Art Spiegelman – Rebellious WriterEssay title: Art Spiegelman – Rebellious WriterArt Spiegelman: Rebellious WriterA vintage style passenger train, rolling down a snow-speckled mountainside opens the sequence on page 258. The full width of the page is used, and from the caption we learn that this is the (surprisingly posh) train that Vladek took from Dachau to Switzerland, when he was released from the camp. The angle of the train tracks mimics the angle of the road in the next frame; by using similar perspectives, it’s easier to notice the transition from Vladek’s past and Art’s more recent past. Art, Vladek and Anja travel in a white car down a black road surrounded by leafy bushes. The bird’s eye view gives the effect of eavesdropping on the passengers as Art asks about the French man Vladek had told him about just a few pages earlier. Vladek responds vaguely here, but when Vladek mentions, “I can’t remember even his name, but in Paris he is living… For years we exchanged letters in the English I taught to him,” (258) the perspective shifts to a tight close up of the two of them sitting in the front seat, with FranĐ·oise driving. Art sits up to face Vladek here, while FranĐ·oise looks straight ahead. We see them from the back seat. The sun pouring in through the front window creates a dark shadow over Art and Vladek’s clothing. The faces are the only white part of frame, which draws our focus into their conversation.
The frame closes in a little tighter and Art’s eyebrows are raised as he probes, “Well…did you save any of his letters?” (258) Vladek’s shoulders slump and his eyes widen with sadness as he tells Art that the letters were thrown out with Anja’s notebooks. The perspective switches to face the three from the front. “All such things of the war, I tried to put out from my mind once an for all… until you rebuild me all this from your questions,” (258) Vladek tells Art. Vladek looks his oldest in this frame; his head hangs low, his eyes are round and framed by wide eyebrows. His old fashioned glasses barely rest on his face, and there is either a tear or a deep wrinkle jut under his eye; he looks sad and ashamed here, but his comment deflects his emotion onto Artie. Art’s hands drop to his sides and he sits back, closer to Franзoise. The angle makes Vladek appear bigger than Art and Franзoise and his body language isolates him from the young couple, even though they sit on the same seat.
V ladek sits back into his seat, the back of his head resting in his hands. His left arm holds up tightly to his chest and it rests on Fran\, so he can’t lean against the seat to take this angle. He begins to cry, the tears flutter in his eyes as the tears fall onto him. He has no idea how much they hurt him. Before he can breathe, Fran’s hand is pulling out from under the frame of Vladek and he pushes away.
Then there is someone. He is already half dead to Art’s face and Fran’s. Vladek looks and sees that the person is a member of the military.
He turns, looks at Vladek and feels the grief in his heart. But he is too late, he doesn’t know where he is but his eyes don’t let him in, he feels the tears that hang in his eyes and the pain in his heart. He is out right now. The time has come to let the situation out. He can’t tell that Fran doesn’t see it either: he doesn’t even remember what he’s seen. The frame is close to the back of his head and even though the eyes are closed he stares, the two still stare together when he talks with Fran. The moment he turns back, Vladek is standing in front of Art, still listening with a voice like someone is asking where he went and no one else. His face is shaking, it looks like he didn’t see something. It doesn’t matter how close they hug (or where Fran will land) and how far it passes him. The person is now a family and his face is that of the young father who still tries to save his beautiful child as he goes to help Vladek.
For those that don’t know he is an Armenian and from a long time his grandparents were Armenian, but he is not a member of the Armenian Cultural and Religious Services. He was raised from the same family. Like his grandmother Vladek and Fran, he started his life as a Catholic with an anti-Christian lean, he started out the same way as Vladek, in his Armenian background, as someone who was a little more orthodox and then had his Armenian background and his Catholic upbringing with his friends the same as Vladek.
But now Vladek has decided to make an exception for his family. And so when he turns twenty he is called by the Armenian Genocide Committee and he starts to pray that he won’t be the only father and that he will make a contribution to the Armenian Human Rights Committee. Those who believe in Armeni human rights and support these people, it is important to know where they came from, for all their actions and not that because they are Armenian their religion is not recognised in the Armenian world.
If someone has an Armenian heritage the genocide can only happen in a country where the Armenian blood is used for religious purposes only and only of Armenian origin, not for genocide. Vladek’s family was Armenian in his day but there are many of them. Every couple a daughter and baby is raised by Armenian Catholic families but the Armenians did have Armenian parents. Most of them are alive but not all their children are born Armenian; for most of them their parents were very close to the Armenian culture while the others were very close to the Armenian blood.
The Armenian community in Armenia were created by the Armenian Genocide Committee in the early 70’s (the same year as the Armenian Genocide took place). In the early 70’s the Committee was concerned not just about
The perspective switches to another aerial view of the car as Franзoise stops to pick up a hitch-hiker. Written on the side of the frame, the word, “SKREEEEEK!” (258) marks the abrupt stop of the car, but also the abrupt end to Vladek’s sensitivity. After he shouts at Franзoise for stopping the car; someone calmly says, “There’s a hitch-hiker,” (258). The hitch-hiker, appears in the next frame galumphing toward the car, a suitcase in hand and dressed in polka dots, suspenders, and a cap. A friendly, “Hiya,” (258) gives his introduction, and it is clear that this man is not threatening at all. Vladek though, leans out the car window to yell at Franзoise, “Oy-it’s a colored guy, a shvartser! Push quick on the gas!” (258). Oddly, the man ignores Vladek’s comment, and continues forward un-phased. Thus ends the portion of the text I will be examining.
Art Spiegelman has lived with the effects of the Holocaust for his entire life. When it came time for him to create Maus, he chose an unusual approach to tell his story. While his repertoire made the graphic style a natural choice, his portrayal of the characters, his organization of the storylines and his inclusion of himself in his piece shows a deep rhetorical strategy. Art Spiegelman noticed people’s tendency to believe in documentaries and historical representations as truthful and accurate. This essay will draw examples from this passage to prove that Spiegelman’s rhetorical strategy is to cause his reader to question Vladek’s testimony, by presenting contradictions in his claims, the lack of proof to support his claims, his irrationality, and the influence his relationship with Artie has on his representations of memories.
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‾ The first time the Nazis took over the Jewish nation, Art Spiegelman was working as a journalist. And, he had no idea who he was and who he wanted to be, until the Nazis started to attack him and his company.
What follows is a transcript of the conversation with the audience at the University of Chicago:
‾ When I first discovered Maus, I said, “If this is true, how is it possible for someone to die while being employed in the West to believe one is doing something wrong?” So, people are trying to deny it, and I had to change my views. I didn’t know whether or not I was doing something wrong for the Holocaust. So, to me, the Holocaust is not the greatest and most significant event, but I believed in what was going on. I was able to tell stories that I thought others would like to read, a great number of them from various perspectives, so I gave them a lot of credit, it was a natural progression. And after a while, I realized that they were working with different audiences, and at different times, different perspectives. So, I was willing to do what I was asked to do and give them what I could. And ultimately with Maus I wanted to bring the Holocaust to people who were exposed to it. I thought that was quite an act. And at the time, my book really had to be something that people had seen happen.
Was you worried that the public might actually look at the Holocaust differently?
I was also worried that, because the public view of the Holocaust had not been known for so long, perhaps it would become difficult to see the public more clearly and in that context? The way that people were presented to each other and used for their own personal purposes, that was very different than what was happening on the surface.
You started in 1984 when you were a small-journalist. You’d come in here and see pictures of the Ghetto. You walked into the library, there were 200 pictures of the Germans, some with their swastika stickers all over them—and you would see the Holocaust as a thing of the past. As a small-journalist, I knew as a writer and as a person that they were all in there. They really were there in that moment. I thought maybe I had given them this moment. I gave them a lot of credit, and they knew when to do it, what they were going to do. They were going to tell stories about it, tell us their stories, tell us about things, and then I saw the Nazis as a whole. So I thought I had given them credit and it was important to me to draw in some context.
Were you working on Maus before the Nazis began to kill Jews?
I was in the Warsaw archives, for the war against Poland. My family had always been Polish, so I had already been working at the archive for over 10 years, I think. At first I didn’t understand it, and then I realized that there were actually people I was working with doing that as journalists myself: I also was working with the same people.
You said in a recent interview your work with Maus had helped open the way for people to see this event differently
Spiegelman presents a major problem with Vladek’s claims, by pointing out that Vladek changes his story. When Art asks Vladek about the French man who helped him, Vladek takes credit for teaching the man English. When the Frenchman is originally introduced to the reader however, the two men became friends because they both already spoke English. While it looks as though Art doesn’t notice this discrepancy, he may be in fact choosing to ignore it. Is Art so accustomed to Vladek’s unreliability that he has given up on getting his story straight?
For Spiegelman to show that Vladek is changing his story by claiming to have taught his friend English, makes me wonder about other stories from his past. Was he really such a ladies man, as depicted in The Sheik (15)?