0:03 Okay. Hello, year 12. We're going to
0:06 look now at chapter two of book two of
0:09 mouse. Um, we're looking here at Alitz
0:12 time flies. I believe we talked about in
0:14 class the flies and significance that
0:17 they are uh time flies and that they're
0:18 coming from the past. And that's
0:21 revealed further on this page here where
0:23 we can see that the flies which are a
0:26 representation of guilt are emerging up
0:30 out of this pile of dead bodies. So time
0:33 flies is not only alluding to the fact
0:34 that we've actually moved forward in
0:37 time because if we look over here we're
0:42 looking at um a period of time where art
0:44 is reflecting on everything that
0:46 happened in book one. So uh the death of
0:49 his father for example. So time flies
0:52 has multiple meanings there. And notice
0:54 here we've got these horrific images as
0:56 well of the mice burning in the
0:59 furnaces. And it's quite a a
1:02 confrontational and graphic image that
1:04 we're seeing. And it's definitely called
1:07 here Awitz is compared to Mauitz before
1:10 possibly to remind us that this is real.
1:13 This is a horror that
1:17 happened. All right. So this uh
1:19 narrative is what we call superresent or
1:21 meta narrative. And we can tell this
1:23 because of the strings and the fact that
1:26 he is depicted as in art or Spiegelman
1:29 is depicted as a human who is wearing a
1:32 mouse mask. Okay. So this part of the
1:34 narrative is all about the process of
1:38 creating past of creating mouse sorry.
1:41 So all about the creation of mouse one
1:44 and it's him reflecting on his
1:46 successes. And it's really important to
1:49 note that this triple layered narrative
1:51 wouldn't be possible in any other form.
1:53 We would not have this in traditional
1:55 text. It would be too complicated. So
1:57 having this meta narrative is part of
2:00 the features of the graphic novel. Um we
2:03 can also set that mouse mask is symbolic
2:07 of his struggle to identify with his
2:09 father's story. And we can see this
2:12 further because he compares himself to
2:16 what his father uh went through. So he
2:20 says, "In May 1987, Francois and I are
2:23 expecting a baby. Between May 16, 1944
2:28 and May 24, 1944, over 100,000 Hungarian
2:31 Jews were gassed in Awitz." So maybe
2:34 he's saying that uh Ashwitz is, I guess,
2:36 like a presence or a ghost from the
2:40 past. and his father's story is
2:42 constantly on his mind. And we'll talk
2:44 about father-son relationships in class
2:46 and we can talk about the fact that he
2:51 feels inadequate compared to the deck.
2:54 Um then down the bottom we look here and
2:57 it says at least 15 foreign editions are
2:58 coming out and I've gotten four serious
3:01 offers to turn my book into a TV special
3:03 or movie. So he's referring here to book
3:06 one. So remember we talked about the
3:08 fact it's published initially as weekly
3:10 installments of a comic book series then
3:13 book one then book two and then more
3:15 recently what we've got in front of us
3:18 which is the complete mouse book one and
3:21 two. So he's reflecting on his success
3:24 and he's thinking about the process he's
3:27 undertaken working on the book and how
3:31 he feels about uh creating it. And here
3:33 he says, "Lately, I've been feeling
3:35 depressed." Which is really interesting
3:36 when we connect it with, of course,
3:39 these guilt flies and the fact that he's
3:43 uh art easel is coming up out of a pile
3:46 of dead bodies. So maybe we could say
3:50 that he feels anguish or he feels guilty
3:52 that he's
3:55 um succeeding or that his previous
3:57 success seems to be because others
3:59 suffered before him. like he's
4:02 capitalizing off a Holocaust story um of
4:04 his parents and of other Jews that he
4:06 didn't live to through. So he wonders
4:09 what right he has to tell the story. So
4:12 I guess the question we could say for
4:16 this bottom panel uh is does he have the
4:20 right to tell us something to tell Rita
4:22 something he doesn't experience. We've
4:24 also had people suggest that in the
4:26 background here this is the watchtower
4:29 from Ashwitz. Okay. And that this is the
4:30 light from like the
4:33 watchtowwer shining down. So it's like
4:38 um like Ashwitz is a continued presence.
4:41 Ashwitch is like a ghost from the past
4:43 that is still like watching over him in
4:47 the same way his father uh seems to be a
4:50 presence that he can't escape. So if we
4:54 flick over then we've got this uh panel
4:56 here and we're looking at the reporters.
4:58 Notice they're different
5:01 nationalities here, which is really
5:03 interesting. Uh, so we've got an
5:06 American dog, we've got maybe like a cat
5:08 here, and then another American. And
5:10 they're all interviewing him, and but
5:13 they're still wearing the masks. So
5:17 maybe that suggests that they are merely
5:19 caricaturures of that nationality. I'm
5:21 not entirely sure that we can chat about
5:25 that in class. Uh, but notice how he
5:28 feels while he's being spoken to by the
5:31 reporters. He feels flustered. He feels
5:33 overwhelmed. Uh, we notice here that the
5:35 reporters are literally climbing over
5:37 the piles of dead bodies to get to him.
5:38 So, he feels like he's really
5:41 disrespecting the past at this stage.
5:44 Feels really unsure about what has
5:47 actually happened. All right. And then
5:49 they ask him questions here like, okay,
5:51 let's talk about Israel. So, we know
5:53 that Israel is the Jewish state. So, I
5:55 think he gets confused
5:58 because he's being asked to comment on
6:00 things that he never claims to know
6:02 about because here they say, "If your
6:03 book was about Israeli Jews, what kind
6:05 of animal would you draw?" And he says,
6:08 "I have no idea. Porcupines." So, the
6:11 whole idea that once he uh opens this
6:14 can of worms, he's expected to know
6:16 everything, so to speak. And we can
6:18 notice here too, especially in these
6:20 last few panels, he's still of a normal
6:23 size, but by this point here, he's
6:26 started to shrink. All right, so he's
6:30 feeling very overwhelmed, very guilty.
6:32 All right, and at this point, he says,
6:35 "I want my mommy." So again, the guilt
6:38 of the past. He continues to get
6:40 smaller. All right, in these pages, and
6:43 he doesn't start to grow again until he
6:46 meets Pavll. Look here, he's climbing
6:49 onto um his chair. He talks about his
6:52 father being a ghost hanging over him.
6:54 So again, he can't escape uh the
6:56 traumatic legacy of his parents'
6:58 Holocaust story. Even though him and
7:00 France have moved on with their lives,
7:03 but then we come to this uh part with
7:06 Paval. So he says, "Paval is my shrink.
7:08 He sees patients at night. He's a Czech
7:11 Jewish survivor of Awitz. I see him once
7:14 a week. He's placed over on stray cats
7:15 and dogs." We've talked about this scene
7:17 here where it says, "Can I mention this
7:18 or does it completely last up my
7:20 metaphor?" So, this is Spiegelman kind
7:22 of poking fun at himself and saying that
7:24 the metaphor is not rigid, of course,
7:26 because he stuffs it up if he says the
7:28 psychiatrist who's a cat has stray cats and
7:29 and
7:32 dogs. So, he feels weighed down when he
7:36 begins to visit uh his psychiatrist,
7:38 Pavll. He feels belittled by like the
7:40 gravity and the guilt pressing on him of
7:44 his father's experiences and he also
7:48 feels deprived of the boyhood that he
7:51 feels he deserved all right with his
7:55 father. Uh he feels like somehow he
7:59 feels like things aren't right. Okay.
8:02 But as he talks to Pavvel, he goes from
8:04 shrinking as seen here because he's
8:05 trying to climb onto the chair to
8:09 beginning to grow again. Um, and then
8:10 here he's taking the Mickey out of
8:12 himself again where he says frame photo
8:15 of a pet cat.
8:28 page. He um his size has diminished a
8:30 little bit again and it might be because
8:34 he's talking about uh the arguments he
8:36 had with his father and we will write on
8:38 this whole idea of a fractured
8:40 father-son relationship about why they
8:43 can't get along and he can't he feels
8:45 like at times all he represents are the
8:49 negatives of Fleck when he says here
8:51 mainly I remember arguing with him and
8:53 being told that I couldn't do anything
8:56 as well as he could Um, and then we've
8:58 got this really famous quote here and he
9:00 says, "No matter what I accomplish, it
9:02 doesn't seem like much compared to
9:05 surviving Awitz." I think that's really
9:08 important. He feels Arty feels Spigman
9:11 feels inadequate. He feels like no
9:13 matter what he achieves, his father
9:16 survived the Holocaust. So nothing he
9:18 does will ever live up to that. All
9:21 right. So that's really important. It's
9:23 the basis of a lot of essays. It's the
9:24 basis of a lot of our discussion. in
9:26 this quote, "No matter what I
9:28 accomplish, it doesn't feel like much
9:30 compared to surviving outwards." So, he
9:33 is riddled by the guilt of having had an
9:35 easier life than his father. All right?
9:38 And Val tries to talk him around it sort
9:41 of thing. He tries to say, "Maybe your
9:44 father was guilty. Um, he took the guilt
9:47 out on you where it was safe." Uh, etc.
9:49 So, it's like this residual guilt that's
10:03 right. Um, Paval asks him if he admires
10:06 his father uh for surviving and he gives
10:08 a really unclear answer. He talks about
10:10 his father being resourceful and
10:13 everything. Um, but he doesn't
10:16 necessarily say. And then Pavll says,
10:18 "You think it's admirable to survive?
10:21 Does that mean it's not admirable to not
10:23 survive?" and he gets quite confused
10:25 here and Paval tries to point out to him
10:28 that it's not really clear.
10:32 Okay, it's not really a clearcut issue.
10:34 It's not something that we can just
10:43 We've also got the uh framed photo again
10:45 of a pet dog in the background which is
10:47 quite interesting whether he's
10:50 deliberately trying to uh louse up his
10:53 own metaphor. This is a really good
10:56 quote here too in the top where the uh
10:58 cursor is where it just says what awitz
11:01 felt like. Hm. How can I explain boo? I
11:04 think that's really good because it
11:07 tries to explain to Arty that it's
11:08 really hard to understand. It's a great
11:10 quote that you can use in some of your
11:12 essays, too, when you're talking about
11:15 guilt and Arty's attempt to try and
11:17 understand and the fact that he always
11:19 feels like he's not good enough or not
11:21 doing a good enough job.
11:22 job.
11:25 Okay. And then down the very bottom of
11:27 the page, notice that he says that these
11:29 sessions with Paval somehow made me feel
11:32 better. And we see the growth here. He
11:36 comes back to normal size. Uh, however,
11:38 as soon as he's back at his easel and
11:40 listening to his father's tapes here,
11:42 cuz here we are back to his father's
11:44 tapes. This is what he's listening to.
11:46 Notice the capitalization.
11:52 Um, this is when he starts to feel
11:54 inadequate again. It's like his father's
11:56 ghost is a presence over him again.
11:59 Notice the circular motif, the fact he's
12:01 almost in a spotlight and it's them
12:18 pages. I want to look at this page just here
12:20 here
12:23 um where we've got this diagram. So the
12:25 diagrams and stories that are placed in
12:27 the book remind us that what is
12:31 happening is real. So this uh diagram of
12:35 the camps that uh VC has drawn, it
12:38 symbolizes the true horror and it's it's
12:40 Beagleman's way of trying to convey to
12:43 the reader the actual reality of the
12:46 situation and how um this happened and
12:50 how does all the truth so to speak or
13:01 We've just got uh more of this
13:05 historical narrative here um where he's
13:07 gone back and he's listening to his
13:09 father's tapes. Then we've got a really
13:12 interesting passage, couple of passages
13:16 just up the top here with the orchestra.
13:18 So the orchestra is actually being
13:20 blotted out by the people because they
13:23 argued about whether there was an
13:24 orchestra. So he says, "I just heard
13:26 about the camp orchestra that played as
13:28 you marched out the gate." And Liddette
13:29 says, "An
13:33 orchestra?" And he says, "No, I remember
13:36 marching not any orchestras." And Arty
13:38 says, "I don't know, but it's still very
13:41 well documented." And then VC, "No, at
13:43 the gate, I heard only guards shouting."
13:45 Okay. So, he has to somehow try and
13:47 visually represent this tension. How can
13:49 you represent this? So, he does it by
13:51 having the orchestra kind of fade into
13:54 the background that they're still there,
13:56 but that maybe the uh prisoners don't
13:58 notice. So, as they're marching, it just
14:01 sort of happens and they just sort of
14:06 blend into the background, so to speak.
14:09 On the next page passage I want to focus
14:12 on. Sorry I zoomed out too much there is
14:16 when the past turns into the present. So
14:17 this is a great passage to note as well.
14:21 It's page 218 in your books. Okay if you
14:23 got the same version as me remembering
14:27 the digital copy numbers are different.
14:30 Um so we've got this little section just
14:35 here. Okay. where um Leiddc is actually
14:37 trying to explain something to Arty and
14:39 he's does doing it in like modernday New
14:42 York and it's the whole face left face
14:45 right and he's talking about the whole
14:47 process of selection in front of the uh
14:51 notorious or infamous Dr. and Gali. And
14:53 so we can see that
14:58 uh this is happening that Vak is doing
