Thesis: Tyranny drives people out of their cultural center and forces them to integrate into new cultures. 

            It was his son’s 18^th birthday. There was no time to celebrate, he had to leave. He couldn't even tell his son where he was going, because he really didn't know. The only thing he did know is that he had to find something better than this, for his family, for his son. So he left to find that something better, even though he had no idea where it was and it would cost him all he has ever known as normal. He is my Grandfather, and this is him leaving Romania during its communist rule. Art Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, has also been pushed out of his own home, and forced to escape captivity so that he could find something better for his own family. This is shown in Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus I and Maus II. Both Vladek and my Grandfather where forced out of what they called home, and needed adapt to a new culture. Unfortunately this cost them much of their own culture to be lost. This is why tyranny drives people out of their cultural center and forces them to integrate into new cultures.

Journal 7

     The story of Maus is the story of a Holocaust survivor and his life before and after the holocaust. This is told in an interesting medium and with an interesting choice in character and world representation. Maus is told in the form of an comic book. Normally stories of the holocaust are told in historical novels or biographies, but by telling the author was able to do to do what most novels can't do: show you a picture of what the characters are actually going through. This picture format allows the reader to really sympathies with the characters and the struggles they are going through, without actually giving a gruesome image. Now the author can reach and tell a younger generation about the horrors of the holocaust, so that the can grow in an understanding of what they have learned wrong and right is from the holocaust.

     Also the author portrayed the world in a game of Cat and Mouse where the Nazi's are cats and the Jews are mice. This gives an easy visual of what the conflict of this time was. The Nazi's were constantly hunting the Jews, and the Jews could do nothing but hide. This visual also makes the cats, or Nazis, look villainous, while the smaller mice, or Jews, are innocent. Once again, this something that is easy for a younger audience to understand and grab a hold of for the future.

This is good introductory material - it seems like you're summing up the text and aspects that interest you. For your body paragraphs, focus on a single detail . For example, you may want to devote a paragraph to the cat illustrations. How is like used? How is shadow used? How expressive are the cat faces? Analyze the significance of specific illustrations. Body paragraphs should make a single point; they should have a balance of evidence and analysis/close reading.

Journal 5

http://books.google.com/books?id=aSgPAAAAYAAJ&oe=UTF-8

http://www3.wooster.edu/History/jgates/book-ch3.html

http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/support/reading_20_2.pdf

Scholarly secondary source:

"Representing History in Art Speigleman's Maus" is a scholarly secondary article on this text.

You should also consider Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Barrel of a Pen (a scholarly text where he directly addresses issues of colonialism and post-colonial violence). 

Journal 4

The topic I'd like to explore for my essay is how European Imperialism change and/or destroyed many aspects of culture around the world. I'd also like to relate it as a big turning point where cultures around the world started to merge and share enough aspects that the entire world is moving closer to a unified culture. I'd also like to discuss how I believe technology accelerating this even faster, but I'm not sure if that be analysed from our readings or from art pieces around the world. Although still something i'd like to look into to. 

Journal 1

The three pieces of literature I'm looking to use in my final paper are A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, The Battles of Coxinga by Chikamastu Monzaemon, and Maus, A Survivors tale by Art Spiegelman. The reason why I think these pieces will work together is because they all are set in different areas of the world during the age of exploration or the age of imperialism which are that ages that foreign influences started impacting culture. 

Summeries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battles_of_Coxinga

http://www.shmoop.com/maus/summary.html

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-a-grain-of-wheat/