In Black and White

In black and white, Art Spiegelman clearly depicts the gruesome horrors of the Holocaust and Nazi territory in the comic Maus. Art, struggling to figure out how to write about his father's story as a Jew during World War II, draws himself into the story. Sitting upon a pile of dead bodies, Art's struggle with his own comic can be seen and felt. The mice he sits upon symbolize how he cannot summarize within the book all that had occurred during the war and that neither words nor images could either. It makes the book seem as if it is not and could never be enough to truly represent all that the Jewish people had faced throughout the war and all the death that it had brought. Also within the same image, the speech bubble saying "alright Mr. Spiegelman... We're ready to shoot!.." characterizes those who attempted to publicize the war and create light from such horrific times. As we discussed earlier this week in class, to beautify Auschwitz would be barbaric; It would create an ethical dilemma. How could a person try to shoot a movie filled with cheesy lines and non realistic love scenes during a time period such as the Holocaust? That, I would consider, is the equivalent of stepping all over the bodies in the image below. However, Art does not make less of the gruesomeness and instead brings the pain into the light through his not so comical comic.