another thing i noticed was his willingness to make his wife different and stand out. i got the vibe that even though she was his wife that they were not very close. i think art had a problem being close to people because even if my future wife was french i wouldn't even dream of drawing her as a frog or make her stand out to the stereotypical french striped shirt what do you all think?
Sunday, April 18, 2010
minor detail
one minor detail that i noticed was at the very beginning of Maus volume two. it was the first panel first page, or first scene if you will where art was laboring back and forth on how he should draw his wife. i felt this strange that he chose to draw her as a mouse but still wanted to keep her separate by making her wear the striped shirt. by drawing her as the mouse instead of the frog, for instance, i think that he kind of compromised the roles of the characters. i feel that only the real jews should have been mice and so on and so forth.
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Yeah, I found that odd too. I understand making the Nazis and Jews different animals. That seperation is a big part of the plot of the novel. But I don't feel like the fact that Francoise being French has any real meaning to the plot of the story. So I'm confused as to why he made her different. Maybe, as you mentioned, to emphasize the tension between them?
ReplyDeleteAt one point in the book it said that Francoise converted to Judaism only because it was the only way that she would be accepted by Vladek and into the family. I think the striped shirt is meant to emphasize that she is different from the rest of the Jews in the story.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this. They both knew she was different, and it's clearly there in the illustrations. I feel like she was supposed to be somewhat different for the sake of the continuity of the story, as each nationality gets its own type of character. Also, there was tension that existed between the French and the Jews that Art even mentions.
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