Humor In Art Spiegelman's Maus

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Throughout Maus, Spiegelman uses a variety of humorous moments to put a sense of happiness into something so bitter, like the holocaust. Spiegelmen appeals to the audiences pathos while using these humorous moments that have happened; although, some may be funny in a dark and twisted way. Throughout the story, Vladek tells Artie his story and the hardships his family had to endure to have a hope of surviving the catastrophe. To lighten this tension, the book Artie uses writes many humorous moments, from him talking to Mala about Vladek fitting a racist stereotype to Vladek talking about the time cake was made out of laundry soap, and fed to the starving Jews, and the contrast between comic relief and a devastation are truly needed in this story.…show more content…
Only 75 zloty a slice…. But the whole ghetto got sick later you can’t imagine…. Some of the flour Pesach found – it wasn’t really flour, only laundry soap, what he put in the cake by mistake… we were, all of us, sick like dogs,” ( Spiegelmen119). Spiegelmen uses this moment to show to his audience that, although the Jews were put into a ghetto and even though how hungry and how miserable they were, Vladek was still able to laugh about the mix up his friend had made in the cooking ingredients. Spiegelmen then goes on to describe how Pesach scammed people out of either…show more content…
Someday you’ll be famous, like… what’s-his-name...Huh? “Famous like what’s-his-name?!”… You know… the big hot cartoonist…. What cartoonist could YOU know...? Walt Disney??.... part of the Yah! Walt Disney,” (Spiegelmen133). Although this has no correlation with the Holocaust, Spiegelmen uses this in his book to emphasize the clash of the older and newer generation, and also the fact that Vladek actually knows the name of cartoonist, the job Artie picked so he wouldn’t have to deal with Vladek’s nagging. Artie takes a break from a more serious panels of the holocaust to share a laugh of his father’s lack of knowledge in this field of

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