the Holocaust.
The Maus series of books tell a very powerful story about one man’s experience in the Holocaust. They do not tell the story in the conventional novel fashion. Instead, the books take on an approach that uses comic windows as a method of conveying the story. One of the most controversial aspects of this method was the use of animals to portray different races of people. The use of animals as human races shows the reader the ideas of the Holocaust a lot more forcefully than simply using humans as the characters.
Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus unfolds the story about his father Vladek Spiegleman, and his life during the WWII. Since Vladek and Art are both the narrators of the story, the story not only focuses on Vladek's survival, but also the writing process and the organization of the book itself. Through these two narrators, the book explores various themes such as identity, perspective, survival and guilt. More specifically, Maus suggests that surviving an atrocity results in survivor’s guilt, which wrecks one’s everyday life and their relationships with those around them. It accomplishes this through symbolism and through characterization of Vladek and Anja.
The past and present are two completely different moments, separated by a constantly growing space of time. Though they’re quite different from each other and separated in many ways, there are still apparent connections between the two. In Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels Maus I: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: And Here My Troubles Begin, Spiegelman integrates the concept of past versus present, most apparent in his relationship with his father. As Artie’s relationship with Vladek improves as Vladek recites his history, the present time and the past begin to blend into each other. At the beginning of Maus I, Artie is oblivious to his father’s rough experience in the holocaust, disconnected from his father and without a solid relationship. However, as Vladek recites his history, Art’s relationship with him begins to improve little by little and the lines between the past and present dissolve. By the end of the story, Vladek and Artie’s relationship has improved greatly and the lines between the past and present are completely dissolved.
In Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the audience is led through a very emotional story of a Holocaust survivor’s life and the present day consequences that the event has placed on his relationship with the author, who is his son, and his wife. Throughout this novel, the audience constantly is reminded of how horrific the Holocaust was to the Jewish people. Nevertheless, the novel finds very effective ways to insert forms of humor in the inner story and outer story of Maus. Although the Holocaust has a heart wrenching effect on the novel as a whole, the effective use of humor allows for the story to become slightly less severe and a more tolerable read.
The format of "Maus" is an effective way of telling a Holocaust narrative because it gives Art Spiegelman the chance to expresses his father's story without disrespecting him at the same time. It shows this through its comic book style drawings on a topic that is difficult to explain. With the illustrations throughout the story, it shows the true meaning of a picture is worth a thousand words. Compared to any other type of Holocaust book, it would be hard for a person who did not go through the Holocaust to understand what was taking place during that time.
The books Maus I and Maus II, written by Art Spiegelman over a thirteen-year period from 1978-1991, are books that on the surface are written about the Holocaust. The books specifically relate to the author’s father’s experiences pre and post-war as well as his experiences in Auschwitz. The book also explores the author’s very complex relationship between himself and his father, and how the Holocaust further complicates this relationship. On a deeper level the book also dances around the idea of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. The two books are presented in a very interesting way; they are shown in comic form, which provides the ability for Spiegelman to incorporate numerous ideas and complexities to his work.
Derk Backderf depended almost entirely on visual narrative and culture, which is anything where meaning is sought through images, to tell his story in his graphic novel My Friend Dahmer. He used words to tell his story, but he let the graphics speak to the emotions of the issues. He used the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words to help him inform and warn other people. His pictures depicted someone who looked fairly normal on the outside, but on the inside he was a monster who was trying to fight his inner demons through the abuse of alcohol.
When reading a traditional book, it is up to the reader to imagine the faces and landscapes that are described within. A well written story will describe the images clearly so that you can easily picture the details. In Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, the use of the animals in place of the humans offers a rather comical view in its simplistic relation to the subject and at the same time develops a cryptic mood within the story. His drawings of living conditions in Auschwitz; expressions on the faces of people enduring torture, starvation, and despair; his experience with the mental institution and his mother’s suicide; and occasional snapshots of certain individuals, create a new dynamic between book and reader. By using the form of the graphic novel, Art Spiegelman created a narrative accompanied by pictures instead of needing to use immense worded detail.
Sometimes, life grows too hard to love oneself, and instead, it is easier to place self-worth in other people, and to make them the reason to live. In the book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathon Safran Foer uses a little boy named Oskar and his Grandma to convey the pain of falling out of love with oneself to readers. After the tragic loss of a son and father, Thomas Jr. Schell in 9-11, both Oskar and Grandma lose a piece of their hearts. Because of the losses that they both suffer throughout their lives, Oskar and Grandma lose the sense of love for themselves and, as a result, place their self-worth in other people. ( 4 sentences)