Inescapable Borders

In Maus, Spiegelman uses borders as a rhetorical strategy in order to reveal his message of the inevitable doom that families often faced. His uses borders as visual metaphors in order to emphasize that horror. The borders surrounding each panel show how people were trapped, and there was little they could do to successfully change their fate.. On page 74 in Maus I, all the panels except the last one have a border surrounding it. It represents how even though they are all together at the dinner table, they are all confined to their destinies: death. However, the last panel does not contain a border which shows that Herman and Hela were fortunate enough to escape death. Also in the first panel of the page, the windows are another way that borders are created. To the reader, it appears as if Vladek and his family are locked up behind jail bars, and it foreshadows their eventual placement into concentration camps. Spiegelman uses borders in his because he wants to give structure to his father's narrative as well as to show that the Holocaust was inescapable. However, borders, such as those in pictures, can sometimes be a good thing.  Having something contained, such as memories, eternalizes those in it and what they have done. Creating pictures allows things to remain the same even if it will change in the future. The lack of change that the picture has allows for all the good in the picture to remain forever. This can be connected to when we discussed memorials and about Tim O'Briens belief in remembrance.