So, in reading Orvell’s article “Writing Posthistorically: Krazy Kat, Maus, and the Contemporary Fiction Cartoon,” Orvell makes articulates my point on Spiegelman’s violence in a way I wish I would have: “where the typical cartoon desensitizes us to violence, Spiegelman sensitizes us, despite the fact that he traps his characters within visual stereotypes that threaten to destroy their sensibilities” (Orvell 117). Spegelman’s power comes from his distance from trying to create a distinct past or present. Orvell says “Thus the postwar years, Spiegelman suggests, in many ways duplicate, uncannily recapitulate, the perversities and deformities of the war. The cost of survival is a loss of the vital self” (Orvell 119). Most people believe that the past and present can be separated completely, and in doing so they almost always impose some of the present on their recreations of the past. Spiegelman is overt about his intentions, and the cartoons in many ways allow the reader to meet the entanglement with less skepticism. Then, the violent confronts us with a maximized power because the reader imposes the masks the characters wear, just as much as the writer. Artifice can also be described as restraint, and this is preciscely what Orvell points to in his article. By restraining his fathers grief and allowing the comic strips to express the subtle nuances Spiegelman is able to “not take over the inner story, but [rather] it occupies more space” (Orvell 124).
