Saturday, August 23, 2014

Maus Question Commander - Antonia

1) We read pages 5-71 of the book Maus by Art Spiegelman and in the end, Valdek goes back home to his family. What do you predict will happen in the next chapters of the book? Will he remain home with his family, or go back to the war?

         I think Valdek will stay home with his family. I have two possibilities of things that could happen, either  he will stay home or be sent somewhere else, separated from his family, by the Nazis. From what I understood, the Nazis are already becoming more powerful. I think they will gain more strength, then find Valdek and separate his family. If that does happen, I think they will be sent to concentration camps or serve them in some other way.





2) Would the book be easier to understand if the characters were human?

         In my opinion, it would be easier to understand the book if the characters were people. In the beginning, when they showed pictures of the mice I couldn't recognize who was who, only by reading the names, which also got me confused. I couldn't understand at first any of the characters or who they were.

3) Do you think there is a reason to why all characters are animals?

         However, even though it would probably be easier to make the characters human, at the same time I also think there is a specific reason to why the characters aren't human. I don't think anyone would write a book where the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats for no apparent reason. I think this was made on purpose to represent where each group stands. For example, the Nazis are stronger than the Jews, and this might be the reason why they are cats and the Jews are mice. They can beat them whenever they want because they are stronger.



6 comments:

  1. Antonia,
    I liked how organized your blog post is it is easy to follow and understand all the information. One thing that really caught my eye is when you say "I don't think anyone would write a book where the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats for no apparent reason." I like this part of the post because it makes ask me self why are the jews mice and the Nazis cats? Overall, your post is engaging and easy to understand.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Antonia,
    I really enjoyed reading your post! I agree with your answer on question #1 about how eventually Vladek and his family will go to a concentration camp. But do you have any other predictions? Because that is a possibility but I think that maybe something else happend. On question #2 I disagree with you because I don't think that he just randomly picked mice to be the characters I think that theres something behind that. Overall your post had some really good content,great job.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Antonia,

    I can connect this story with my own family because my great-grandparents were Jews in the Second World War. In this book, they would be represented by the mice - the weak. However, I see them as cats. They were strong and were able to escape from the war and they came to Brazil for peace.

    If I were to answer the third question, I would say the same thing as you, that the metaphor behind the animals is that the cat is stronger than the mice, jus like the Nazis were stronger than the Jews.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree to your opinion Antonia. I also think that Vladek would be facing more problems as the Nazis take hold of more power and that the representations between cats and mice show how the Jews used to be so vulnerable compared to the Germans (Nazis). However, I think the author made a good choice to represent people as animals because it shows the different people in a more clear way. Especially, I loved the part where Vladek Spiggelman, the main character puts on a pig mask which indicates that he was pretending to be a Pole. Overall, I loved to see your opinions about the book and your post is really awesome :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree about what you said for question two. Because I definitely think it would be much easier if the characters were humans. I was also confused about who was who, and which character was which animal. All of your opinions about the book were really good!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I agree in what you said for question two. Because in the beginning I was also confused in what did the mice represent, what did the cats represent, so I think that if the author used humans people would be less confused in the beginning of the book.

    ReplyDelete