Vladek And His Father's Experiences In Nazi Germany

643 Words2 Pages

Introduction, Art Spiegelman writes about his parents’ experiences in Nazi Germany. Spiegelman uses various interview and graphic-style techniques to capture the horror of the Nazi “experiment” whereby up to 6 million Jews were killed in gas chambers in concentration camps. Whilst Vladek and Anja both survived, they were psychologically scarred. Throughout the interviews with his father, Vladek, and his father’s narrative recounts, Spiegelman reveals the extent of their trauma which inhibits family life and relationships. The emotional and psychological divide between Art and Vladek is further tarnished by the deaths of Richieu and Anja. The father’s development of a variety of obsessive neurosis also becomes another burden in the father-son relationship. Next, throughout the graphic novel, Spiegelman depicts a variety of emotional and communication barriers, which he suggests may have originated from Vladek’s Holocaust experiences. Vladek constantly offers parental advice to Art that is often based on his experiences as a symbolic mouse in pinstriped pajamas and yet this advice leads to, rather than, solves …show more content…

In this case, Nahum Cohn and his son, who traded goods without a coupon, hang from the scaffold. Vladek suggests that such assistance was critical to his survival and yet it led to the deaths of others. Spiegelman uses an eight-frame page consisting of a five-frame present-time overlay. In the above frame, the four mice, dressed in suits, “hung there for one full week”. Vladek’s prominent caption refers to the tactics of intimidation used by the “cats” to scare the “mice” into submission. In the bottom frame, Spiegelman uses the image of legs hanging in mid air to give an impression that anyone who subverted the system would suffer a similar fate. In doing so, Spiegelman enhances the image of the dead Jews and the brutality of the cats that continues to haunt both father and

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