Maus

Since the 1930’s, the Walt Disney Company is known for producing characters, images, as well as stories which have created happiness for audiences around the world. This corporation has grown from a small cartoon studio run by famous Walt and Roy Disney to a million dollar business. In Janet Wasko’s novel, “Understanding Disney”, Wasko explains Disney as corporation calling it “The Disney Empire”. Throughout her novel, Wasko argues that Disney is set up like a typical profit seeking corporation, as well as creates and manufactures fantasy, and lastly re-invents folk tales by “Americanising” them.

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, shows the trials and tribulations that the main character, Vladek, and his companions suffered during the Holocaust. No matter the situation, Vladek rises up to the challenge, and does the only thing he can do: live. For the Jewish people during that time surviving was a challenge and for those that actually survived was pure luck. Throughout Maus we find this survival in the portrayal of Vladek Spiegelman; father of the author. Vladek resourcefulness helps him survive because of his knowledge of different languages, skills to work on anything, and initiative to make trades with others allows him to survive the years that he was trap in the Holocaust.

Mickey Mouse may be an iconic figure. However, history has shown that Walt Disney may have actually been a rat. Building his empire of “The Wonderful World of Disney” does not qualify him to be a captain of industry. By definition, a captain of industry is one with positive integrity. Whereas, a robber baron is motivated by greed. As Disney began his ascent, he was like the Pharaoh in his Prince of Egypt production. Believing the end justified the means, Disney plowed over employees, considering their livelihood as part of collateral damage. Disney was a robber baron with a pernicious temper, who harshly controlled employees, and ruled his cast members by intimidation.

The left side of the painting includes American icons such as Steve Irwin, Prince, Abraham Lincoln, and the “army” being led by George Washington. This could symbolize the American lifestyle that focuses and is represented mainly by society's take on who is important to the culture. This is often popular or influential celebrities, iconic presidents and/or leaders such as Abraham

1. What is your first impression of Vladek Spiegelman? What does his remark about friends suggest about his personality? How does it foreshadow revelations later in the book?

The face is over exaggerated in its features and is almost clown like. It tests the ideas of gender, identity, and race. The only reason I would assume that this portrait is a woman because the collection of which it was originally presented was named “Head of a Woman.” However, this easily can be represented as a man due to its angles, and there was not an overly dominant color that is generally associated with a specific gender. This leads into the topic of identity especially in the twenty-first century where people have become freer to express their identity and beliefs. Lastly, I think Thomas was trying to add the topic of race into the piece with the afro inspired pattered and similarities to African

The whole face is essentially made of lines, made by the paint. This images makes great use of tone, giving the impression of a shadow on Captain Cook’s face. The colours in this piece are more natural, with hues of grey, pink and peach, creating a skin tone, and smatterings of purples and greens. This image is very texturized, due to the process used by Quilty which is the same as he used in the making of Beryl. This is real texture, as if I ran my hand across it I would feel the texture of the oil paints. However, the texture of the face on the right seems to be much thicker and less blended than the face on the left, which perhaps is where the concept of history becoming blurred comes into play in this piece. Shape in this work is not a key component, although it is still present, with the shape of the Captain’s

GUILT is an emotion one gets when he/she believes or discovers that he/she did a wrong deed and valuated his/her standard social, moral or penal code ( Chaplin, 1975). The intensity of guilt varies from one person to another. When some individuals survive a horrific event, they get this overwhelming feeling of guilt and blame themselves for surviving the abominable situation that others did not survive. This state of mind is a mental condition and is sometimes termed as imagined guilt. It may be found in survivors of holocausts, natural disasters, mass murder and pandemics e.g. the 9/11 Oklahoma City bombings. While this guilt might not be experienced by everyone, it a research based

“Maus: A Survivor’s Tale”, and “Maus: And Here My Troubles Began”, are hit graphic novels about World War II, and tell the fictional stories of a soldier who survived the Holocaust. These two books are both purely about survival, but not in the way that you may think. Maus I and Maus II are both essentially telling us that survival may mean that you live through something horrific, but you may be a different person by the end of it.

Other than shading, the artist puts great detail as to how he positions his characters. The second pair of a white soldier and contraband in the front of the Union lines captures the

“The Mouse” is a short story written by H.H Munro. The main characters are Theodoric, the mouse, and the blind lady. The author Munro writes the story in third person and uses an omniscient view. The setting of the story takes part in the vicarage, the stable, and the ends in train compartment. The tone used by the author to engage his readers is an exciting, thrilling fast paced tone that bring the characters to life. To strengthen the thrilling exciting tone, the author uses phrases such as: “he was not even alone in his own clothes. “A warm, creeping movement over his flesh betrayed the unwelcome and highly resented presence, unseen but poignant, of a strayed mouse.” After reading the quote above, I as the reader was drawn into the

In my presentation, I’m going to discuss the relationship between Art and Vladek, and how their relationship develops. The relationship develops gradually throughout the novel; however, I have chosen a few key points that I feel are the most important.

Throughout the story of Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, cats and mice are used metaphorically to represent Nazis and Jews. Pigs and frogs are also used metaphorically, however, due to their lack of relationship with the cat and mouse metaphor, they do not add on to the effectiveness in relaying the theme of identity being shaped by adversity. (Spiegelman 93-94) These pages are the only ones that the frog appears in with only a minor role in which he offers to share Vladek a box of food. The brief interaction does not add any significance to the cat and mouse metaphor seen throughout the graphic novel because the frog has no impact or change on Vladek, thus making the animal metaphor less effective. Another reason why the animal metaphor is also less effective is how misrepresenting the stereotypes can be. The pigs for example are usually stereotyped as self centered and lazy animals. However, (Spiegelman 92) the pig doctor who helps Vladek’s injured hand directly contradicts the stereotype that pigs are self centered. Spiegelman’s use of stereotyping and lack of other animals hinders the effectiveness of animal metaphor in the theme. One could argue that the lack of images in Night could possibly allow readers to miss information, however, pictures aren’t everything into understanding what is going on. “Dragging himself on all fours.”(Wiesel 101) This quote offers the reader a visualization on how animalistic the Jews have become, ultimately proving that Elie Wiesel's use of animal imagery is more effective than Spiegelman's animal

Admittedly, many of Disney’s original works are not being viewed by their intended audience. Author of Patricia Digón Regueiro 's states, “it may be of interest to know that in his early cartoons created by Walt Disney were not directed at

Emlyn, you made some very interesting points. I agree with you some of the images do show individualization, while others not so much. I must say you made an excellent observation on figure 2-13 they do have same body structures. The image does depict the guy at the top as a powerful person and the people at the bottom do helped to provide that feeling.