Maus Motifs - “Prisoner on the Hell Planet”

 



Maus is rich with motifs. Each page is filled with them, when analyzed, conveying a deeper meaning. For example, the page after 101, in the first page of the comic “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” written by Artie, the page has a photo of Anja and Artie when Artie was young boy . This photograph shows us that that though the characters are presented as caricatures inside the comic, they are, in fact, real people this also goes bacMausk to the animal metaphor, throughout the book, characters are depicted as different animals depending on their races(rats as Jews and cats as Germans) but when seen as people, they all look the same and have no differences are all equal other than their “races”. Also on the first page, we can that Artie is wearing a prison costume with black stripes which might suggest that Artie is imprisoned by his mother’s death and trauma. In later pages of chapter 5, we see Artie and Vladeck go to the bank where have conversations about inheritance, but in the “Prisoner on the Hell Planet,” Artie depicts himself as a guy who was released from a state mental hospital which suggests that Artie might have also inherited depression and anxiety from his parents which shows the effects of intergenerational trauma due to and his mother’s death. Which overall shows how much trauma and depression affect a person.

Comments

  1. Anonymous3 December 2023 at 19:34

    I liked reading your post, since I did mine about the same page, I also focused on the outfit but you looked at it from a slightly different perspective which gave me better insight about the panels.

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