LTEN 178  Maus Study Questions

For the take-home quiz this week, please answer question 5.  You should pick a page of Maus that you find particularly rich or interesting, consider carefully how the form and layout of the page function as part of the narrative and be prepared to write a short essay about how you see the form and content working together. The quiz is due at the beginning of class on Monday, Jan. 29. Typing is preferred, but you may write by hand. Please leave room for comments. Hard copy only pls.
 
1. Spiegelman chose the comic book form or "comix" to tell his father's story.  What do you see as the benefits and limitations of this form?  Pick one specific page or set of frames to focus your argument.

2. Spiegelman chose to portray his characters as animals.  How do you think the work would be different if he had used humans instead?  Looking at the insertion of his earlier comic, "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" vol. 1, pp. 100-103 may be useful to help you think about these issues as may considering the epigraph to Book II.   

3. In some instances (see for example vol. 1, page 136) the characters wear animal masks.  What is the difference between these representations and those of the characters in animal form? 

4. Volume 2 begins with a dedication to Richieu, using a photograph of him and has near its end a photograph of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, posing in concentration camp clothing (p. 134). What do you see as the effect of using actual photographs in the text? 

5.  In an interview Spiegelman had this to say about Maus:  "I'm literally giving a form to my father's words and narrative, and that form for me has to do with panel size, panel rhythms, and visual structures of the page, so that a page is a very specific and significant unit, it's not just a stream of panels one after another" ['Spiegelman interview, 103, 105), cited on page 3 of Geis introduction to Considering Maus, University of Alabama Press, 2003.]

Take one page of Maus and analyze how Spiegelman uses graphic form to tell his story. 

6. In this course we are considering how writers attempt to discuss the "ineffable."  How would you characterize Spiegelman's attempt?  How do elements of realism and of the fantastic figure in? 

7. How does "postmemory" function in Maus? Provide a specific example to support how you see postmemory working in the text.