A Guess on Speilman's Purpose

     I couldn’t help but wonder why Art Speigelman incorporated this set of panels into the book. I know it has some sort of significance and I feel that by bringing a sense of the real world into his writing it would be very effective for the comic. But what is the unique quality that it brings to the comic?

     Speigleman makes many motifs apparent in the chapter, Time Flies. The motif of animal masks is a demonstration of the phony sense of empathy he feels from the men interviewing him. All they want to do is make money off his story, but Art feels guilty. He does not want his story to blame one person or be used as this extreme weapon, instead he intends for it to provide insight onto what happened during the war. Although his story is portrayed in a comic and may inaccurately represent the Holocaust to some people, it also adds to the theme of something being superficial. You can’t put the Holocaust into words and one person’s experience can be extremely different than another’s; so, you will never know what is real.

     The motif of flies throughout this chapter represent little memories from the past that he cannot escape from and he is being tortured with them around. The flies are attracted to the pile of dead bodies that lay under him which can symbolize how he still carries around the guilt of these people because he is keeping them “alive” with his story. No matter where Art goes the flies and dead bodies will always remain a part of life. The dead bodies still appear to be mice, and this contrasts with dates of his relative’s deaths, Speigelman includes. He can never fully comprehend what happened because one can’t explain how something that horrific happens to real people.