
With no visuals, Spiegelman’s comic strip would have been harder to understand. It would be able problem recognizing who is speaking or who is saying what. It seems as if the shaded characters are the masses. In other words, these are the ordinary people. I wouldn’t say they are middle class individuals, rather working class elderly. The characters not shaded look to be the middle class group of younger individuals. Evidently, all of them are Jews.
The images parallels with the text in the sense that the characters speaking have their own voices but the father is still the individual telling the story. In addition, the bubbles the illustrator used to enclose the text goes hand in hand with the dark gloomy theme of the comic. In each scene, there are more shaded areas than there are bright areas. This is symbolic to the time of the tragic events that the father is speaking about.
The visuals serve as the father’s flashback. As he is telling the story, the illustrator gives us visuals of what is happening. I conclude that the father is one of the characters who speak of fleeing. He could not possibly be one of the shaded characters who I assume to be all elderly. I do not assume him to be any of the generals either.
It is ironic that the father is the individual riding the bike while the son is smoking a cigarette. This all goes back to the shaded elderly characters and not shaded young characters. Based on the shaded characters reactions, the elderly were to be disposed of when they are sent to the stadium. The father gives the impression that he is afraid of getting old in fear of suffering the same fate that was to be of the elders in his flashback. He utilizes the bike as a means of remaining young.
