The assignment was: Read Maus I and II . You paper should be 3-5 pages in length. Give specific examples. Cite page numbers for all examples. Clearly indicate which questions you are answering. The assignment is worth a total of 20 points. Answer the following questions:

The items in bold were the most important points to have identified.

All examples had to have page citations to get credit.

1. What are the 3 main concepts/issues concerning anti-Semitism and survival presented in the book as a whole? (3 pts)

The three main concepts concerning anti-Semitism expressed throughout Maus are: stereotyping, scapegoating, and dehumanization.*

collective guilt and middle man minority were also accepted as a possible choices.

2. What animals were used to illustrate different groups? (1 pt.)

The animals used to illustrate the different groups are: Jews=mice, Germans=cats, Poles= pigs, Americans=dogs, French=frogs, Swedes= reindeer, Gypsies=moths, British =Fish, Hungarian = hedgehog.

3. What are the Nazi attitudes towards and prejudices of Jews expressed in Maus? (2 points)

The Attitudes and Prejudices shown in the book were the following: Jews are vermin (p. 4), worthless (p. 56), lazy (p. 52), responsible for the war (WWI and WWII) (p.51)or any hardships, Jews are rich (p.51), always have gold (p. 51, 156), Jews are always ready to do business.(p. 51)

4. What are the Nazi actions regarding the Jews illustrated in Maus? (6 pts)

The Nazi's did many things to the Jews including: a) pogroms (p. 65, 80), b) labor camps (p. 55-59), c) forced removal of personal goods (p. 79), d) movement of families into the ghetto (p. 85, 105), e) wearing of star for identification (p. 83, II 33), f) curfew (p. 82), g) limited rations (p. 75), h) no jobs (p 89), i) random hangings to inhibit dissent (p 83), j) rewards to others who turn in Jews (p 82), k) removal of Jews from small towns (p. 33, 82), l) breaking up of families (p.. 86), separation from children (p.108), m) forced registration (88, 90), n) gas chambers (p. 87, 116, II p. 26-27, 70-72), o) passports stamped with a J (p 50), p) forced work for Germans (p 106), q) Germans take over Jewish businesses (p. 33, 76, 77, 78), r) massacres of people (p 61, 109, 112, 124, II 108), s) teach children to fear Jews (p 149), t) tattooed numbers in camps (II p. 26), u) pretend Jews were escaping so they could shoot them (II p. 35), v) brutality of the kapo and guards (II p. 53, 57, 63), w) hospitals for selecting those to die (II p. 58), x) burning alive Jews in mass graves (II p. 82), y) forced march to evacuate the camps (II p. 82), z) trains packed with Jews, no food, water, till they died (II p. 86-87).

Twenty-six examples were possible choices to answer this question.

5. In trying to survive, what were some of the choices Vladek and others made? (3 pts)

Choices made by the Jews included: a) pretend not to be Jewish (p. 64, 125, 136-140, 149, 152), b) deal on the black market (p. 77), c) pretend to be ill to avoid draft (p 46). d) move from job to job to earn money or retain registration to stay with family ·p. 186), e) Jewish police -sacrificing a few to save others (p 87, 106), f) send children away to safety (p. 82, 107), g) bribing Germans to disobey rules (p 63, 78, 79 II 83), h) giving up family and friends to the Germans (p. 87) i) separation from family (p. 89, 91). j) hiding relatives and friends (78, 86, 107, 110, 121, 124, 147) k) informing on others (113), l) suicide and murder to prevent going to camps (p. 109), m) teach English to Polish kapo (II p. 31) n) smuggle food and make deals (II p. 48) o) join resistance (II p 79), p) self-inflicted wounds (II p. 92)

Sixteen examples were possible choices to answer this question.

6. How does Artie depict the relationship between the Poles and the Jews? (1 pt.)

Poles and Jews as groups are sometimes allies, sometimes competitors and sometimes friends or rivals. He depicts the relationship as ambiguous having both positive and negative aspects. It is complex and reflects different personal relationships and fears: 1) Some Poles hide Jews for money (II 13, 28, 142), 2) some betray Jews (II p. 150), 3) some adopt Nazi attitudes (I p. 149), 4) priest offers sympathy and hope in camp (II p. 28), 5) Kapo in camp II p. 30), 6) Poles killed Jews who returned to claim their property after the war (II p. 133).

7. What problems does Artie have in telling his father's story? (2 pts.)

Artie has many concerns over how to tell the story some are about the process of depiction (how to turn his father's words into images), some are concerns of the content (accuracy, chronology) and some are personal problems as a result of taking on the task: Fear of presenting father inaccurately, as a stereotype (p. 131), anger at his father for destroying his mother's diaries (p. 159), dealing with his dead brother (II p. 15-16, II 136), guilt about having an easier life than his parents (II p. 16), guilt over success of earlier chapters (II p. 41-43), presenting his father's prejudice against blacks (II p. 98-99), chronological order, accuracy in presenting the Holocaust and the camps (II p. 46).*

8. What impact did this experience have on Vladek? (2 pts.)

He is changed by his experience to become the stereotype of a Jew: 1) miserliness- something for nothing - bingo, careful counting of things: money pills, goods deals extreme thrift, returning partly used packages,(II p. 22, 36, 78, 89, 102, 127) 2) distrustful -fear someone would take his money (I 67, 134, II p.69, 99) or who would steal from him: the black hitchhiker (II p. 93), 3) fearful - of wasting and doing without of experiencing the Holocaust again (II 74, I 93, 116, 127, 130, II 20). 4) Less religious - in beginning of Maus I Valadek is religious and participates in religious activities (p. 54, 57) by the end of the book there is no mention of religious observance 5) proud of his survival as proof of his abilities to do things better than anyone else.

At the beginning of the story, we see a happy, self confident man who enjoys dancing and dining and family. A man who sees a bright future ahead of him in his marriage and work. At the end of the story we see a man who is mistrustful of anyone other than his family, who is fearful of doing without even though he is rich, who enjoys very little, neither dancing nor dining nor friends. He has not left the camps mentally. His whole life is still focused on surviving not on living.

*In his lecture at UCSB on November 23, 1997 Art Speigelman specifically answered these questions. He said that his main interest in telling the story was to illustrate dehumanization and stereotyping and their impact and that his biggest problem in telling the story was his concern for accuracy. He said he repeatedly struggled with the difficulty of telling this tale in drawings. This was the main topic of the lecture.

COMMON ERRORS IN ANSWERS

1. Answer the question asked. If it asks about choices then only select as examples things that people had a choice about. If the question was: "What are .....?" Then your answer must indicate those things. A discussion of the items was not asked for.

2. Insufficient data provided. Be thorough!!!. Answer the questions with as many documented (cited) examples as you can identity. This is important because it is what the assignment is about. Can you translate Speigelman's pictures into data you can analyze? The point value of the question should give you an idea of the information needed to get full credit for it. Many of you put more effort into answering 1 point questions than you did in answering the 6 point question.

3. Lack of citation. You must back up all statements about the book, all examples with page citations so that someone can argue your point or offer other ways of understanding the example you provide. If you can't find it in the book, you can't discuss it.

4. Prejudice/discrimination. Thoughts/actions. You must be able to distinguish between the two concepts. They are not the same thing. If we are trying to identify prejudices before they become discrimination we must be able to find them. You must also be able to distinguish between feelings and prejudices and attitudes. Hatred is an emotion not a prejudice. You can have a negative attitude without expressing any particular prejudiced views of the group. Fear and hatred are important factors in intergroup relations but they are not attitudes or prejudices. They are emotions.

5. Adding things that aren't in the book. Be accurate. Don't say Speigelman shows something when he doesn't. You may know more about the topic than he is including. Don't say its there when it isn't. Speigelman doesn't say anything about Christianity anywhere in the book. He doesn't mention Hitler by name. He doesn't express any opinion about him or Nazi ideology.

6. Providing interpretations where none are asked for. In the sciences we are trying to be objective and discussing facts. Feelings, opinions and guesses have no place here. Of course you have feelings, but we are analyzing events not your feelings. You must be able to keep them out of what you report or your science is biased.

7. "blame the victim" One of the things I noticed in many of your answers is a sense that if everyone only made the right choices, like Vladek, they would have survived. Be careful of this kind of thinking. We know what Vladek says he did. Other people did these things too. Many of them did not survive. Vladek's actions did not guarantee his survival. He had no more information about what would be a good choice and prove successful than anyone else. His fate was just as random as everyone else. People did not survive or die because they were good or bad, wise or foolish, astute or dense. The Holocaust did not choose between good and bad people. It did not make them better people than they were before. Do not blame the Jews for their lack of survival of an attempt to exterminate them.

8. Grammar. Capitalization. Think about it. When you use a capital letter to denote one group (this is the correct way, in English all proper nouns are capitalized), and then use a lower case letter to denote another you are unconsciously demoting them whether you intend to or not. When you do not capitalize at all, you are not only writing English poorly, you are also denigrating the groups you are writing about. If you use "i" instead of "I" you are deliberately choosing to not follow convention and de-emphasize yourself. "who" or "that". Who is only used for people. That can be used for people (sometimes) and things. When you consistently choose "that" are you saying that people are dehumanized to things in your mind?

The Logic Behind the Assignment

Some of you made the observation that the book illustrated Kitano's theory. That the prejudices shown were followed by bigotry, then discrimination, then segregation in ghettos, the camps and then genocide the gas chambers. It is important that you can isolate the answers in question 3 and 4 so you can see the pattern that emerges. As Speigelman is telling the story through flashback and not always in chronological order, by isolating the data we can see the pattern. This is the way social science research works. You identify the data and then you can find patterns if they exist. You can also document the existence of the pattern by carefully recording the data. If you don't do this it is harder to come to those insights. This assignment is to show you how to do this, it is not just a matter of finding the correct answers to the questions. The data in the books can provide a number of insights but you won't get them if you don't know how to find the data that provides them. Real life is quite complicated, complex and often understanding is hidden in small details. The number of times a specific kind of action is mentioned gives you a clue as to what kinds (collective grouping of specifics into generalities, larger categories) of things occured and that these collectively add up to something not seen in the isolation of a specific event. Collectives lead to concepts and patterns lead to theories.

We have been talking about not only theory and ideology, which the unit on the Holocaust provides a good opportunity to analyze but also about data collection and the issues around getting good data to analyze. This is the problem Artie faces in trying to tell his father's life. What of his father's story can he present, what should he present and how accurately does his father remember these events? Can he come to an understanding of what his father lived through? At the time Spiegelman began this project (the mid 1950's) he found only 6 books on the Holocaust. So there wasn't much matereial then to help him understand what his father experienced or what actually happened. The Nazi's did the best they could to hide the reality. Now there is much more material available.

email me at: bmori@calpoly.edu

When contacting me, be sure to leave an email address where I can reach you. I am getting many of my responses to your questions returned because the email address is incorrect or insufficient.

Return to Soc 315 or Written Assignment