Abstract
Autotopographical objects play a pivotal role in life narratives, and the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman is no exception. Based on a close reading and textual analysis of the text, the present study analyses the autotopographical objects in the novel under four categories: photographs, masks, miscellaneous objects of everyday life, and lost autotopographical objects, with a view to expounding the nexus between life narration and autotopographical objects. It was found that autotopographical objects in Maus show how objects enable the life narratives to be constructed and viewed in varied lights, how the autotopographical objects become an embodiment of lives narrated, the significance of the artist's involvement in contextualizing these objects and providing supplementary details, metamorphosis of everyday objects into autotopographical objects in the course of life narration, and the significance and impact of absent autotopographical objects in creating gaps in life narratives while adding layers of meaning through the dynamics of absence and presence.
Highlights
The present study aims to expound such claims via textual analysis of the graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
Consisting of two volumes written in the 1980s and 1990s by Art Spiegelman Maus is a story of tragedy, survival and trauma
Often in life narratives references are made to various objects as autotopographical objects which help create a physical map of memories and experiences narrated, i.e. an autotopography
Summary
As stressed by Hilary Chute, “Maus is about archives, and it itself does the work of archiving” [3]. It is through the archiving of autotopographical objects Artie and Vladek construct the life narratives, share, and attempt to overcome trauma, which is why autotopographical objects are made to embody a self-aware and deliberate connection between the auto/biographical subject and life narrative. Similar to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Maus too makes numerous references to artefacts or autotopographical objects visually as well as verbally. One of the key idiosyncrasies of its central character, Vladek Spiegelman, is his obsession of archiving, i.e. hoarding of various objects ranging from gold and money to scraps of paper and wire. In the pursuit of finding how autotopographical objects enrich the narrative and their significance, this study will focus on the following in the course of the analysis: photographs, masks, miscellaneous objects of everyday life, and lost autotopographical objects
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