Sunday, February 22, 2015

Illustrious Artist - Isa Farhat


Isabella Farhat

Maus 

By Art Spiegelman

February 14, 2015

Week 2 - Job #5

Pages 72 - 127

          This second week I have chosen to take the artsy side of the blogpost, my job is to be the illustrious artist. I will draw my own detailed drawings of a scene, object, or character from the book Maus to portray something that stood out to me. The drawing that is displayed underneath, is in relation to the characters from the book also explaining the connection between the way Art Spiegelman transformed this novel, by comparing it to the "The Food Chain" that took place during WWII.



       In the drawing above, by Isabella Farhat, it shows that perspective of Art Spiegelman when it comes to the relation of the food chain and the book Maus. Above, you can see three different characters, the cat's (Nazi's), the mice ( Jew's), and the pigs (Pole's). Each of these characters have their own "personality" or place in the story. The book Maus, holds the idea of the Nazi's eliminating the race of Jew's, and Jewish people act like they are useless when it comes to defending because they are threatened by the difference in ability, size, speed, amount. In the middle of all this, there was the Polish population. They are bystanders, also meaning that, they don't mean harm to any of the two "teams". The live in a bubble of peace, but even without meaning harm, they can be sent to concentration camps for helping Jew's in hiding. 
        This relates to the "Food Chain" because of the way Art Spiegelman makes his characters relate to the animal world. In the animal world, the cat's chase and kill the mice, while the pigs are rolling around in the dirt living on their on not doing any harm to anyone else. The author was very crafty when coming up with the idea of making his novel using animals instead of human figures. 
        So, summing up, the author made this choice so even if the graphic novel isn't using human figures, there is a clear difference between the power and/or leadership of each character. 

4 comments:

  1. Isa,

    First of all, nice drawing, it really helped deepen my thoughts regarding the format "Maus" is in. I agree with what you said about Art Spiegelman being very crafty with choosing the animals he did to represent the different groups of people present in his Grandfather's story. However, I wonder why he decided to use those specific types of animals. Since there are countless species of different animals spread about in the world and many are also known predators such as lions and zebras, birds and worms, sharks and fish, etc. not to mention that the bystanders could've been any other animal in the world. Especially since pigs are not seen positively upon, which makes me wonder if the author had something against the Poles.

    Other than that, I don't quite agree with your idea of the poles being in a bubble of peace because throughout the book we see them occasionally aiding the Nazis and based on statistics from WWII, the Jewish poles were also being sent to concentration camps and so on so forth. Which makes me believe that the poles, while they are only bystanders in the story, they don't live in their own bubble of peace, because they also suffered under the reign of the Nazis.

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  3. I really liked your drawing and I also think that it really is the perspective of Art Spiegelman. Nevertheless I think that you didn't include a very important factor which is that the pigs(polish) are like the vultures in the in the cycle. Pigs actually eat leftovers in real life and their personality in the book is really similar to its real image.

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  4. I really liked your drawing and I also think that it really is the perspective of Art Spiegelman. Nevertheless I think that you didn't include a very important factor which is that the pigs(polish) are like the vultures in the in the cycle. Pigs actually eat leftovers in real life and their personality in the book is really similar to its real image.

    ReplyDelete