According to professor of English Joan Gordon, in “Surviving the Survivor,” Art Spiegelman breaks rules that dictate how Holocaust literature is to be criticized. Defined by authors Jacob Glatstein, Israel Knox, and Samuel Margoshes in their 1975 book An Anthology of Holocaust Literature, these rules are meant to confine such criticism to legislative analysis as opposed to a description (Gordon, 81). Interest in learning these rules about Holocaust writing is my first reason for researching this article. They suggest pronounced ethnographic barriers meant to commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Second, while I admire the way Maus and Maus II are written, I wanted to enhance the maturity of my perspective by researching Gordon’s contrasting
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These portrayals offend because they support ethnic stereotypes, simplify and misrepresent political situations, and allude to the very unserious, unsacred world of Loonytoons” (84). That assertion is clearly meant to vilify Spiegelman’s attempt to express cultural differences by calling them inappropriate. Personally, I have found the animalisms used by Spiegelman to be an effective device for conveying the idea that the violence perpetrated against Jews during the Holocaust triggered sensitive feelings. Images of a small animal being maimed by a larger animal might make someone feel bad. Gordon’s opinion of Spiegelman’s use of animal characters does not seem, to me, to take this expression of sensitivity into account Expounding Spiegelman’s third folly, Gordon calls Spiegelman on rhetoric by describing his self-characterization and use of artwork as insincere. She declares,
Law Number Four: use an authentic Jewish voice and language…. Art Spiegelman portrays himself as a man with a mouse mask, as if he does not really feel himself a Jew while he writes Maus…. Beyond this expression of inauthenticity of Jewish voice is Spiegelman’s medium of expression. What could be further from authentic than a comic strip? (Gordon,
These portrayals offend because they support ethnic stereotypes, simplify and misrepresent political situations, and allude to the very unserious, unsacred world of Loonytoons” (84). That assertion is clearly meant to vilify Spiegelman’s attempt to express cultural differences by calling them inappropriate. Personally, I have found the animalisms used by Spiegelman to be an effective device for conveying the idea that the violence perpetrated against Jews during the Holocaust triggered sensitive feelings. Images of a small animal being maimed by a larger animal might make someone feel bad. Gordon’s opinion of Spiegelman’s use of animal characters does not seem, to me, to take this expression of sensitivity into account Expounding Spiegelman’s third folly, Gordon calls Spiegelman on rhetoric by describing his self-characterization and use of artwork as insincere. She declares,
Law Number Four: use an authentic Jewish voice and language…. Art Spiegelman portrays himself as a man with a mouse mask, as if he does not really feel himself a Jew while he writes Maus…. Beyond this expression of inauthenticity of Jewish voice is Spiegelman’s medium of expression. What could be further from authentic than a comic strip? (Gordon,