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More Real – More Human
On page 23 in Maus by Art Spiegelman, Vladek, a Jewish survivor of Nazi Germany, tells his tragic story to his son Artie. Vladek begins with his relationship with a girl named Lucia Greenberg. After Vladek finishes, he asks his son not to put this information in his book. Artie responds “But Pop – It’s Great Material is makes Everything More REAL – More Human.” I believe this is so important and crucial to Vladek’s story. When people read about the Holocaust it is very difficult to understand how vibrant and exciting Jews lives were before the war. Vladek’s relationship with Lucia allows the reader to relate to Vladek before the war starts.
http://davidmorgen.org/eng101s14/2014/01/21/most-important-panel-from-first-2-chapters-of-maus/
Important panel from first two chapters of Maus
The panel that caught my attention more than others was the top one on page 35. In this panel, Vladek is in a ballroom setting, dancing with his wife. Surrounding Vladek and his wife, who are both depicted as mice, are all different kinds of animals. Spiegelman portrays the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, and Polish citizens as pigs,and other citizens as rabbits, turtles, and more. The way Spiegelman uses animals to represent the people who experienced the Holocaust, portrays the animalistic nature of the people during this time and the actions that many horrible people were doing during the war. Vladek and his wife were the only Jews in the ballroom, which also shows how outnumbered the Jewish people were during this period.
Maus: Assignment #1
On page thirty-one, there is a panel toward the middle of the page that I found to be extremely eye-catching and important. Since I have only read the first two chapters of Maus, I can’t identify the significance of this panel to the graphic novel as a whole, but I do think its importance will be revealed as I continue to read the coming chapters.
The panel I found to be most important stands out in a variety of ways. First, the panel is the only panel on the page with a predominantly dark background. It also is the only panel on the page that is crooked and seems to be “stacked” on top of a few other panels. In the panel, Anja appears to be physically ill. In fact, the only two sentences in the panel express Anja’s pain. She says, “But I don’t care. I just don’t want to live.” What really strikes me as important about this panel is the foreshadowing I feel it contains. Any is in pain, begging for it to end. Since Maus is representative pain and suffering endured by millions in World War II, I see this panel as foreshadowing the eventual suffering of a main character. The dark background gives the panel a dark ambiance, and the striped pattern on Anja’s couch seems to allude to the typically black and white uniforms prisoners and captives were known to have worn.
Overall, the panel is definitely a container of importance. It is obvious that the author sought to emphasize its content by intentionally drawing it to stand out. Its contents are unique and [I think] extremely important to the story as a whole.
English Website: Link to Assignment
Maus Chapter 1
In the first two chapters, Panel 17 is a changing point in Artie’s fathers life. He has decided to stop seeing the beautiful Lucia and marry Anja, someone who it seems he had just met. This is a turning point in his life and a major event. It also changes the direction of the storyline by instead of him being chased by girls he will now settle down and the story progresses closer to the more important events of his fathers life.
Maus I – Most Important Panel from the first 2 chapters
Maus 1, chap. 1 & 2, most important panel.
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.
Important Panels – Ch. 1 & 2 of Maus 1
One of the most subtle panels of these two chapters was about the gradual separation between the Jews and their fellow associates caused by the Nazis. Located on page 37, after hearing news of the Nazis’ invasion, Anja remarks in front of her Polish governess about the high temper of the “Poles”. Affronted, the governess calls her out, and Anja apologizes because fear caused unreason. Although only casual conversation dominated this panel, it represented the unconscious polarizing between the citizens from fear of their own safety.
Maus I: Important Panel
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.
Maus Chapter 1 Panel 17
The first chapter of Maus is centered around Vladek telling his son, Art, the story of how he met his mother. While dating Lucia Greenberg, Vladek met Anja Zylberberg during one of his trips to Sosnowiec. After striking up a connection with Anja, he placed a framed picture of her in his apartment, which was soon noticed by Lucia during panel 17. Vladek told Lucia he was going to marry Anja as although Lucia was prettier, looks were not everything to Vladek. This is a key panel in the early chapters of Maus as it is a major change in the story that he is telling to his son.