This document provides an analysis of the graphic novels Maus by Art Spiegelman and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Both works use photographs and drawings of photographs to explore trauma related to the authors' fathers' pasts. Spiegelman depicts his father Vladek's experience in the Holocaust through drawings of family photos. Bechdel examines her father's hidden sexuality through recreations of photos she finds. The document analyzes how both authors use photographs and drawings of photographs to interpret memories and depict how trauma can be passed down through generations.

1. 1
Barbara Guldner
Professor Eschen
Eng 333
Final Paper
13 May 2015
Looking at Photographs: Memories Open for Interpretation in Maus and Fun Home
The Complete Maus by Art Spieglman, and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel center their
personal narrative around their father’s past through visual starkness with dark bold lines, with
emphases on the characters in the foreground of the frame. These personal narratives involve
trauma and post memory in their own lives, resulting from the conflicted, and painful pasts of
their fathers. Post memory according to Hirsch, is part of the psychic traumas endured by the
parent and “that of the child of the survivor whose life is dominated by memories of what
preceded his/ her birth”(8). In Maus, Spieglman interviews his father Vladek about his harrowing
survival of Auschwitz. Bechdel processes her father’s death as a possible suicide, and constructs
his hidden sexuality through photographs, personal memories, and relics from the past.
Bechdel’s recreation of family and personal photographs is a process of “remembering,
repeating, and working through”(Dean-Ruzicka) post memory and second generational trauma
shared between parent and child. Life and death help define personal relationships through
memories and family photographs, yet they only tell one side of the person’s story, because
memory and photographs can be open to interpretation. Use of closure, in these comics reveal
how memories are open to interpretation, and “elements omitted from a work of art are as much
a part of that work as those included”(McCloud 82).
In the introduction to Vladek’s story in Maus, Spieglman asks about “life in Poland and
the war”(fourth panel, 14)Vladek is drawn in bold lines in contrast to the stark white image of
Spieglman. The closure between the middle longer panel, when Vladek tells him “it would take

2. 2
many books, my life, and no one wants anyway to hear such stories” leaves the reader to stop
and think about why Vladek does not want to talk about the war. The close up of his forearm
shows the number 174113 tattooed on his forearm. Speiglman depicts the bleakness of the tattoo
by using dark solid lines. The purpose of showing a close up of his tattoo, shows the reader an
actual fact, that he has survived Auschwitz, but Vladek is hesitant to convey his traumatic
memories of his past. On page 27 of Fun Home the first panel shows the newspaper headline of
her father’s death. Bechdel is showing actual fact that her father died, by recreating the
newspaper heading. Through the use of black lines instead of words, and her inner dialogue
“there’s no proof, actually, that my father killed himself”, the panel juxtaposes the reality of the
newspaper heading to the book her father was reading before his death, A Happy Death, to make
the assumption that there is more to his death than can be seen from the headline of the
newspaper. The juxtaposition of those two images creates questions for the reader about her
father’s death. The panel depicts how truth can be open to interpretation. The newspaper is
drawn askew to convey this point.
Trauma is manifested in obsessive behaviors, when Art thinks his father has found his
mother’s diaries. As Vladek hands Artie a box full of photos, Artie’s words darkened, he hopes
to have found his mom’s diary. The use of dark lines around Artie’s face, depict an obsessive
hope to salvage a link with his dead mother. “The disruptions resulting from the Speiglman
family traumas take the forms of fetishes, silenced testimonials, and specter-memories of the
dead that continue to influence the “living”(692 Elmwood). Vladek and Artie are looking at
photographs of family who have died. Speiglman recreates the photos for the viewer, and
highlights the photographs by placing them askew, breaking out from the narrative of Artie and
Vladek’s conversation. The tragic endings that took place for his family in the photographs

3. 3
create a psychological burden for the living. The photographs provide evidence of the family
Vladek had, and the family Spieglman would have had. The recreated photographs place a
personal identity to the millions killed or displaced by the war. The pictures on page 274 are
piled on the floor, the same way Speigleman depicts the dead bodies on the bottom of page 201.
“His father’s experiences in Auschwitz seeks to narrow the psychological rift between himself
and each of his family members, whether deceased or still alive” (691 Elmwood).Spiegelman
draws Vladek’s whole body in between three panels, a lack of closure for Vladek, because he
cannot erase the memories of the past, he has nothing to hold on to.(276) Vladek tells Artie, “so
only my little brother, Pinek, came out from the war alive…from the rest of my family, its
nothing left, not even a snapshot”(276) Recreating photographs of Speiglman’s family is a way
to visually depict what has been taken away.
Family photos in Fun Home are redrawn as a way for Bechdel to reexamine her
father’s identity, her connection to family, and herself. “By framing each of her chapters with
words and images that bear a complex relationship to each other, Bechdel reminds us that that it
is in the space between existing visual images and familiar storylines where we make meaning of
our individual lives”(130 Lemberg). In the introduction to each chapter Bechdel’s draws
photographs from her families past. In chapter one, “Old Father, Old Artificer”, Bechdel uses
this technique to draw a photograph of her father. The crosshatching, bold lines, and large
horizontal panel convey an intimate moment of her father to the reader. One side of his face is
darkened by shadow, and another is light. “The act of drawing itself thus becomes an act of
witness, while also giving rise to a collection of emotionally charged documents and objects”(29
Hirsch). Her drawing suggests the duality of her father’s personality. In Maus, Spiegelman
breaks the narrative structure of Vladek’s story to highlight the post trauma Spiegelman feels in

4. 4
relation to his mother’s suicide Prisoner on the Hell Planet (pages 102- 105) a comic within the
comic. The mini comic is Spiegelman’s way of “working through” (113 Chute) memory and the
trauma. Spieglman’s mental breakdown of her death is drawn in bold dark lines and stark black
and white, making the reader feel, they too are ascending into inexplicable madness and grief.
“Adult recollection of childhood events makes clear its process of interpretation as visualization,
an aesthetic”(113 Chute). The comic depicted within the comic show two different hands holding
on to different memories of trauma. In the photograph Spiegelman is a young boy, smiling and
sitting under his mother. The image conveys a feeling of safety and happiness, a time of leisure
as the photo places the time and place of that moment. Prisoner on the Hell Planet in
conversation with the photograph shows the anger and trauma Spiegelman feels as an adult after
his mother’s suicide. On page 106 the top third panel, Anja and Spiegelman are drawn in the
same position as the photograph. The words above the panel let the reader know that was the last
time he saw his mother before her death. Anja is depicted in a close up the same sadness is
reflected in her face, but this time Spiegelman is crouching down with his face inside his body in
a fetal position. The last three panels on the bottom of the page show the trauma he feels about
his mother’s suicide, and draws himself in a prison as a metaphor for the painful memories he
cannot escape from.
In Fun Home Bechdel uses photographs as a way to understand her father’s sexuality,
and to bear witness to the life he was trying to hide. “Her father is visually absent, but implicitly
present as the photographer”(Dean-Ruzicka). Bechdel’s hand is drawn holding the photograph
(100) to convey to the reader that she is trying to make sense of why her father has taken a
seductive photograph of her babysitter Roy during a family vacation. For Bechdel, “the image of
Roy functions as a visual reminder of how within a heterosexual culture all homosexual

5. 5
attachments are ‘unlived possibilities” or prohibited attachments”(249 Butler). Examining the
photograph Bechdel asks herself “why am I not properly outraged?” Part of Bechdel’s guilt and
trauma comes from her ability to be open about her own sexuality, in contrast to her father
having to keep his sexuality suppressed. Recreating the photograph of Roy, Bechdel highlights
her father’s marking of the dates on the photograph. “It’s a curiously ineffectual attempt at
censorship. Why cross out the year and not the month? Why, for that matter, leave the photo in
the envelope at all?” Bechdel looks at the photograph through her father’s eyes, wondering if this
photograph was an attempt for him to be found out. The photograph is redrawn in a crosshatched
style; the details of his face are darkened, making it hard for the viewer to make out the details of
his face. He looks up at the ceiling in a seductive pose, leaving the reader to wonder what
became of her father’s love affair. On page 102 the negative is drawn out in the first panel, the
negative “reveals three bright shots of my brother’s and me on the beach followed by the dark,
murky one of Roy on the bed.” The negative serves as a visual metaphor, about the duality Bruce
faced as a father and husband, and his attraction to younger boys. Bechdel finds more pictures of
her father (120). She is bears witness to his cross-dressing, and through his pose she finds him
“lissome, elegant”. Bechdel connects herself to her father, as she holds up two pictures of them,
her father is only twenty-two in the picture, and Bechdel is twenty-one. She wonders if her
father’s lover took the photo, as Bechdel’s lover took a picture of her. The placement of the
photographs within the page visually depict the connection she shares with her father, she looks
like him and through memory she makes a connection to his past. Spiegelman places a picture of
his brother Richieu, at the start of Maus II, in the center of the page to contrast with Vladek’s
survival of the death camps. The photograph of Richieu conveys innocence. Placing the photo
before the story gives the viewer a sense of wonder. Richieu is a ghost like figure for Spiegelman

6. 6
and a source of trauma and guilt. Towards the end of Vladek’s journey, Spiegelman juxtaposes
the photo out of the frame to make a truth claim about Vladek’s survival. Vladek has taken a
souvenir photograph, wearing a clean camp uniform. The photograph is the same picture Anja
looks at. The picture is placed as a symbol of hope and survival. Spiegelman places different
photos of his family within Maus to place a human connection to the trauma his family has
faced, and for the reader to make an emotional connection to the story. “These photographs
connect the two level’s of Spiegleman’s text, the past and the present, the story of the father and
the story of the son, because these family photographs are documents both of memory (the
survivor’s) and of what I would like to call post-memory (that of the child of the survivor whose
life is dominated by memories of what preceded his/her birth)”(8 Hirsch).
The guilt Spiegelman feels for the success of Maus is depicted on page 202 the last
panels on the bottom of the page. The gutter in between Spiegelman feeling like a child and his
guilt over the success of his father’s tragic circumstances, are drawn to represent Spiegelman as a
scared child. He draws himself as a small little boy in an adult size chair. “The paradox of
traumatic memory, in which people “forget” trauma, but do not “forget” it enough while these
memories may no longer be verbal, they yet drive behavior”(114 Chute). The lack of negative
space, crosshatching, and the contrast of stark white against dark solid lines convey his feelings
of trauma. The last two panels depict Spiegelman wanting his “mommy”. This image came be
connected to the actual picture of him and his mother, when she was alive and he was able to feel
secure. On page 203 the first two panels on the top of the page show how Spiegelman has a hard
time being an adult, and the panel next to it shows that he needs to grow up and get past his
father’s traumatic life, because he too will become a father soon.

7. 7
Bechdel and Spiegelman depict trauma and post memory through the layout of their
photographs and the recreations of actual documents. The past trauma of their father’s lives
became a part of their lives. Working through their parent’s past is a way to look at their story in
hindsight; it gives perspective, and allows for emotional closure. Both of these comics convey to
the reader that memories and identity can be open to interpretation.

8. 8
Works Cited
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. New York: First Mariner Books, 2006.
Chute, Hillary L. "Materialzing Memory." Graphic Women Life Narrative and Contemporary
Comics (2010): 95-134.
Dean-Ruzicka, Rachel. "Mourning and Melancholia in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family
Tragicomic" . 2013. 2 May 2015.
Elmwood, Victoria A. "Happy, Happy, Ever After: The Transformation of Trauma between
the Generations in Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale." Biography (2004): 691-720.
Hirsch, Marianne. "Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory." Gender and the
Politics of Subjectivity (1992-1993): 3-29.
Lemberg, Jennifer. "Closing the Gap in Alison Bechdel's " Fun Home" ." Women's Studies
Quarterly (2008): 129-140.
Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. New York: Pantheon, 1973.