Term Paper

The text I chose to write on is Maus by Art Spiegelman. There was so much of this text that I loved, and there were times when I was reading that I stopped and had to take a deep breath. There were times that I was so enthralled in the book that I found my self losing track of time. I think back to what I read, and I like the fact that I can relate to the book on different levels. There are not many books that I have had such a great connection with, and have had little or no problem understanding the message that was trying to come across to the reader.
One of the things that I really connected with was the fact that Vladek and Artie had such a weird relationship. Not just the fact that they had a weird relationship but the fact that they were father and son. They seemed to not know much about each other even though they were related. I look at this and I am amazed at that fact because I could see this in me and my dad. Sure I can talk to him about certain things but there is a lot I don’t think I can tell him. I see that in Artie in this book and especially in the part where Vladek finds the comic Artie made. Artie made this comic strip to express his feeling about his dead mother, and Vladek had no idea that Artie had those types of feelings. After Vladek read it and Artie found out he approached Vladek and apologized and Vladek reaction was very interesting. “It’s good you got it outside your system, But for me it brought in my mind so much memories of Anja” (pp. 104). All Vladek wanted in the long run was for Artie to get his feeling out even though they were hard for him to face. I thought about this part quite a bit and came to the conclusion that my dad would want me to do the same thing. He would want me to express my feeling to him even if it made him feel bad about something. All fathers want is for there kids to express their feelings and that definitely happened in this part of the book.
Another aspect of the text that really hit home for me was the fact that it showed the tight bonds all the characters had in adversity. There was a real need for family and if it were not for family they all probably would have gone crazy. There were times in the book where parts of the family were taken and the rest of the family seemed devastated by it. There was part of the book where Anja and Vladek talk of giving up their son and Anja wanted nothing to do with that. “I’ll never give up my baby, never” (pp. 81). In this line alone you could see that the family did not want to be split apart, and would do anything to make sure the family stayed together. Even if their family would be better off splitting apart they were very apprehensive to do such a thing. They believed that if they were together they would be alright. I look at this aspect of the book, and I don’t know what I would do because I know the importance of family. It is easy for me to read and think that it would be better if they all went their own way. If I were thrust into that position I don’t know if I would be able to make the decision to split up. So what they had to endure in this book and at that time of history is just mind boggling, and it is something I hope I never have to face.
The last thing I want to touch on in this section is the fact that Art Spiegelman’s use of the animal characters in the story line and how he viewed what happened. It was just a very smart way to get the reader to experience the book and the story in a different way. While I was reading I was able to look at the characters and realize what they were about because Spiegelman did such a great job classifying the characters.
Looking at the way Hayden White views metahistory is very interesting and really ties in with Maus. He argues that there is an underlying story that needs to be told using history. In the case of Maus see someone who went through the whole ordeal of going through the holocaust. On the other hand we see that person trying to explain what really happened through the whole ordeal, and we see Vladek want to show Artie what types of emotion were really experienced. I could see the story really gaining steam and interest when the feeling were shared in this book and you can see what truly was going on in this time period. Hayden White expresses that most of history is put into chronicles after the writer gains knowledge of the situation and then puts it into plots and stories. I could definitely see this in Maus, There were times that you could see that Spiegelman did a lot of research and took aspects of history and put them in the story. Spiegelman took something as serious as the holocaust, and put a different spin on the whole thing and did not lose any of the tragic nature of the event. He did a wonderful job putting in different aspects, he did things like using animals as characters and this put a great spin on the way we view this particular event.
According to Hayden White, “no historical event can itself constitute a story, tragic or ironic: it can only be presented as such from a particular historian’s narrative point of view” (1710). I look at this and I am kind of taken back by it, I have a hard time believing that a historical event can’t have a story. But the more I thought about it I could see that no matter what you do to the story it is coming from an author’s point of view. Unless of course, the person writing the story actually experienced what he or she is writing about. Then I could see that the historical event is an actual story to that particular person, he or she wrote about history but on the other hand they experienced it.
One of the secondary texts I am going to use is the movie Pearl Harbor, I know it is not the greatest movie of all time, but I think it has a lot to do with what I am talking about. In the movie we see a serious event like the bombing of Pearl Harbor and we see the movie try to incorporate a love story into it. There is a huge event and they try to down play it and make the audience take a hold of the love aspect of the movie. I can also see this in Maus a little bit and Spiegelman does it in a different manner. Spiegelman seems to use the relationship between Vladek and Artie as a cover up to what is really going on in the book. Spiegelman wants the reader to connect with something else besides the Holocaust, and I wonder if he wanted something else out in the forefront. Did he want the reader to see that the holocaust had more of an effect on Vladek, so much that that it hindered the way that he communicates with his own son? Another thing I could think of in terms of the movie Pearl Harbor was the fact that once it was time to get away from the love story you could really see the pain and anguish that the event brought the movie. Almost everybody that watches the movie has an understanding of the events that took place at Pearl Harbor. But after you experience them on the screen you really have a feeling of what all those people went through in that time and place. I spin it back to Maus, and it is the same situation. You as the reader know the story of the holocaust, but it takes reading the book to really experience what all those people went through. In both of these instances the reader or the viewer are shown what really happened and the trauma that the characters had to go through.
Another secondary text that I wanted to look at was the movie, Saving Private Ryan, and I wanted to look at the fact that the characters needed each other to make it. Looking at the movie a little closer you can see that the characters are all thrown into a stressful situation and they need each other to make it through. This is a lot like Maus, because in the book you could see a lot of instances where people needed other people to survive. For example, Vladek needed the help of others to hide him and his wife so they would not be taken away by the Nazi’s. You could also see that in the movie that they were from different areas of the United States, but yet they were forced to trust people that they barley know. But because they are in such a volatile situation, they are forced to trust the person next to them and hope that they can all take care of each other enough to survive. In the book you can see that Vladek has to put trust in people he barely knows, and people that at a drop of a hat could sell him up the river.
In the movie Saving Private Ryan, we as the viewer that there are many different emotions that the characters have to go through. We see that they are going through different highs and lows, and they have to roll with the punches so to speak with what they are experiencing. The characters have to go through a lot and they have to deal with so many demons and the thought that they might not make it through another day alive. This is the same in the book; you can see most of the characters having to deal with emotions that they are not usually faced with. Vladek and his family have to go through the realization that tomorrow might bring the end of there lives as they know it. This has to be a lonely feeling, knowing that the day you are living in, might be your last. You can see this feeling takes its toll on Anja, in the book because the stress that she goes through ends up killing her in the end. She could not take all of the stress and she killed herself because she could not deal with everything.
The historical event I have chosen to write and compare is The Gulf War. I found a few things that I can compare to the book. First of all, the Gulf war stems from the fact that Iraq invaded Kuwait and the things escalated from there. I could easily relate this to Maus because in the book it takes about the Germans taking over regions that they were not welcome in. In the Gulf war there was very little that Kuwait could do to stop Iraq from doing what they wanted. The people of Kuwait were in a bad situation and they had to do what Iraq said or they would have been killed. This same exact thing happens in the book and it is eerily similar. The people who were being invaded had no chance to stick up for themselves, and if they had they would have most certainly been killed. In both the Gulf War and in the book, it is a shame that the people that were being invaded had to deal with the realization that they could lose their lives at any moment. It is one thing to die, but it is another thing to have to think about death all of the time and know that it might be around the corner. There were so many times throughout the book where Vladek and his family felt helpless and they could not do anything to better there situation. This is also true in terms of the Gulf War; those people that are in that situation can do little to improve their situation. This is a very sad thing because those people more or less have their lives taken from them and have it put into the hands of people that could care less about them.
Another thing I saw was the fact that in the Gulf War you saw a bunch of different countries come together to aid another country. There was a common belief that what Iraq was doing was wrong and something needed to be done in order to save the people of Kuwait. Countries like the United States and Great Britain came to the aid of Kuwait and wanted the rest of the world to know that what Iraq was doing was wrong. In Maus you could see a little bit of this in terms of Vladek and his family knowing what was happening was wrong and something needed to be done in order to fix things. For example, there were times that Vladek and Anja were willing to do what ever it took to save the family. There was a time in the book where Vladek and Anja had to give up the children in order to save themselves and wanted the best for the children. It did not turn out the best for the children but at the time they thought that was the best for them. That is the bad thing about war and hard times; you do what you think is the best for everyone at the time, but only time will tell if it works out. In terms of people helping people I think you can see this in both situations, the United States helping Kuwait, and friend helping friends in Maus.
The last thing I would like to touch on is, the fact that the death totals in each situation were not really told accurately at the time. In terms of the book you can see that the characters were never really sure how many people were being killed. For a long time they did not know where anyone was being taken, and then as the book goes on they start to hear of all the places the prisoners were being taken to be killed. They never really know a number but it is downplayed by the Nazi’s and real numbers are really spoken of until later. In terms of the Gulf war it was the Iraqis that were the one’s who were untruthful about the number of people who were killed in the war. They were saying the number of people killed were really high so they could gain support of the Muslin nations, according to Wikipedia. It was the hope of the Iraqis to turn other Muslim countries against the United States and the allies.
As you can see there are many similarities to the book Maus and to the Gulf War. I think the reason we can see so many similarities is the fact that war and hard times bring out the worst in people, and in some ways brings out the best in people. We see people work together to save the ones they love, but on the other hand we see people do whatever it take to make sure they do what is best for them. It think that the book shows both sides of this, and shows what torment people had to go through in the times of the Holocaust.