Maus & Fun Home

            The mood of Maus was, despite the description of the terrible conditions at the prisoner of war camps, mostly comedic. As ridiculous as that sounds, the dialogue between characters was funny. Vladek and Mala sound like a stereotypical Jew, similar to how Jon Stewart would speak when he is trying to accentuate his Jewish background. This is re-enforced when the discussion of money comes up; Vladek complains that Mala is always asking about his will. Understandably the author probably didn’t use these negative stereotypes in a comedic effort, but that became the result to me.

            The mood when Vladek is telling Artie the story, however, is entirely different. As prisoners of war, Vladek was desperate for normal: he wants a comfortable bed to sleep in, food to fill him, and to spend time with his family. All of this had been stripped from him. After several months of inhumane treatment he is finally freed from the camp, but he is not quite home yet. He still must disguise the fact that he is a Jew, even from the Polish. At this point, the idea of normalcy is almost completely out the window; his safety and survival are his top priorities, but going home to see his family is a very close second. The feeling of love and acceptance that comes with being with one’s family is a feeling he longs for, and it almost sounds like heaven when he is trapped in a prisoner’s camp.

            The imagery in the comic has much meaning to it. I noticed that the Jews are all mice, while the Germans are cats and the Polish are pigs. My lack of world history left me troubled to explain why the Polish were pigs, but the Germans and Jews are very obvious – it was like a game of cat and mouse! The mice had no way to defend themselves, they only feared for their lives while the cats mercilessly slaughtered them.

            Fun Home had a similar mood but in a more tragic way; the protagonist wishes he had a true family. He did in some sense, but the father tortured them in such a way that divided the family. By treating the home as the most important part of the family, and not the family itself, the children felt left out and unloved; they were merely an extension to their father’s physical body and nothing more. It became more and more apparent that their father was not happy with how things were. It seemed that he was upset with himself; like he realized how unhealthy his obsession with restoring the home was. I can only assume that is why he killed himself; he probably realized the damage he was causing his family and felt that it was irreversible. It was sad that he felt this way because no damage is truly permanent, but he must have felt so if he thought it was necessary to take his own life. In this fashion the protagonist felt empty; his father was no longer around but he questioned if he ever really was in the first place.