White Vs. Epileptic

What is the significance of Jean-Christophe's hunger for power?

Epileptic is the story of a boy dealing with his older brother's sickness, which is epilepsy. Although we see Pierre ( the author and main character) and his struggles, we also see the struggles of his brother Jean-Christophe as he copes with his disease. It's tragic for Jean-Christophe mainly because he sees it as a weakness. He fantasizes about power by imagining himself to be Hitler and leader of the Nazi army. Jean-Christophe is by no means anti-semetic, he just uses it as an escape from his reality that he sees as weakness. David B. plays with the pictures by overemphasizing the leader. Jean-Christophe ( assuming it is him) is seen in all pictures as the center or twice the size. In Egyptian pictures, it is noted that people of power are pictured significantly larger than the servants to depict their power. David salutes Egyptian mythology by placing Anubis, the Egytian God of the death realm, in the comic.

What is the significance of of Daved B's depiction of Jean-Christophe's fantasy.

Hayden White says this about humanity

"Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling"

David B uses the illustration to tell what he knows about his brother: Jean-Christophe despises weakness. We get a glimpse of the present in the beginning of the book as we see Jean-Christophe as bloated, scarred, and slightly disfigured. Through out the book Jean-Christophe leads a destructive and fantasy filled lifestyle. At one point David B., in the form of Pierre, tells Jean-Christophe that he has become more careless; this is after Jean-Christophe walks in front of a car. It seems as if Jean-Christophe trys to fight hard and deny his reality but deep down knows it's inevitable and that he will have to face it. The Jean-Christophe of current day we see is the one who accepts his destiny. Just like Hayden says, David B uses this narration to tell us Jean-Christophe's struggle to cope and accept his fate

V for Vendetta

What is the significance of V's mask in V for Vendetta?

In V for Vendetta, the protagonist is wearing a Guy Fawkes mask; the mask, for the most part is generic with no significant facial features other than a smile and mustache and beard. But why did Alan Moore choose a Guy Fawkes mask for the main character?

In order for us readers to relate to V, we must first understand the significance of the Guy Fawkes mask. Guy Fawkes was a man who attempted to destroy the Parliament building in England as a way to strike out against the Protestant church. Now fast forward into the Alternate universe of V for Vendetta. V's mask is his symbol of rebellion against the oppressive totalitarian government. The reasoning for V's mask is so he can conceal his identity.

There is more to the mask however. We readers want to relate to V because we would like to think that we ourselves have the courage and motivation to do what V does. In McCloud's book, he states that our species is a selfish one, plugging away our own likeness into things that really have no meaning. Behind V's mask is a face that we never see; we as readers would like to think that the face behind the mask could be our very own. V's mask is recognizeable mainly by his actions and reading from an outside view, us readers tend to sway with V, no matter how terroristic his acts can be.

But what is the significance of V's hidden identity?

Although we learn little about V, we learn enough to determine that he is a legitimate character in the story. However, he is mysterious to the point where we can see ourselves in V. Would we do what V does? Would we have the strength to do the things he did? Although we see an overview of both sides and see how corrupt the government is; if we were civilians in England in the comic book, who knows what kind of character we would be.

Maus and the cartoonish feel

Art Spiegelman's Maus is a captivating tale about a survivor's efforts during the Holocaust. The story is more than just a survivor's tale, but it also paints a picture of the strained relationship between the survivor and his son(whom is Art Spiegelman himself). One may ask however, what is the significance of Spiegelman's cartoonish style of drawing? Spiegelman's art and style appearance is a more cartoonish format whereas the characters are animals (Jewish people are mice, Germans are cats etc. . .) I meditated on Art Spiegelman's reasoning for using animals as his way to depict characters. I have a hypothesis that wasn't brought up in class that I would like to share.

Spiegelman wants to play with our emotions and distort our sensory ques.

In the movie A Clockwork Orange, Director Stanley Kubrick plays with our sensory ques. He recognizes that we as society repsond to ques in media. When there is sad music, we automatically recognize a scene in a movie to be sad and depressing. Kubrick uses this against us by playing upbeat music to scenes of depravity and horror.

My first thought when reading Maus was "What if Spiegelman was trying to do the same thing?" The Holocaust was dreadful and a downright abomination. The horrors endured during that time were unspeakable and for that period of time, hell was on earth. We recognize the whole cat and mouse schema from our childhood. It's a popular theme in cartoons. One cartoon in general is Tom and Jerry. We as children watched it for pure entertainment, while the cartoon Tom and Jerry didn't have any subtle social commentary. Now, take that cartoon and imagine the character Tom wearing a Nazi officer uniform while poking a bayonet in the back of an emaciated Jerry dressed in Jewish Holocaust work clothes. It loses it's innocence, however we still recognize the cartoon characters as Tom and Jerry so our sensory ques become confused as to what to think of the sight.

Spiegelman possibly could have wanted to skew our visual ques in a sense that while reading the comic we just imagine these things happening to mice yet when reality hits us, we realize that it's an actual occurance in our history.

In relation to Hayden White's writing Spiegelman in a sense takes the form of a historian. In White's writing, he says that historians do not have to report the facts in a fancy narrative, they can be as bland as a bowl of white rice; their job is to file the reports and thats it. However, that is not to say that they can't recapture history in a narrative manner. Spiegelman simply prefers to narrate that particular moment in history, and such a personal one too.

-Chuck Hill- (^_^)