Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Visual Representations

In your opinion, what does the visual representation add to the story? Support your response by referencing specific panels.

25 comments:

  1. Yes, that's what makes comics so appealing, you aren't fumbling around in your mind trying to gauge the setting or what someone looks like. My only problem with this book's art is the fact that the characters are mice, it's sometimes hard to tell people apart. With this being a Holocaust story, I sometimes think the misery and gore should be amplified when telling a story about it, there's one moment where Vladek mentions the Nazis slamming kids against a wall to stop them from screaming and there's a large blood splatter coming from the child. It's debatable whether you should be more subtle, but I think Maus was spot-on. The cover for Maus Part II is also pretty horrifying, the fact that people are mice actually work to increase the sadness and misery being conveyed.

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  2. images help me to understand whats going on and connect the dots. even if its not important it shows me exactly what the character is doing and even how they may be feeling from expressions and body language.For example when the father is knocking over his pills it really helps show that it was frustrating by the way he looked. I have always been a visual learner so no matter if its a real picture or like this it helps me comprehend the hole story better seeing whats happening. -Dalton Greenlee

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  3. In my opinion the visual representation used with the characters of Maus l and Maus ll is key to the understanding of the book, through the book Artie mentions that it is a very complicated theme and that it is very difficult to write about the Holocaust, obviously because he did not lived through it so he cannot understand how horrible it was. So to help us, the readers, understand the story deeper he includes drawings. Art Spiegelman represents People as animals on his books, to help us understand the differences of the races in the book. Even though humans are represented as animals we can still see their feelings by facial expressions, for example when Artie yells at Vladek that they didn’t want the cereal, the way they draw Artie completely let us know that Artie is about to explode of angriness. Drawings also help by letting you notice differences, like when Vladek is talking about the camp when he was young, and they show you young Vladek right next to old Vladek, it help me see how skinny and weak the Holocaust made Vladek be, he was strong and clean before the Holocaust started, and then at the end he could barely stand because of the weakness of his body.

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    1. The pictures give us an idea about racism that existed then...and unfortunately today.

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  4. The visual representation adds a sense of what it was like for them back then. Example: All of the Jews are portrayed as rats while all of the Nazis are portrayed as cats. The visual representations also give more detail beyond words of what was happening in each panel. (Ben Shifflett)

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  5. I really liked the visual representation between the Germans being cats and the Jews being mice. It made the story easier to understand, so it was a quick and easy read. I thought it was ironic that the Jews were so easy to pick out, and they are in the book as well. (Laura Davis)

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  6. In a story like Maus, the use of different animals to represent different species helps a great deal in understanding what was going on. You see the Jews are mice, the Nazis are Cats, the poles are pigs and you see Vladek wearing a pig mask when he is posing as a pole. This is one of the main strengths of the book and perhaps one of the biggest reasons it is famous.

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  7. Spiegelman helps us to gain a betterunderstanding of the Holocaust through his visual representations. He emphasizes this through the use of comics. It helps us to relate more closely to such a difficult subject. One example in Maus II (p. 11) is when Artie is having trouble drawing Francoise as a mouse. She was French and converted to a Jew, so he wasn’t sure how to draw her. Another example (p. 15) is how Artie struggled his entire life to compete with his dead brother, Richeu. He felt like his parents remembered his brother as being perfect, and that he could never live up to their expectations. These examples help us realize that Artie suffered, even though he was not in Auschwitz.

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    1. What do you mean by "even though he was not in Auschwitz"? In class we discussed not to compare pain.

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  8. I like how this book uses visual representation. It's something that is simple to read, and seeing the drawings help you understand a little more of what is going on. To me, it made the story a little more interesting. And example it the Jews are portrayed mice and the Nazis are cats, which shows that they are pretty much being hunted just like a cat would hunt a mouse.

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  9. The visual representation definitely helps a lot with the story. Art Spielman drawing the nazis as cats and the jews as mouses conveys the whole cat and mouse games. Also the pictures when his father is talking about being in the war and when he returns home to see the Nazi influence everywhere help to tell the story as well. Showing the fear on the jews faces adds another element to undersanding the story.

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  10. i think it helps a lot in this book. The comics help you understand what is going on better. Personally i think the use of animals to explain and represent the book is great and helps me comprehend it better. For example the cat has the advantage and its hard to get away and stand up to someone(the german/cats) in this book if your just the mouse(jews).

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  11. I think it helps with following who is who in the story. Obviously, the mice are Jews and the cats are Nazis/Germans, but I think it was a good idea to use pigs as Poles to show how some were neutral in the Nazis actions. The pictures help the reader follow the story when it skips from modern day to the father's younger days. It also helps with visualizing what is going on and where the characters are at. I like how you could see the black market was working because I had no idea how those were operated.
    -Olivia Pyanoe

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  12. it helped creat a visal and showed more emoshion and helped bring the story to life.

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  13. i think being able to see whats happening and see what they're describing is great and allows us to get a better visual. its also great because i need to be able to see something so i can fully understand. i liked being able to see the black markets because i thought it was people who meet randomly and trade also maybe a little fighting.

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  14. it helped create a visual picture, showed more emotion, and helped bring the story to life. -Justin Register

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  15. I think the visual representations of the jews being mice and the nazis being cats works very well, because a mouse can only run or hide from a cat, which is what most jews did from the nazis.~Noah B.

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  16. I think having a visual of what is happening helps me better understand what exactly is going on. Some things I wouldn't have fully understood unless I looked at the pictures to connect the picture to what I read from the book. The pictures helped me determine who people are because there were many names in chapter 5 that I wouldn't have knew who they were unless I looked at the picture to see the setting of what's going on. Such as Lolek and Haskel, Without glancing at the pictures, I would be lost. How Spiegelman had the picture of the coal cellar for a hiding spot drawn out so clearly for readers to see is really cool. There were many things in these chapters that had a lot going on that without a visual, I wouldn't fully get who were who and what things actually looked like.

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  17. The visual representation is defiantly different. It shows the different types of people as different animals like the Jewish people were mouse poles were pigs and so on. It made the story more interesting and it, and it made it easier to recognize people. The pictures added more light heartiness in a difficult time like in chapter 6 page 136 they showed Anja and Vladek wearing pig mask when they were trying to look Polish and it showed Anja's tell popping out to show she stood out more. I just thought that that page was interesting. -Hayden Groff

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  18. Having a visual aid of pictures that goes along with the story helps because the pictures keep me interested in the story. On page 82 it shows the pictures of the family being sent to the ghetto and it gives you a representation of what they carried and how they were sent to go there.

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  19. I think the visual representations really bring the story to life. Being able to visually capture what is happening in the story makes it easier to follow the story line. It also makes the story more interesting to read. Seeing all of the Jews that were trying to get work permits really put into perspective how many of them were trying to receive them. It also put into perspective the few Germans that were actually running the stations. It is nice to have a visual aid to help understand numbers and characters!
    Angela B.

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  20. The visual representations in Maus play a key role in understanding the book and the Holocaust itself. Artie kept repeating that the story was so hard to tell, so it was perfect to have images for the reader. The idea that Jews were represented as mice and the Germans is cats was brilliant because it shows how much power Germans have and how week the Jews were. The drawings have a great representation of Vladeks descriptions of the before and after of the Holocaust. With a story like this words can amplify so much but it is so much more powerful with an image. (Rula tareq)

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  21. I really liked the visual representations in book, and it kind of give you another perspective in the holocaust. I did really injoy reading this book because the graphic and story was amazing. I felt I was apart of the story because the drawings were so fantastic. The best part was that he used the cats as the germans and the mouses as the jews - that gave you an expression of how powerfull and strong the germans were during the war.
    Oline

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  22. The visual representation plays a key role in showing our eyes how it happened in the story with the reading. it helps understand better. The visuals got to me emotionally when the family was deported to the ghettos. Its hard to see that even in comic form.

    -PJ Sabo_

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  23. I really like graphic novels because they make it so that you can strictly pay attention to the story line, you do not have make up a scene in you head and you also do not have to make up what the characters look like. Panel six on page twenty five really shows how much power the Germans had over the Jews in the camp. I like that the illustrator used cats as the Germans to display a powerful role against the literal vermin Jews.

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