Maus Close Read

On page 125 of Art Spiegelman's first volume of Maus, Vladek is discussing what he and Anja did after they left the abandoned ghetto.  He says they "didn't have [any]where to go."  The path they are walking on is swastika so it is clear why they had nowhere to go.  This path represents that it didn't matter which why the Jews went; the Nazis would catch them anyway.  Everything in this panel is shaded except for the path to bring focus the fact that the Jews during this time had nowhere to hide.  This is illustrated in the panel because there are only a few leafless trees and two houses that could be used as a hiding place.  There is mostly barren land because the Jews hiding places were next to none at this point during the war.  Vladek says that they "walked in the direction of Sosnowiec" but they didn't know what to do once they got there because the Nazis wouldn't be too far behind them.  One wrong turn and they could end up in the smoke stacks, which is represented in the right hand corner of this panel.  The smoke stacks always had a looming presence over the Jews which is why it is shaded really dark and located in the corner.  It is far from Anja and Vladek, but it is close enough for them to worry about ending up in it.

Memories

"To attempt to represent Auschwitz in language - to reduce the degradation, death and stench to a concept - drowns out the screams...it is therefore necessary that the Holocaust remains immemorial - that it remains that which cannot be remembered - but also that which cannot be forgotten.  Thus, any art attempting to represent the Holocaust should continue to haunt us with its inability to represent the unrepresentative, to say the unsayable.  It should continue to haunt us with the feeling that there is something Other than representation."

Today in class we discussed this quote by Jim Powell.  He says that it is impossible to represent the all the horrors of the Holocaust through writing, which is true.  History textbooks, for example, only state the statistics and a synopsis of the Holocaust.  One chapter in a textbook isn't nearly enough to accurately represent this tragic event.  They choose to write about the big picture instead of specific details which "drowns of the screams."  However, it is hard for the authors of the history books to get personal stories because many of the survivors don't like to talk about everything they witnessed; it's "unsayable."  Many try to forget everything that has happened to them and the best way to do that is by not talking about.  Yet, if everyone forgets about the Holocaust, an event just like it can happen again.  History repeats itself unless the world learns from the past and prevents it from happening in the future.  It is a constant battle between remember and forgetting, but neither one ever wins.  People can forget about it for a while but eventually something will bring back the memories, such as a picture or an article.  These works of art are "haunt[ing]" because parts of it may be true, but the creators are leaving out some terrible details which is very frightening to think about.