Article, Related to Your Paper 2 Topic
"The temporal dimensions of Vladek's story, the innermost narrative, are relatively easy to identify.... (Easy despite Vladek's own problematic experience of ordering a seemingly fractured and unstable sense of temporality during the Holocaust, which then has consequences for his subsequent memory of time. As he says, 'In Auschwitz we didn't wear watches' [II])."
~"No Time Like the Present: Narrative and Time in Art Spiegelman's Maus" by Erin McGlothlin, page 184
This article focuses on the importance of the different time frames in Maus. It covers all different angles--such as the artwork, capital vs. lowercase letters, and Spiegelman's way of dealing with everything. I thought the above quote was interesting because it seems to explain one of the reasons for the blurred lines when it comes to time. When Vladek was in the concentration camps, he had no way of telling time. Time would have blurred together for him. Time is blurred a lot throughout the two books. Maybe this was one way of getting that sense of timelessness across.
Comments (2)
The blurriness of time, for me anyway, meant that there was just eternity. The prisoners thought that they would be in Auschwitz forever. Time ceased to exist. When you are suffering, time seems to go slower and slower until it just stops. I had to use a crude example, but here it goes:
my junior year in high school, I had saturday school, or "super-detention" if you will. It was 5 hours, from 8-1. I kept looking at the clock, The hands did not seem to move.When you want time to speed up, it slows down.
Posted by Daniella Choynowski | November 15, 2007 10:46 AM
Posted on November 15, 2007 10:46
Maybe it is blurred because time means nothing. Because the events still haunts Vladek as if it happened to him yesterday. It is only a tool to show that he still remembers the event.
Posted by Kevin "Kelo The Great" Hinton | November 15, 2007 1:55 PM
Posted on November 15, 2007 13:55