A literary interpretation begins with a critical question about the text. The question, in this case, emerges from our particular thematic and theoretical focus in this course, which we have looked at, in part, through the lens of Dori Laub’s theory. One responds to a critical question using a focused close-reading of specific passages from a text as evidence to back up the response. Again, close-reading is not plot summary nor vague generalization, but a process of maintaining a focused attentiveness on how language (and visual text) is being used, not just on what is being said or illustrated.

Your Task: For this exercise, you will need to respond to the following critical question:

How does Art Spiegelman’s Maus project both illustrate and complicate Dori Laub’s article about testimony and witnessing?

Close-read the page from Maus II that I posted on the Week 7 Overview page on Canvas through the following quotation from Laub (this is from a different essay than the one we read):

The act of bearing witness at the same time makes and breaks a promise: the promise of the testimony as the realization of the truth. On the one hand, the process of the testimony does in fact hold out the promise of truth as the return of a sane, normal, and connected world. On the other hand, because of its very commitment to truth, the testimony enforces at least a partial breach, failure and relinquishment of this promise….The testimony in its commitment to truth is a passage through, and an exploration of, difference, rather than an exploration of identity, just as the experience it testifies to – the Holocaust – is unassimilable, because it is a passage through the ultimate difference – the otherness of death.

Yet it is this very commitment to truth, in a dialogic context and with an authentic listener, which allows for a reconciliation with the broken promise, and which makes the resumption of life, in spite of the failed promise, at all possible (Laub, p. 73).

The key is to respond to the question by giving your interpretation of a page from the literary text and supporting it with a detailed and nuanced analysis of specific textual evidence (word choice/word play, connotations, metaphors, visual details, etc) – making brief references to other frames or pages from Maus, if need be. Remember, avoid assumptions or generalizations – the field from which to gather data/evidence is the page in front of you.

Work to apply Laub’s theory to the representation of witnessing and to the making and breaking of the promise.

Let’s make this a collaborative process so please try to avoid simply reiterating others’ points. Build on previous posts and add new close-readings/insights/connections to theory/etc. (250 words at least).

Response from student #1 on discussion board:

“Time flies…”

Throughout Maus, we encounter representations of witnessing (and, at times, false witnessing) in almost every interaction between Art’s father, Vladek, and Art himself in their iteration of the present day. While Vladek was provided a space to tell a story he knows “by heart” (p. 133), Art would often interrupt his father’s telling of his death experience in order to maintain the chronological nature of Art’s comic book narrative (as we have engaged with in p. 81-82 during class). Maus subsequently ends with Art noticeably enraged at his father for burning his deceased mother’s journals, whispering “murderer” as he departs angrily from Vladek’s home – an act that I deem as a failure on Art in his role as a companion, a listener. In this particular page from Maus II, we see the consequences of Art’s failure to provide an authentic space as a listener for his father’s testimony to be presented. Vladek has passed by the time Spiegelman is creating Maus II, and I feel that this death occurrence has re-oriented Art’s role as a son, a listener, and as an artist and a writer. Laub speaks of survivor testimony as a means to break traditional paradigms of history, and I gleaned from Neha’s comments on the Laub Interactive Doc that when studying history, one feels detached from the object of study, but as Neha interprets “we are always emmeshed in and part of history” and testimony helps us come to that realization. I mention this because each of the five panels either begins or mentions a specific date in time. The first panel dates Vladek’s death, the second panel dates Vladek’s entry into Auschwitz and Art’s creation of this specific page, the third also juxtaposes two dates, the first being Art’s expected arrival of his child placed in relation to the 8 days in 1944 where nearly “100,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed,” the fourth dates Maus’ development, and the fifth (and most jarring to Art) dates Art’s mother’s suicide.

Here, I can’t stop thinking back to Resmaa Menakem’s words, “time decontextualizes trauma.” I bring this particular quote to light because we ask if Spiegelman’s choice of medium – the comic book – is ethically responsible in telling a holocaust story, and I believe it is. And I find that this particular Holocaust story encompasses both Art’s father, Vladek, and Art himself as the bearer of intergenerational trauma, while the comic book medium itself provides a very nuanced yet seemingly “played down” way to illustrate this idea. I argue that in both Vladek’s death and his mother’s suicide, Art also encounters the “otherness of death,” but this time, he has no listener to help enunciate this encounter, an encounter where Art also has to take on the deaths of those who Vladek mentions in his testimony (i.e. Art’s baby brother, the various family friends lost, those hung in the town square). This is expressed by Art (as an author) via the imagery of flies buzzing around his drawing desk, flies gather when something is rotting or dying (think of trash, left-over food, bodies on a battlefield), a testimony to the way death encompasses all of Art’s psyche as he bears his parent’s traumatic experiences. When we examine the diction of these five panels, we see that Spiegelman has used 14 verbs, three of which relate directly to death (22%, more than a 1/5th of the action verbs he uses).Furthermore, the parentheses in the last box that reads “(I don’t wanna)” and “(she left no note)” feel as if Art himself is crying out for help – for a companion, a listener to arise. I see these parentheses as Art’s inner monologue, fueled by the death experience of his parents and the burden of telling his father’s death story after his passing.

This is totally off-topic, but I recall reading an essay by the existential psychologist Rollo May who wrote frequently of the “otherness of death,” suggesting that what is peculiar and empowering about the human is its innate ability to bring about something – to create. And it is this very ability to create that is considered an exercise towards attaining fulfillment as the act of creating gives significance and meaning to our finite existence. Perhaps Spiegelman, in understanding his role as the listener to his father (and really all of those affected by the ghastly horrors of the Holocaust), chose the medium of the comic to portray the Holocaust story in a way that he himself could make sense of it all, portraying his struggle to attain fulfillment in the years following his parent’s passing.

Response from student #2 on discussion board:

Similar to what we discussed in class, I find that this passage makes us reconsider who Vladek’s story is being told, how Spiegaman’s role as a listener is imperative to how Vladek’s story is being told. We must notice how Spiegamn’s traumatic experience of his father’s story is intertwined in Maus’s narrative.

I find that Spiegamn can illustrate the complicated role that the listener has, and Laub can also discuss this complex role of witnessing through this proposal of a “promise.” Laub states that “the act of bearing witness simultaneously makes and breaks a promise: the promise of the testimony as the realization of the truth. On the one hand, the process of the testimony does, in fact, hold out the promise of truth as the return of a sane, normal, and connected world.” By Spiegelman taking on the role as a listener to his father’s trauma, he makes a promise that not only connects to his father and his father’s experiences but also forces him to develop a realization of the truth that he and his father hold together.

Within the page from Maus II is where we begin to notice how Spiegamn’s traumatic experience of his father’s story and how, through his role of witnessing, there is a promise that is made that maintains the connection between Spiegamn and his father. Spiegamn is intertwining his own journey with his father’s because he tends to go back and forth between the events that have happened to his father and the events happening to him. As the reader, we are forced to make this correlation between them and how their experiences are reflective of each other. We also see that this is mainly from the perspective of Spiegamn because he is not a mouse-like how he portrays his father in the book. Instead, he is someone who is wearing a mouse mask, and he is a force to try to put himself in his father’s shoes, but he will never truly understand what his father had to experience. He will never be this ‘mouse’ like his father was. I think that this relates and helps illustrate Laub’s idea of witnessing in the sense that Spiegamn, or the listener, can create this ‘space’ for his father where he can help him articulate his experiences and come to a better understanding of the traumatic events that have occurred. Laub even states that “there is something we don’t know, but it could have a reality, and I’m going to help you articulate it” (pg. 58). Even though this is not Spiegamn’s story, he is a creative space where his father’s experiences can be articulated and create a healing space for his father.

It could be argued that Spiegamn, in fact, complicates Laub’s article implementing his own narrative too much to the extent that his role as a listener is tarnishing his father’s traumatic experience. Throughout all of Maus, we cannot ignore that Spiegamn plays a crucial role in telling his father’s story. In his need for discovery, he must undergo his own trauma, but Laub may argue that Spiegamn’s ‘nature of listening’ is realized together to a whole new extent. Spiegamn creates this ‘space’ for his father to articulate his own experiences and Spiegamn to come to terms with his own traumatic journey. I find that we can see this when we the image of Spiegamn on top of the many dead bodies. Even with Spiegamn on top of the many deceased, he is still coping with the fact that he has had to experience his father and mother’s loss. Even though the articulation of his father’s journey has been successful, he has had to undergo a traumatic realization of his own, and the book can be perceived as Spiegamn’s traumatic journey to coming to terms with these new experiences of trauma.

Coming back to Laub’s thought of a promise between the listener and survivor, there is a responsibility that the listener has to the survivor with the trauma created in witnessing death. In this death witnessing, the survivor needs a space that the listener can provide to help articulate their trauma, and this is what Spiegamn does for his father. To look even further, it could be argued that Spiegamn also needs this space or a listener to help him articulate his own trauma.