21 Aug 2014

Spiegelman. ch3. of Maus I, “Prisoner of War”, summary

by Corry Shores
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Art Spiegelman

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, vol.1


Ch.3
Prisoner of War

1.41.1

 

Brief summary:

Vladek was drafted into the Polish army to fight the Germans in 1939. He was captured and lived for a while as a prisoner of war. Being Jewish made this more difficult. Finally he returned home to his family.

 

Summary

 

[Begins in the present] Art says he sees his father Vladek more frequently to interview him about his past during the Holocaust. They are eating dinner with Vladek’s second wife, Mala, and Vladek insists that Art finish everything on his plate. Art tells of the extremes Vladek would go to when Art was a child to force him never to waste food.  After dinner, Vladek begins telling Art about 1939 when he was drafted in the Polish army [cuts to past]. They faced off against the Germans [cuts to present].

1.44 45.5 1

Vladek explains how his father went to great extents to make himself and his children seem unhealthy so they would not be admissible to the army [cuts to past]. For three months before the army examination, Valdek was only allowed three hours of sleep and very little food. Then no food or sleep a couple days before the test, and he had to drink a gallon of coffee. The doctor noticed he was not well, and told him to get better and return in a year [cuts to present]. This older story is set in 1922. Vladek begged his father not to torture him again like that, and he went to the army. Vladek returns now to 1939 when he was facing the Germans [cuts to past]. The officers tell him to shoot, even though he cannot see any targets.

1.47.3 4

[[Note: Even though Vladek is Polish, he is also Jewish, and Spiegelman portrays Jews as mice regardless of their nationality. The contrast is especially interesting in the fame above, because as a member of an army, one would think that national identity would trump religious identity. As we will see, the Germans will care mostly about this religious identity, and thus the different portrayal is justified.]] Vladek begins shooting aimlessly, but he stops, wondering, why should he kill people? Then he saw an enemy disguised as a tree and moving about. After shooting him to the ground, he keeps shooting despite the enemy’s pleas to surrender.

1.48.6

Finally the Germans capture him, and ironically this time he is blamed for having a hot gun.

1.49.1 3

He and other captured Polish soldiers are marched to the German side.

1.49.4 7

The captured men are supposed to help find fallen Germans, and Vladek finds the man he killed. The captured soldiers were then taken somewhere near Nuremberg and forced to give up their valuables. Most soldiers had only 5 or 6 Zlotys, but Vladek had 300. The German officer noticed his soft hands and said Vladek never worked a day in his life [cut to the present then immediately back to the past]. The Germans gave Vladek and three other soldiers the impossible task of cleaning a stable in one hour. They only succeeded in finishing in one and a half hours, and so they got no soup that day [cut to present]. Art is so interested in the story that he has been dropping cigarette ashes on the carpet, which Vladek scolds him for [cut to past]. Vladek and other prisoners of war had to suffer in camps out in the cold.

1.53.1 Nonetheless, they still were able to maintain themselves and some of their customs. [[note how they adapted their ways of life to the new circumstances.]]

1.54.1 2

One day the Germans advertised for workers to come to the front. They would receive better food and housing. Vladek’s friends declined, but he decided to do it.

1.54.7 9

His friends finally went along, and they were sent to a large German factory. They lived more comfortably with better lodging. For the first time many of them must work with their hands, and they were tasked with leveling out hilly areas.

1.56.1

They even supported the older people who struggled to keep up. [[note: here is an instance of working around the constraints of the system.]]

1.56.3 5
[Quick cut to present then right back to past.] One night Vladek had a dream that his grandfather told him he would be free on the day of Parshas Truma (each week on Saturday they read a section from the Torah, and for one week a year is Parshas Truma).

1.57.1 3

[Cut to present then right back to past.] When Parshas Truma came three months later, the Gestapo signed their release documents and Vladek was made free [cut to present then back to past]. Germany divided Poland between Protectorate and Reich. Sosnowiec is in the Reich, but the train went past that region and took them much further away, near Lublin.

1.60.3

The prisoners were then kept in tents. Some Jewish authorities visited and said yesterday 600 other Jewish Polish war prisoners were executed.

1.61.3 5

[Cut to present]. Vladek explains that international laws offered some protection to them as soldiers, but because they were Jews, they could be killed at any time [cut to past]. As a solution, the Jewish authorities bribed the Germans to allow some prisoners to go to the homes of local Jews and be claimed as their family members. A family friend, Orbach, came that night and took Vladek to his home [cut to present then back to past]. To get back home, Vladek would need to take a train, but he would also need legal papers, which he lacked. He got on a train anyway. Trying not to reveal that he was Jewish, he convinced a Polish conductor to let him hide in the train and sneak to Sosnowiec.

1.64.2 6

[[Note this beautiful and powerful depiction of Vladek concealing his Jewish identity, here by wearing a pig mask, since the Poles are drawn as pigs. We can sense the humiliation he must have felt, especially in the last panel above when Vladek peers down at the mask that saved him. These panels are also interesting for our examination of how Jews worked around the oppressive system that constantly threatened their existence. And moreover, it is an instance of where Spiegelman’s choice to use animal forms has extra effect, since changing from one form to another is such a drastic alteration as to be a betrayal of one’s own basic sense of identity. This is reminiscent of Deleuze’s notion of the self as a self-forger. Survival for the Jews in this situation sometimes required making forgeries of themselves.]] Vladek finally arrives home, and learns his mother is sick with cancer [cut to present then right back to past]. His father once had a beard that made him look like a Rabbi, but Germans cut it off. They also took his Seltzer factory. Vladek then travels to reunite with his wife Anja and his young son Richieu.
1.66.5 7
[Cut to present]. Vladek explains that he would be much happier today if his first wife Anja would still be alive,  instead of him living with his second wife Mala. Art objects that he must hear this same thing too often from Vladek. When Art goes to leave, he discovers that Vladek threw out his jacket and gave him instead an oversized coat. [Below I show his coat from the first panel of the chapter then the new jacket at the end of the chapter.]

1.43.1

1.69.7 8



Spielgelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, vol 1. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.





20 Aug 2014

Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Entry Directory


by Corry Shores

 

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

 

[Central Entry Directory]

[Literature, Poetry, and Drama Entry Directory]

[Graphic Literature, entry directory]




Entry Directory for




Art Spiegelman’s Maus




Book 1



Opening Material

Ch.1: The Sheik

Ch.2: The Honeymoon

Ch.3: Prisoner of War

Ch.4: The Noose Tightens

Ch.5: Mouse Holes

Ch.6: Mouse Trap


Book 2

 

Spiegelman. Selections from Maus II

 

 


Spiegelman Interviews about Maus


Transcribed Selections from Art Spiegelman's 1991 Interview about Maus on UWTV


Art Spiegelman, “Why Mice?” in MetaMaus


Transcribed Selections from Art Spiegelman's 2014 Interview with Neil Gaiman




Related to Maus


Selection on Jews as Rats from Hippler’s Der Ewige Jude [The Eternal Jew]

Canetti. Defining Crowds and Packs in his Crowds and Power

Rosen (Alan), “The Language of Survival: English as Metaphor in Art Spiegelman’s Maus”, summary

Kafka, “Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse Folk,” summary

Kafka, “The Great Swimmer” [fragment] summary (with commentary and reproduction)

“Human?? Why Should I Want to Be Human?!?”

 

 

 

My Article on Spiegelman's Maus

 

Shores. The Minor Machinery of Animal Packs: Becoming as Survival in Spiegelman’s Maus



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Graphic Literature, Entry Directory. [Comics, Graphic Novels, Strips, Cartoons, Drawing, Bande dessinée (bd)]



by Corry Shores

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]   

[Literature, Poetry, and Drama Entry Directory]



Entry Directory for


Graphic Literature
[Comics, Graphic Novels, Strips, Cartoons,
Drawing, Bande dessinée (bd)]





Eisner. Will Eisner




Groensteen. Thierry Groensteen   





Hatfield. Charles Hatfield



McCloud. Scott McCloud



Miodrag. Hannah Miodrag



Molotiu's Abstract Comics





Roth. Gil Roth’s Virtual Memories



Shores. Corry Shores
[published papers on graphic literature]






Spiegelman. Art Spiegelman




Studies of Perception with regard to Graphic Literature
[including drawings, cartooning, etc.]


   
.

9 Aug 2014

Priest (P3) One, ‘The One of Parmenides and Plato’, summary

 

by Corry Shores
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Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Logic & Semantics, Entry Directory]
[Graham Priest, entry directory]
[Graham Priest’s One, entry directory]



 

Summary of


Graham Priest


One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness


Preface


P.3 The One of Parmenides and Plato



Brief Summary:
Part 2 will focus on Plato’s solution to the problem of the one and the many by examining Plato’s Parmenides. It will show how the gluon theory can be helpful for interpreting this text and solving the relevant problems.

 


Summary



Part I is concerned with Aristotle’s solution to the problem of the one and the many, and part II focuses on Plato’s solution. (xvii)


The second part examines Plato’s Parmenides to discuss Parmenides’ partless one and Plato’s form of Oneness. Priest’s gluon theory will help provide a coherent interpretation of this obscure text (xvii).


Part II will also discuss applications of gluon theory along with the questions of meaning, truth, intentionality, and mereology raised by this application (xvii).

 

 



Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.

8 Aug 2014

Graham Priest, One, Entry Directory


by Corry Shores

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[Graham Priest, entry directory]



Entry Directory for

 

Graham Priest

 

One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness

 

Preface

 

P.1

Ways to be One

 

P.2

Wholes and Their Parts

 

P.3

The One of Parmenides and Plato

 

P.4

All is One

 

P.5

Paraconsistency

 

P.6

Dialetheism and the Inclosure Schema

 

P.7

Noneism

 

P.8

Characterization

 

P.9

Buddhist Philosophy I: India

 

P.10

Buddhist Philosophy II: China

 

P.11

And so . . .

 

 

Part 1:

 

Unity

 

Ch.1:

Gluons and their Wicked Ways

 

1.1

The Illusion of Simplicity

 

1.2

Frege and the Unity of the Proposition

 

1.3

Unities and Their Parts

 

1.4

The Bradley Regress

 

1.5

Explaining Unity

 

1.6

The Aporia

 

 

Ch.2

Identity and Gluons

 

2.1

How Gluons Glue

 

2.2

Breaking the Regress

 

2.3

Material Equivalence — Paraconsistent Style

 

2.4

Identity and Gluons

 

 

 

 

 

Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.

 

.

Spiegelman. ch2. of Maus I, “The Honeymoon”, summary

 

by Corry Shores
[
Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]

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[Spiegelman’s Maus, entry directory]




Art Spiegelman


Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
, vol.1


Ch.2
The Honeymoon

 

2.25.1

 


Brief Summary:

With the help of his wife Anja’s wealthy father, Vladek Spiegelman builds a textile factory. They later have their first child, Richieu, but shortly after Anja suffers a breakdown. She and Vladek spend three months in a sanitarium while she recovers. When they return, they learn the factory was robbed. Again with the father-in-law’s help, they rebuild the factory, and they are living in Bielsko. Vladek is drafted into the Polish army in 1939 to fight the war with Germany, and his wife and son return to Anja’s family in Sosnowiec.



Summary

 

Art Spiegelman continues visiting his father Vladek to interview him about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. We see Vladek counting and sorting the many pills he takes for his health. We then learn that his first wife Anja had a communist boyfriend before she and Vladek married.

2.26.9
[page 27, switch to past] After the marriage, Anja was once arrested for translating into German and distributing the communist’s documents.
2.27.5 6
Anja was tipped off that the police would be searching for them. Anja was a loyal customer to seamstress tenant [of Art and Anja’s building] who agreed to hide the documents. The police eventually searched there and found them, but Anja was safe as the seamstress claimed she knew nothing of the papers.

2.28.3 4

[page 29, return to present time, then switch to past, then back to present, then back to past] Art compels Anja never to associate with this communist again. The seamstress had to serve some months in prison.

2.29.3

Anja’s wealthy father wanted his grandson to be well-off, so he offered Vladek the funding to start his own textile factory. In 1937 their first son is born Richieu.

2.30.1 2

[p.30 switch to present] Richieu will not survive the war. Art needed to be born prematurely, and the doctor had to break Art’s arm to remove him from Anja’s womb. This caused Art’s arm sometimes to rise like the salute to Hitler. Vladek demonstrates and knocks over his pill bottle, blaming Art.

2.30.7 9

[p.31 switch to past] Anja suddenly has a nervous breakdown.

2.31.1 5

They take her to a sanitarium in Czechoslovakia, and on the way, they see a Nazi flag hanging in a town. This is in 1938, before the war began.

2.32.1 5

The passengers then share their stories of Nazi abuses of Jews.

2.33.3 6

The sanatorium was very nice, with shops, a café, and a theatre. Vladek would take her dancing and tell her funny stories.

2.35.7

When they return home three months later, they learn from Anja’s father that the factory had been robbed. Fortunately Anja’s father can help them build it up again. [p.36 return to present; p.37 back to past and again to present] They become well-off again, but there are anti-Semitic riots in Bielsko where they live. They wonder if they should leave, and Vladek tells Anja that if things get bad, they could return to Sosnowiec. Vladek assumed it would be safer, because he thought that Hitler would only want cities that were once a part of Germany. [p.37 back to past] Then in 1939 Vladek was drafted into the Polish army to fight the war with Germany. As he leaves to join, Anja, Richieu and the governess go back to Sosnowiec to stay with Anja’s family.

2.38.5 6

[p.39 return to present] Vladek complains about his health problems with his eye and an irresponsible surgeon who failed to operate on it. Later, he needed to replace it with a glass eye. Vladek and Art then retire.

2.40.8



Spielgelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, vol 1. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

 



 

Priest (P2) One, ‘Wholes and Their Parts’, summary

 

by Corry Shores
[
Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Logic & Semantics, Entry Directory]
[Graham Priest, entry directory]
[Graham Priest’s One, entry directory]



 

Summary of


Graham Priest


One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness


Preface


P2:
Wholes and Their Parts



Brief Summary
Part 1 will discuss unified objects, ‘gluons’, which on account of their being made of many parts, may have contradictory properties. It also addresses and solves the Bradely regress by proposing a non-transitive theory of identity. And finally it will discuss further ramifications of gluons and as well Heidegger’s question of being.

 


Summary



Many things are made of parts. So in one sense, something is one in that it is a whole, but in another sense it is many in that it is made of many parts. This means that things might have contradictory properties. “Part I of the book simply accepts this conclusion: these things—gluons, as they will be called in Chapter 1—do have contradictory properties.”
(xvi)


The second chapter address and solves the Bradley regress by “spelling out the required theory of identity, and how gluons fit into the picture” (xvi).


Priest shows the technical coherence of these and other parts in the appendix where he expresses them using formal logic.


Chapter 5 addresses the issue “any account of identity according to which the substitutivity of identicals is not valid is not philosophically coherent.” (xvi)


The rest of Part I explores some of the immediate ramifications of gluons, such as their connection with tropes (or, as I will call them, pins—particular instantiations), with universals themselves, and with two very particular objects | nothing and everything.
(xvi-xvii)

Priest’s gluon theory also “provides a solution to Heidegger’s notorious Seinsfrage—the question of Being.” (xvii)

 

 



Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.

Priest (P1) One, ‘Ways to be One’, summary

 

by Corry Shores
[
Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Logic & Semantics, Entry Directory]
[Graham Priest, entry directory]
[Graham Priest’s One, entry directory]



Summary of


Graham Priest


One:
Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness


Preface


P1:
Ways to be One



Brief Summary
This book is concerned with the metaphysical concept of the One. The first part is about Oneness itself, the second is about universal properties (one property in many things), and the third is about the notion that ‘all is one’.

 


Summary



The book is about what it means to be one in the metaphysical sense.


It is important to look at this metaphysical sense of One, because

The notion of being one thing is, perhaps, our most fundamental notion. One cannot say anything, think anything, cognize anything, without presupposing it.
(xv)


There are many problems concerning the one, including problems of ‘the one and the many’. Part 1 of the book is concerned with “what it means for an object to be numerically one; what constitutes its unity, as it were. When an object has parts (the many), how does their multiplicity produce a unity? (xv). The second part is “concerned with the problem of universals: how can one property be located in many things?” (xv). Part three deals with the tricky notion that ‘all is one’.


Priest will now give more preview of these parts. (xvi)

 



P2: Wholes and Their Parts


Priest, Graham. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University, 2014.