Page selection was hairy process, by which I mean I was leaned over my desk checking page after page in frustration for so long that it became impossible to keep my hair out of my face. How on Earth was I supposed to find two pages I liked that had a relation? Across two separate books? The first and second installments of Maus are vastly different in terms of mood and focus, so they surprisingly didn’t have as much in common as I’d hoped.
My saving grace as I was flipping between my two lists (pages I liked from the first book and pages I liked from the second book), looking for a correlation, were pages 66 from Book 1 and 136 from Book 2. I’ll get into their remarkable similarities in a minute, but what popped was a very particular visual that Spiegelman chose to use only on these two pages:
This circle acts as a spotlight for these moments, both of which are instances where Vladek and Anja reunite. Everything else, everything around them disappears and all we see is their embrace. So I figured these two would make a good pair!
As I traced them, however, I realized that the similarities didn’t stop there!
In fact, he has the frame before the embrace show one of them at the door.
Also, the words Spiegelman chooses to use are again eerily similar:
“I don’t need to tell you.” It’s almost as if Vladek believes his love of Anja needs no explanation, which might be why it’s follow by “how big the joy was in our house” and “we were both very happy” respectively. Sure enough, we’re offered very little on Anja in these pages, emphasizing the absence of her perspective.
Perhaps the most chilling parallel is what comes next with Richieu. Even the most discreet details are used artfully to make the entire situation of each page come alive.
The Secret Language of Sabrina 