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.