Maus II

The bottom panel on page 41 has Art sitting at his desk with a pile of bodies under him and on the next panel two people are seen standing on top of the bodies. According to McCloud the words and pictures are in parallel because what Art says on that panel on page 41 has nothing to do with what is seen, “words and pictures seem to follow very different courses,” (154). Art is thinking about the book and his mother, but the picture is showing something more horrifying. Even in the next panel, the people seem to be deliberately ignoring them by stepping on the bodies to talk to Art, portraying how Art’s attempt to display the horrors of the holocaust and what the people at the time had to go through is not having the effect that he wants. He’s successful and is profiting off it but people are missing the message that Art is trying to convey.

            Furthermore, as the panels progress on page 42, Art is seen as growing smaller and smaller, to a younger, childlike version of himself, which is an example of “when pictures carry the weight of clarity in a scene.” (McCloud 157). Art is very overwhelmed in this scene perhaps by the people around him or even the weight of the stories of the holocaust and how he is profiting off of it and how other people are trying to use it to make money, completely diminishing his purpose; finally, the very last panel on page 42 is him crying out “WAH.” Here he is like a child who is not able to express his feelings clearly and properly, which is enhanced by Art drawing himself as a child and clearly expressing the overwhelmed feeling he is experiencing in the scene. Moreover, Art’s feeling of sadness or loneliness is seen through the lines on his face, making his face seem visibly darker, unlike chapters before where his face is clear and white.

            Finally, unlike previous chapters where Art and the other characters are seen as actual animals, in these two pages the characters are seen as humans with animal masks on. McCloud says that “Storytellers in all media know that a sure indicator of audience involvement—is the degree to which the audience identifies with a story’s characters,” (42); by this logic before when all the characters were actually animals the audience could identify with the characters, but now they are humans in animal masks, bringing attention to the fact that these were real humans, not different species of animals, who had to live through the holocaust and they experienced things that Art and the reader will never be able to experience, which reduces the “degree to which the audience identifies with a story’s characters.”

            Art in these two pages portrays the negative effects of the holocaust on him despite him never living through it himself; it still haunts him and makes him depressed.

"Spring into Action"

Both The Things They Carried and Maus share the idea that war stories shouldn’t be really about the war but more about the stories, the memories, the story telling, and the effects it has had on them. Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried does not really describe the war itself, but describes the people and their experiences during and after the war, and yet it is still a war story. Similarly, Maus does not describe the war itself but describes how the war is affecting his father Vladek, his mother Anja, and the rest of his family and friends. It describes how they are surviving, where they had to hide, and how people were being affected. Both describe the horrors that come from the effects of war.

Another way they are similar is the way the stories are formatted. Tim O’Brien is telling a fictional story where he is a narrator and at one part he is the telling the story through the character Tim who hears the story from Rat Kiley who hears the story from someone else. Similarly, Art is telling the story of his parents and is referencing parts of the novel that has already passed such as the mice who hung themselves towards the end of the first part. Both are very metafiction.

Both stories talk about the effects of war without really discussing the events of the war itself which reminded me of the “Spring into Action,” when compressed it’s very small and when pulling it, it is very long. The actual war itself is described briefly, but the effects are very long lasting and have longer descriptions. 

Waterfalls and Twelfth Night

When you pull the bottom tab of the waterfall card each flap opens up to finally reveal a single bigger piece of paper. This is like the final act of Twelfth Night. 

Each flap corresponds to each conflict that became solved. Generally, there are four flaps in a waterfall card which can correspond to four conflicts that were resolved in the play. One conflict is Viola and Sebastian not knowing that they are both alive; once they saw each other and started talking to each other they figured out who they were. Once this was resolved, the others followed quickly after; just like once the tab is pulled and the first flap is raised the others follow after. The second conflict that was resolved was that Viola and Orsino could get married because it was revealed that Viola is actually a woman. The third was Olivia and Sebastian getting married because Sebastian looks like Cesario and the fourth conflict that was resolved was Malvolio realizing that it was Maria that wrote the letter and not Olivia. Finally, the large paper is all the marriages and how all the knots smoothed out in the end.

The marriages that are occurring at the end of Act V are Viola and Orsino, Olivia and Sebastian, and Sir Toby and Maria. However, are any of these marriages based on love? Viola loved Orsino, but Orsino never loved Viola. He didn’t know that she was a woman until Act V. He still calls her Cesario and she never changes back into her own clothing at the end of the act. Olivia loved Cesario, but married Sebastian thinking that he was Cesario. Sebastian didn’t know who Olivia was until Act III and he said how great is his luck and then agreed to marry her. Finally, Sir Toby marries Maria because of her clever trick on Malvolio. All of these marriages occurred very casually. Sebastian just accepted that Olivia wanted to marry him without questioning anything, and because they were married and Viola is actually a woman, it feels like Orsino had no other option than to marry Viola, not because he actually loves her. Therefore, I don’t think that any of these characters can be described as actually in love.   

Falling Rings and Modern Romance

         Aziz Ansari pieced together love and marriage in older times versus love and marriage now, in the modern world, and how it has changed.

After interviewing people, he realized some things that were common among them.

1. People got married to people who lived in the same neighborhood or even in the same building. 
2. Women got married at the age of twenty and men got married at the age of twenty-three. Whereas now women are marrying around the age of twenty-seven and men are marrying around the age of twenty-nine.
3. And finally, that most of the older women felt that they were missing a part of their life.

            

            Much like these rings, all these reasons for marriage are connected and linked together. The women felt that they were missing a stage of their life because women were not allowed to leave home and were not allowed to have a lot of freedom. They would get married to leave the house, but marriage came with more responsibilities, such as having children and taking care of their husband. Which is why they would tell their children and grandchildren to enjoy themselves. Giving rise to a stage in a person’s life called emerging adulthood. A stage in an adult’s life where a person can focus on education, focus on a career and earning money, and finally focus on finding the perfect partner, rather than marry someone who lives close to them just to get a little bit of freedom. This explains why the average age of women and men when they get married is much higher.

      

 

Furthermore, when one ring is released from the top (watch the first thirty seconds of the video to see this) it seems to have a cascading event, which seems to change the order of the rings. This is similar to the effect of modern technology and its effect on love, or the way it continues to change the way young people go about expressing love. According to the survey that Aziz includes in the book, “In 2010 only 10 percent of young adults used texts to ask someone out for the first time, compared with 32 percent in 2013.” This is because more people have smart phones, there are more modes of social networking which has free messaging options, and messaging is quick, easy, and fun. One thing lead to another with technological advancement and the way love is expressed.