Pages 129-159
Job #5: Illustrious Artist
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| Once memories are gone, they may never be retrieved... |
Sources : <Fire>, <Vladek>, <Artie>, <Font(Sketch Block)>
For this week's reading of the last section of the book Maus, I think that there was a part that stood out to me and kept me thinking. Actually, it was when Artie finds out that Vladek had burned so many useful resources and pieces of the past that he could have used to write his book much better. In my opinion, I found this part interesting because of the fact that Artie calls his own father a murderer, just because he burned his Anja's papers that held so many memories. On page 159, Vladek confesses: ''After Anja died I had to make an order with everything... there papers had too many memories, so I burned them.'' Right after, Artie cusses a couple times and becomes enraged that his father did such a thing. To be honest, I think that Art was feeling quite bad to his father, being really mad, and thinking of something else as well. This other thing that Artie was probably thinking about was the fact that once memories are gone, they may never be retrieved. Interestingly, it actually does match with the context. For instance, Artie calls his father a murderer because he burned memories. Since killing someone or something will mean you will never see them again, this means that burning memories or ''murdering'' them means that you will never be able to see them again.
The image I created was Artie trying to obtain some more information about Vladek's past, however, when he tries to think of something, Vladek realizes he burned the memories. Since he incinerated many artifacts, Vladek comes to think that it may have been a mistake to destroy piles of papers that could have reminded him of Anja and maybe even make him feel happy that he is still alive with the memory of his wife that died. Really, I can understand that when emotions are out of control, there is not much you can do to get rid of those overpowered emotions. Additionally, it is because they are what take control of you and make you feel good, bad, or depressed, which was Vladek's case.
To my belief, I think that though it is a quite interesting metaphor in my mind, whether the author did it on purpose or not, Spiegelman was quite successful in transmitting a message that I didn't really think of before.
I really liked your post. I liked how you created your image too. I agree with you. I can also see why Vladek would burn the memories. I also agree that the memories could have made Vladek feel happy. I can see what you mean about Vladek burning the memories is like killing a person, but Vladek also has a lot of other memories about Anja. He just told a whole story and Anja was in a lot of it. I also think that Artie shouldn't have cussed at his father. I think Artie could have been as mad as he wanted, he could have called Vladek a murderer as many times as he pleased. But I don’t think Artie should have cussed, like you said, at his own father. I agree, I never thought about that either, and now that you mention it I can see how the author would be expressing that metaphor, but I also think that it’s not that big of a deal. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteMax,
ReplyDeleteYet again, another outstanding blog entry by Mr. Huang! I love it how you put so much analysis and explanation to your posts. You give good details and clearly explain why you said what you said. You not only explained in 232 very analytical words how your image connected with the book, but also used in a very clear fashion 125 words which told what exactly your drawing was. Oh, and not to mention the 40 word concluding sentence which wrapped everything up. Just one thing you should watch for are some easily-correctable grammar errors. But in general, your post was fantastic!