Prisoner On The Hell Planet Analysis

In “Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History,” Art Spiegelman evokes German expressionist wood-cut drawings, similar to Lynd Ward, to convey and suggest depth and weight through his use of heavy and jagged lines. This strategy in turn helps the viewer embrace the emotional anguish Artie is feeling after finding out his mother had passed. Spiegelman sets the shockingly confessional tone of the piece in the first two frames by wasting no time describing his mother’s method of suicide. The 1972 story’s disturbing storyline and style of narration was not necessarily uncommon during the comix era (roughly ranging from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s), a taboo-breaking time when trying to shock the reader became common. Although “Prisoner on
This is done through frames that are drawn to suggest horror and fear as well as abstract drawings, which are crooked and or disproportionate. Throughout “Prisoner on the Hell Planet,” the reader gets a growing sense of claustrophobia, of the characters becoming boxed-in, isolated, and trapped. This is not just from the dark, densely-composed (some might say cluttered) page or by its literal panels, but by Spiegelman’s use of frames within frames—examples being when Artie is coming up from a subway stairwell or his father opening the door to discover his dead wife. This feeling is reinforced at the end of the story when Artie is metaphorically imprisoned in a cell in his own mind. Spiegelman further ratchets up the unease of key frames (discovering the body, being told his mother has killed herself, feeling nauseous and overwhelmed) by drawing in a dizzying, German Expressionistic manner. This is done through Spiegelman’s use of etching and deep contrasts of light. Artie’s clothes resemble those of a prison, more darkly those of a concentration camp. This could be construed to represent his guilt over his mother’s death, as if he killed her without actually doing the deed. Both of his parents survived the Holocaust and although Artie himself was never in a concentration camp, he hasn’t escaped unharmed. He’s lived under the
When she comes into his room to ask if he loved her, he blows her off with a “Sure, ma” without even looking at her and admits he was “resentful of the way she tightened the umbilical cord.” This brief glimpse into the relationship he had with his mother suggests she may have been either extremely fragile, overbearing, or needy. Artie’s pain and hostility towards her lasts until the very end, when he blames her for both metaphorically killing him and pinning her death on him. It’s hard to tell; perhaps his flippant response to her question did set off her suicidal feelings, or perhaps she had always been fragile and suicidal. Likewise it’s unknowable how much did war and the Holocaust affected her. What we do know is that she needed validation and an acknowledgement of love, which she clearly wasn’t receiving from Artie and quite possibly from Artie’s father. Maybe if they had returned the affection, Anja never have died, a thought that crosses many a person’s mind who has known someone who has killed themselves.
As for Artie’s father, it is interesting to see how a younger Spiegelman wrote him as a one-note character in the context of the greater Maus story. Spiegelman does a great job of showing how annoyed Artie is by his father in the way he looks at him while he is breaking down. Artie’s composure in front of others by contrast could be interpreted in a variety of ways. He appears to resent his father