Sprinkles Look like Lines, Too

It's no secret that lines and stripes play a constant role throughout both book one and book two of Art Spiegelman's Maus, with the most obvious giveaway in the holocaust's prisoner attire of blue and white stripes, which became more popularly known after the book and movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. However, we see lines continuously among Speigelman's sketches. Among the walls and furniture of the post-holocaust scenes also continuously shows the motif of lines. Thus, it seems that the lines and stripes symbolize more than just the status of a current prisoner of war. The furniture and walls can be interpreted that Vladek never truly escapes the war. He is forever enclosed in a prison until his death, where even in the last scene he is surrounded by a constant pattern of stripes among his death bed. Two scenes above it is one of a few rare scenes where stripes do not have much significance in the block, showing how only in times of pure joy can the holocaust be pushed away. However, this only lasts a mere few moments, as obviously the stripes returns. Vladek, unfortunately, takes the haunting of his stripes to his grave. 

A (donut)Hole in Maus

I found myself continuously surprised as I was reading the first two chapters. For example,

On “we weren’t close” on page 11: 

Without the caption, I would assume Art and his father are the best of friends. Both of their expressions are of such happiness and their arms are all open for an embrace. It’s not only that Art’s father says that “[he] was worried”, but more so that he was willing to say it. Not only does he sound like a caring father that has a strong relationship with his son, but the fact that he was willing to admit anything that “goes against” the pride of a man means a lot. When I studied the art after reading the text, it was hard for me to put them together in my head.

This got me thinking: Is art ever really telling from experience? It’s obvious that his illustrations and secondhand storytelling is not a direct source from the author himself. He is telling a story of a story—there is always room for error in this equation. However, even in the scenes where Art is in conversation with his father, the illustrations are not a direct translation from his memories. Art illustrates the scenes from an omniscient viewpoint. In reality, Art can only see so much of the room, his father, and barely anything of himself. Art is inferring his own expressions, and probably many of the intermediate actions of his father which don’t hold much significance in real life but could probably be analyzed down to the core in an 11 AP class. Art was probably busy jotting down notes while his father was telling his story while counting his pills or biking. We must remember while reading this novel that the text is told in first person, but the illustrations are not. 

A Sweet-tooth For Complexity

School is weird—five out of seven days of the week, toddlers, children, and teenagers alike all go to school to eat the weird food and learn the weird material. In art/photography class, the teacher tells her students to paint a landscape or take a photograph so vivid that it tells a story. After working through blood, sweat, and tears, the same students pack their bags and shuffle along to English class, where the teacher tells the same students to write a story so incredibly vivid that it paints a picture or captures an image in the heads of the reader. It’s humorous how the subjects that we learn all involve something that they are not, and in this way, they are beautifully poetic or engagingly complex. Art involves storytelling, English involves painting, mathematics involves letters…the list goes on.

Now when one tries to combine these abstract complexities into a more logical way of understanding, perhaps…oh, I don’t know, a graphic novel (?!?!?!?!?)…it is considered childish or “not real literature”. Simply because graphic novels usually involve easier understanding does not correlate to a noncomplex idea or expression, as many may seem to believe. After all, we are all addicted in some way to the idea of a hidden meaning. So, the words tell a story, but they also paint a picture. The pictures capture the image, but they also tell a story of their own. It seems to me that graphic novels do twice the damage, but all in one blow. 

DoughnutzZzzzzZzzzzzz

The American education system is my life—five out of the seven days of the week I am in school from 7 AM to 2 PM or later.

It’s funny how the American education system is also the death of me.

I learned in seventh grade health class (a required course might I add) that teenagers need eight to ten hours of sleep a night, as they are in their prime time of growth. However, the National Sleep foundation reports that only 15% of teens get at least 8.5 hours of sleep per night. Colleges want kids that do everything. They look for someone who can take heavy courses in school, then juggle extracurricular programs after school including clubs, sports, community service, competitions, and a social life to make connections.  However, this is obviously too wordy for the millions of letters and emails colleges send out every day so instead they euphemize it to “time management.”

Time management is no longer a term of how quickly you can finish your activities because there are just some events in scheduling that the student cannot control. However, teens are able to manipulate their sleep schedules, so time management is just “who can function the best on the littlest amount of sleep?”

A lot of homework tonight? Sports right after school, and band concert in the evening? No problem, we can just sleep tomorrow during class and pull an all-nighter tonight.

This is the mind of the youth nowadays. But it’s okay, the bags under my eyes are designer. 

Makin' Some Dough $$$

Laura Brown is the second example of an individual who has achieved the American Dream but is ultimately unhappy. First is Gatsby, who has the companion of his wealth, but not the intimacy of companions. Laura, on the other hand, is not blessed with riches like Gatsby, but she does have a family including a child and a loving husband. One would think that she is the epitome of a comfortable woman of middle class suburbia. However, this is all but true, as she contemplates suicide and ends up running from her family and starting a new life on her own. This makes me question what “success” truly means. Some people say that success is when you’ve reached the top of the economy and can buy anything you can dream of. Other people conclude that all you need is the love and support of family and friends. Laura had one and Gatsby had the other, yet neither of them felt successful. Society gave us two different definitions of success, but I’ve come to realize that neither are true. Every being is programmed with different needs, so who are we to define success for someone else? To be happy is to be successful—whether it is money or love or donuts…it’s really not up to society to generalize.

(dough)Nuts

“The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wallpaper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out on his feet, looking at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees…warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wings of a bird…her sentence bubbled away…like a contented tap left running.” (144)

During the brief moment when Septimus sees only the products of reality, Septimus takes notice of the dancing of the sunlight in the room. Sunlight is usually something that most people take for granted—we see and feel its effects but don’t think twice about it until the room is dark and cold again for the night. After not being able to see the purity of ubiquitous sunlight through the haze of his hallucinations, even the simplest things are able to content his battered soul.

Septimus is a character that brings new light (ha-pun) to the book. Unlike other cliché characters from other novels who have a hard time dealing with reality, Septimus has a hard time finding reality again. His comfort in anything “so real…so substantial”, even something as simple as Mrs. Peters’ hat and the warmth of the sun’s rays is a sense of comfort to him. Because Septimus lives in the limbo between reality and his hallucinations, he constantly feels trapped between the two. Bradshaw proposes to place him in an institution where now he is not only mentally trapped but physically too. At the time, “the air buffets the cheek like the wings of a bird.” The bird parallels Septimus, who is able to fly freely for just a short period of time, similar to how Septimus was lucid for even just a a brief period.

No One Wants a P(l)ain Donut...

“’Beautiful!’ She would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste (Rezia liked ices, chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him.” (87)

This short and simple passage is a complete depiction of Septimus’ perception of his life. Dr. Holmes is only able to understand the transparency of the glass—he can see the things that Rezia finds beautiful, he can eat the “ices, chocolates, sweet things” that Rezia likes, but there will always be something that stops Septimus from perceiving this beauty and from tasting the ices, chocolates, and sweet things. Rezia fell in love with the Septimus of who she thought was gentle and sweet (like ices, chocolates…). However, just like the sweets that graze his taste buds with no effect, Septimus’ marriage with Rezia “had no relish to him”.

 With this passage, I found a parallel between Mrs. Dalloway and “The Death of a Moth”.

“Watching him, it seemed as if a fiber, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.” (The Death of a Moth, 2)

In both of these passages, Woolf uses pane as a pun. Both the pane of glass isolating Septimus and the windowpane trapping the Moth can also be interpreted as the sources of their pain. The transparency taunts them with a life they cannot have. Rezia, Dr. Holmes, and Sir Bradshaw are all ignorant to this barrier between Septimus and his existence.