Short Paper #2 and Short Maus 2 Lecture

I'm posting the Short Paper #2 assignment below, along with a short lecture to give you a little guidance and context for the assignment. These are the ideas I would normally show you and discuss in class, but for now, have to make do with a short Zoom video. Please let me know if you have any questions as a comment or via e-mail. There are no comments necessary for this video (this time), but be sure to answer the response questions in the previous post. Otherwise, start thinking about this short paper, due next Friday by 5pm (since we don't really have TR classes anymore). 

Short Paper #2: Words and Pictures

INTRO: For your Second Short Paper assignment, I want you to focus on how Spiegelman uses words and pictures together to change the meaning of his comic, adding context that we might not have seen or been aware of. Just like in the photos from Morris’ book, when you add words to an image, it changes what we see and how we experience it. This could make the picture more “true” or more “false” depending on what the artist wants you to see, or what the picture represents about history, people, etc. In a comic book, the pictures alone don’t tell the story, since they could tell many different stories. The words help us frame the stories in a specific moment for a specific meaning, even when they seem to push against the meaning of the images.

PROMPT: So for this assignment, I want you to choose TWO passages from the comic, one from Maus I: My Father Bleeds History, and one from Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began. A “passage” should be no more than a few frames, or a single page at most. Discuss how these two passages change when you add the words to the pictures. In other words, if you blocked out the words, why wouldn’t you ‘see’ this story or this idea? Discuss why he wanted us to see this, and how it complements some of the major themes of his novel and of the Holocaust itself. Be sure to describe the images so we can understand how the words work with the images: in other words, don’t just tell us what the words say. Think back to your first short paper, when you had to describe the photos from Humans of New York.

REQUIREMENTS:

• At least 2-3 pages, double spaced (though you can go beyond this)
• Only choose TWO passages, one from each part of the book (Maus I and Maus II)
• Describe images and cite the passages you use, using page numbers according to MLA format
• For example: In Chapter Three, “And Here My Troubles Began,” Vladek sees a man shot by a German soldier and reflects, ““The dog was rolling so, around and around, kicking, before he lay quiet. And now I thought: “how amazing it is that a human being reacts the same like this neighbor’s dog” (82).
• DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 10^th by 5pm via e-mail (jgrasso@ecok.edu)