One thing that I noticed about Art Spiegelman’s comic pages about 9-11 and post 9-11 America was that he constantly changed the way his character was represented. I mean, in one section of the graphic novel he was a scruffy, scraggly looking guy and then the next thing you know he is a mouse! Although after looking at the historic strips I understand where he got the inspiration for his third character representation in “Marital Blitz” since the main character is fairly similar o the main character in “Bringing Up Father” (Plate VII.) At that point he appears to have chosen to represent himself in that particular way because it fit the mood and allowed him to over dramatize a little (much in the same way movies occasionally flip to black and white reels mocking the overly perfect Cleaver type family.) I still don’t quite understand the symbolism behind occasionally representing himself as a mouse though. I think it has something to do with fear (the kind driven by hysteria) but I can’t quite figure it out past that. Perhaps it has something to do with his graphic novel Mouse that I have heard some talk about in class. All I know is that his strip entitled “Weapons of Mass Displacement” is probably the biggest clue behind his reasonings since he starts out with his usual human character but as emotions become more heated the comic strip becomes more chaotic until the last box depicts the main character as a mouse (or a human with a mouse head to be more exact.) Now if I could just figure out the clue I would be set.
If anyone has a clue why, please fill me in!
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Hi Alison. I enjoyed your post, and I think you're right--Art Spiegelman creates some very confused/confusing characters. The mouse symbolism, however, actually is linked to his Jewish identity and to his last graphic novel, Maus. In Maus, the mice represent the Jewish people and the cats represent--you guessed it, the Nazis. It was an effective way of portraying the horrors of the Holocaust, but it's inclusion in In the Shadow of No Towers would be rather confusing without the referent!
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