Oreo's Observations

A week ago, my mom “caught me” reading a comic book. As she started laughing at me for what would be another good five minutes at least, I shamefully started concealing the pages and laughing with her out of sheer embarrassment. Not even 24 hours go by before I realize how mortifying this novel really is.  As soon I mentioned that this book was about the Holocaust, the room was silent immediately. Because only when they depict death and torture are pictures taken seriously.  Let's examine the last panel of page 72 in volume II. Before you scroll to the bottom to see the picture, this is what is says: "Prisoners what worked there poured gasoline over the live ones and the dead ones". Such a gut-wrenching sentence formed in such a nonchalant manner. You might raise your eyebrows, widen your eyes, but no feeling compares to when you see the image beneath it. The mice are burning alive, the flames consuming them, their faces in pure agony. You feel the terror with them, your ...

                               In Maus , Spiegelman tells his father's story in an extremely vivid and captivating manner. Page 83 discusses one of Vladek's most undigestible moments of the holocaust: the hangings. Even when Art displays the gut-wrenching illustration in panel two, the faces are covered up, turned around, or tilted in a manner in which the reader literally can't look them in the eye. They're completely stripped of their identities that only Vladek recognized. To the Nazis they're merely walking targets dressed in costumes of formalwear. In the following two panels, Vladek narrates short summaries of each of the characters hanged, isolating only each of their feet. This was drawn not simply for the act of dramatizing the hangings. It once again goes to show how readers, unaffected pigs in the audience, and the Nazis are only able to see identical hanged legs with little significance. This com...