Maus Analyseas

pg. 115

I love taking pictures. I try to take them whenever I can because I believe that remembering is of the utmost importance. It is so difficult to remember anything because our brains empty out some things here and there to make room for the incoming flow of images. Quite frankly, I have trouble remembering what I ate for breakfast yesterday. So maybe that's why this page stuck out to me out of all of the meticulously planned pages.

The photographs fall to the bottom of the page to frame Vladek. In some sense the photos restrict Vladek and bar him in with the memories from the Holocaust, but it could also be interpreted as a hug. The photos of his friends and family surround him, and even hold him up as the photos collect under his feet. "All what is left"(115) is in the photos; their emotions, their smiles, and their family is on these pages. Although it may seem like there isn't much left, the absence of a page number shows how memories are endless. Readers will never be able to see the full picture as demonstrated through the photographs collecting below the page.

This page could also be a way of showing how pictures can convey more than words. Vladek burned Anja's journals but kept the pictures. The pictures show various facial expressions, people, and actions that would be difficult to convey accurately with just words. It proves what Scott McCloud discussed in "Show and Tell." If readers just saw the pictures without the speech of Vladek or Art, the pictures and the people in them could be misconstrued. For example, on the following page there is a picture of Pinek, Vladek's brother, with his wife. In the picture they look completely normal and content. No matter how hard you looked at it you would not be able to come to the realization that he was a victim of the Holocaust.

On the following page, Vladek's body is pieced together in multiple boxes like in book one where he in on the exercycle.

pg. 116

Readers see much more of Vladek's body here in comparison to the frame with him on the exercycle. This shows that we have seen and learned more about the Holocaust, but we still do not get the whole picture. Even with all of the photographs that were depicted on page 115, we cannot understand or even begin to comprehend the murderous and barbaric experiences that victims of the Holocaust experienced. The box at the bottom of this page to the right is emptied. There are no pictures, which shows how "nothing [is] left" of his family, "not even a snapshot" (116) because of the Holocaust. The memories that he would have created with them, had the Holocaust not taken place, is sheer nothingness. There can be no pictures or documentation of any kind of what could have been for Vlad because of the Holocaust.