Spiegelman book 2 chapters 1-2

so the second book of Maus focuses on Vladek's joureny throught Auschwitz and how he survived in the concentration camps. Vladek uses the same clever tactics that he used in Poland in Auschwitz to survive in the camp. Spiegelman uses the same ideas in presenting the sory as he did in the first book of Maus. The setting for the stroy has changed as his father is now in the Catskill Mountains in upstae New York. In most of the pictures the mice are not drawn as bad as I thought they would be. Only when they take off their shirts or dead mice are shown are they shown to be in bad condition.

Spiegelman Book 1

In the first series of Art Spiegelman's Maus Spiegelman describes his father's experience living in Nazi occupied Europe.  Spiegelman switches from the present time where his father and his new wife discuss how they despise each other to his story of struggling to survive in Poland during World War II.  The Holocaust is a hard issue to discuss but Spiegelman keeps the reader in the story by occasionally stopping the Holocaust description and focusing on him trying to make the book and discuss his father's problems.  the occasional break allows the reader to take a break from the cruelty of the Nazi regime and so to speak catch your breath before resuming the story. Making the faces of the Jews, Germans, and Polish people of animals also helps tell the story.  I thought one of the best drawings was of Vladek (Art's father) and his mother Anja disguised as Pigs which is the animal chosen to represent the Polish.  Vladek says that he was able to blend in more but his wife looked more Jewish.  the picture drawn shows Anja's mouse tail reveled while Vladek's is tucked in his clothing to represent this.      

Thompson 3-9

I was really surprised by how this book ended.  It was not the typical ending to a story and caught me off guard.  Thompson continued to use the style of having many frames without words and continues to go back and forth between time periods although he does this less often then he did in the first two chapters.  

Thompson 1-2

When reading Blankets I thought it went by really quickly.  Unlike Fun Home the author chose to use pictures more then words to explain the story.  there were a lot of panels without any words and even a number of pages that didn't use any words to describe the situation at all. You have to use your imagination a lot more.  Some of the panels don't need words to describe the situation.

Bechdel 2-7

The end of Fun Home was not what I was expecting at all. I thought that the family did not expect the father to be gay at all but then we find out that the mother new all along and that he had numerous affairs with men included teenagers. I thought overall that the book repeated the same things over and over. Bechdel really wanted to point out how she and her father wanted to be the opposite sex. I thought the book could have had a better affect on the reader if it had been maybe four chapters rather then seven.