Julia's Justifications

“After you peed on me, I wanted to kill you” (Morrison 213).   At the end of chapter 9, Lena is talking to Milkman about how he has peed all over his family.   Now, Milkman is quite drunk, so he does not truly understand what Lena is getting at, but she tells him the story of when she took him to the woods, and he peed on her.   Lena explains to Milkman that he was born with all his needs catered at his every whim and that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.   Their entire life, their worlds revolved around Milkman’s.   Lena states that, “As surely as my name is Magdalene, you are the line I will step across” (Morrison 214).   She means that she is finally standing her ground and is physically and mentally exhausted of carrying this weight on her back.   For everything that his mother and sisters have done for him he has peed on them in return.   “When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked…” (Morrison 215).   ...

In Song of Solomon, women are those that are abandoned and left behind.   We see them imprisoned in their marriages and family life.   Morrison uses the relationship between Macon and Ruth to show how women are oppressed and how reliant women are on their husbands for support.   Ruth’s emotional state proves the theme of abandonment of women through the watermark on the kitchen table.   “Some stable visual object that assured that the world was still there” (Morrison 11). She has been so emotionally abandoned by Macon that she needs an object to assure her that she is still alive.   Morrison states also on page 11 that “like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner,” she is comparing their marriage to a lighthouse and Ruth is the prisoner.   Marriage is about compromise, yet it always seems that Macon is the only decision maker and Ruth is just... there.   On page 35, the Dead family is going on a drive looking for beach houses, when Milkma...

Maus ends without resolving all tensions that occurred during the novel.   When Vladek calls Art Richieu, there are many questions going through my mind.   Does it mean Art will never replace the void that Richieu left in their lives? Or maybe has Vladek finally accepted Art as a son that Richieu once was? Art Spiegelman also ends Maus with Vladek and Anja’s tombstones dividing the last two panels.   He finishes his story with “happily ever after.”   We all know that the couple doesn’t have a happily ever after because Anja commits suicide in 1968.   Spiegelman could have possibly used the words “happily ever after” because the reality is that there isn’t a happy ending.   Not only was their reunion not a fair representation, but it is insensitive to those who lost their families and had nothing to go back to.   It shows that a story about the Holocaust cannot have a happy ending.   It is something so horrific and atrocious that there is no...

Have you ever pretended to be someone you’re not just to impress someone?   Or bought some new clothes because you desperately wanted to fit into the crowd?     Masks have been used for hundreds of years; from Shakespeare’s play to those of traditional dances and many different cultures.   The meaning is usually always the same— to conceal one's appearance and transform into another.   Spiegelman's characterization of mice is important to their prominent nose, which is one of the most prevalent and defining features of a Jew.  His choice of using the Jews as mice is quite clever because he did not shy away from the widespread stereotype that was placed upon them.  Throughout Maus, the Jews wore masks to conceal their identities in order to protect themselves from the Germans.  On page 64, Vladek needed to get back home, but he had no legal papers.   He put on a pig mask, and approached the train man, saying, “you’re a pole like ...