Few are unacquainted with the atrocities of the holocaust, and while the first two chapters of Maus took place in the years leading up to Germany’s ’39 invasion of Poland the reader feels a mounting sense of tension: the arrest of the neighbor for holding communist propaganda, the looting of Vladek’s factory in his absence, yet none of these events are as vivid or iconic as the scene in which Vladek and his extended family look from the train window at the Nazi flag (p. 32).  Here, common symbols, imagery and tension converge.  The reader now recognizes the holocaust, and feels (despite the characters being portrayed as mice)  a sense of sympathy for  the family and familiarity with the historical connotations of the swastika.

In the third panel of page thirty two are five men looking out the window of their train onto the town square of a small town they were passing. They state that it is 1938 and thus before the war and are commenting on the appearance of the swastika on the side of a building in the town center. To me this is the most important panel that we have read so far because this was basically the first sign to the people of Poland that Hitler was coming. All of the Jews knew of and had heard of the imminent danger, but this was the first time that they saw with their own eyes any sort of indication of the realness of it all. This panel was also a jumping off point for the stories that make up the rest of not just this chapter but also the book itself.

Assignment

In my opinion, the most important panel from first 2 chapters of Mausby Art Spiegelman in chapters 1 and 2 would be on page 23, where Artie, the son of Vladek Spiegleman, urges his father to truthfully and thoroughly tell his story about the Holocaust because it “…makes everything more real–more human” (23). This sparks the story of Vladek Spiegleman and his wife and how they survived Hitler’s Europe during World War II, which is one of the major plot lines of the whole novel. The next few chapters were a detailed account of Vladek’s experiences with the Nazis and living in Europe during World War II.

Upon reading the first two chapters of Maus, I found one panel to be particularly peculiar. This was on page 29. In page 29 Anja was just shown to have been translating Communist documents into German for someone, and this was illegal. In order to not get sent to jail, Anja’s father-in-law had Miss Stefanska paid off in order to keep quiet about Anja’s involvement. He also gave the money and credit to build a textile shop. If Anja was not protected by her father-in-law’s bribe she would’ve gotten sent to jail for a long time. This made it seem like there was some shady business going on with Anja and was the first real sign of secrecy in the book. It is the beginning of a turn in events for Anja as she now might be getting into more trouble as the story unfolds.

http://davidmorgen.org/eng101s14/2014/01/21/most-important-panel-from-first-2-chapters-of-maus/

The panel on page 33 supplies many plot complications and introduces the reader to the main antagonist: Nazis. I specifically enjoyed seeing how different beliefs are drawn as different animals; Jews as mice, innocent civilians as innocent looking cats, and the Nazis as angry cats. The picture in the bottom left corner is a great representation foreshadowing the dominance the Nazis will achieve. With the swastika replacing the sun and the banner in front of the town saying “This town is Jew Free”, the author and illustrator do a great job of emphasizing the power the Nazis will soon possess.