Guidelines for Essay 1

Due: Due dates for the rough draft, workshop days, and final draft are listed on the syllabus.

Format: Double-spaced, Times New Roman 12pt font, Formatted in MLA style for documentation and manuscript format, in-text citation of quotations, and a Works Cited page.

Length: Three precise pages, minimum.

Select an essay prompt for the subject of your essay. Make use of multiple significant moments in the text to provide evidence for your argument. Devote ample time to selecting moments which offer the strongest possible evidence for your position, whether the moment is an image or part of the dialogue. Try to build the connections within the text necessary to fully illustrate your position. These are general topics, from which you can develop your own conclusions, your own driving questions, and your own argument. Remember that you must focus your argument on your own; these prompts provide a general guideline for your own field of inquiry. Rather than simply selecting a wide array of moments in the text to “prove” an argument, you must instead find specific moments which require further analysis.

Essay Prompt 1:

Maus’ narrative focuses on Art Spiegelman’s relationship with his father. What effect does Artie’s narration of Maus have on the text? Specifically, what are his anxieties regarding narrating his father’s memory of the holocaust? How does the text exhibit the tensions between Artie and his father? What effect do these tensions have on the larger narrative? What are the consequences of Artie’s strained relationship with his father for the text at large?

Essay Prompt 2:

In Maus, Art Spiegelman struggles with the concept of survival at any cost; he complicates the heroic ideal of survival and morality. What message, if any, does Maus seem to give the reader regarding the morally reprehensible actions of several of the survivors? How does the text itself reveal the struggle between morality and survival? Does the text break down the concept of morality, through its portrayal of survival?

Essay Prompt 3:

In the first volume of Maus, Art Spiegelman includes a comic written about his mother’s suicide, “Prisoner on the Hell Planet.” Juxtapose the imagery in this comic with the rest of the text. How does Spiegelman’s artistic style in the short comic differ from Maus? What effect do these significant differences have on the reader? What do these differences suggest about Spiegelman’s attempt to narrate his father’s experiences in the holocaust?

Essay Prompt 4:

In Maus, Spiegelman narrates a history of racial genocide. How does Spiegelman’s represent race, in imagery as well as in his father? Does his representation satirize the German’s belief in racial superiority? How does his use of race complicate the reader’s understanding of the narrative?