Saturday, August 23, 2014

Question Commander - Max H.



Book: Maus


Author: Art Spiegelman


Pages 5-71


Job # 4 – Question Commander


Question #1:

What was the intent of the author to create the story using the mice as the Jews and the cats as the Nazis?


In my opinion, the fact that the author was using mice as the Jews and cats as the Nazis was simply to show a simple conflict. For example, since the Nazis were basically ''ruling'' and the Jews were the lower class, Spiegelman chose to represent something that happens naturally in nature, which is cats are more powerful than mice. As stated in the preview of the book, this book is no ordinary ''Tom and Jerry'' type of thing because it really is using cats and mice to tell a serious story about the past.


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Question #2:


Relating back, how do you think the story would be different if the author chose to use humans instead of mice and cats?


Moving on, I indeed think that the story would be different if the author chose to use humans instead of animals for various reasons. First of all, I think that the story wouldn't be as creative because it would be basically making a graphic novel of the past with ordinary humans. Next, I think that the story would be different because sometimes when a story involves real life people, the story becomes much more serious because it would take much more maturity to see people die in a graphic novel. With the fact that the author replaced the Nazis and Jews with mice and cats makes it so the violence rating is less.



Question #3:


On a scale of 1-10 how lucky do you think Vladek was to survive all of the events that had happened to him so far in the story he is telling? (1 being unfortunate, 10 being ''winning the lottery''.)



To be honest, I think that 9, Vladek was so lucky to be alive until this point of the story. In my opinion, I think Vladek would have been killed already if it weren't for the lucky events that had happen. For example, he was able to escape from war prisoners camp and escaped from the train ride far away to get to his home and meet up with his family again. The only reason I wouldn't say 10, however, would be because some terrible things had happened upon his return. For instance, the factory Vladek had opened was robbed and they lost quite a bunch of it.






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4 comments:

  1. Question 1: I agree with you. I agree that which animal the character is symbolizes the conflict between them.
    Question 2. I also agree that it would be different, and with everything else you said, but I also think that the book would be more realistic with humans. I also think that making the humans animals makes the book easier to understand in some ways.
    Question 3- I also agree with what you said here. I might even say 8 because he had to go to the war prisoner’s camp in the first place.

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  3. Max,
    I really like your post. I agree with what you said about why the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats since the Nazis have power over the Jews. I also said the same thing on my post. For the last question, I also agree with what you are saying, but maybe I would give it an 8. I think 9 is too high for someone who has to go to the camp.

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  4. Max,

    I agree with most of your questions. Your questions made me think of different things. I was mostly intrigued on question #3 because it made me think about it a lot. I think though that you should make your images a little better. They should connect even more to the questions. Also, no mean to point out but you forgot to put picture on question #2, so maybe next time you should check over your work twice to check if you got it all okay. Besides that, I think it is very good and the explanation is very well put.

    Daphne

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