storytelling can get pretty bizarre when you think about it there are so many delightful
ways to convolute the fundamentally simple process of relating a series of events so
many strange tools differing perspectives differing time frames descents into symbolism
and abstraction the battle between the prosaic and the poetic the list goes on and on writers
will do just about anything to tell the story in the way that they mean to tell
it even if that means telling the story by telling a different story altogether
for how strange a device it is stories within stories are surprisingly common especially in
fiction you see this all over the king killer Chronicle by Patrick rothfuss is an incredibly
Epic Fantasy about one of the greatest heroes who ever lived but it's also the wistful backstory of
a washed up bar Keep The Princess Bride is a grand Adventure yes but within the fiction
it's also just a bedtime story being told by a grandfather to his grandson a thousand a one
night is a collection of some of the most beloved stories of all time Aladdin Alibaba and the 40
thieves the seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor but in the larger narrative they're also just a
series of ingenious Cliffhangers designed by the Storyteller shaharazad to keep her husband the
king too entertained to behead her the embedded stories are usually what you come for they tend to
be the substance of the work the core but there's something that the outer story what we commonly
call the frame story adds to the experience the value of which I think is hard to overestimate
because the frame is not just a decorative border around the story we're here to consume
it's a window frame the unique and precious lens through which we view the story it's a little hard
to explain just how this part of the narrative affects all the rest so let me show you instead
I found one of the single most effective frame stories I've ever seen not in a novel
but in a graphic novel one you might have heard of before Mouse by art spiegelman
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Mouse is a very singular work it is not like a lot of The Other Stories We analyze on this show to
start it's a work of creative non-fiction it's the actual story of the author's father vladek
spiegelman a polish jew who survived World War II the book invokes the form of classic fables with
animals depicting the characters based on their ethnic backgrounds Jews are drawn as mice Germans
as cats poles as pigs and Americans as dogs this however does very little to blunt the impact
it's simply a matter of artistic license using the medium to share vladek's emotionality and
perspective it is still of course an incredibly dark depressing story
it's a true story about the Holocaust those dark qualities are hard to avoid in a story like this
I may even be worried if the story didn't feel that way so brace yourselves because although we
aren't here to analyze the historical or cultural commentary the book offers in talking about it we
are going to have to brush with some painful subject matter that much is unavoidable but
it's also part of what makes this such a powerful demonstration of the power of embedded stories the
frame of reference the outer story gives to this narrative changes so much about how we interpret
the events the frame story of mouse is that of art the author interviewing his father for the story
he could have just given us the story his father tells the parts of the Nazi occupation in Poland
and the Holocaust which he experienced but art does more than that he makes sure to tell the
story of the telling as well and it is a story unto itself it's late in vladder's life by the
time art manages to get the details out of him he's been through a lot his wife Art's
mother had taken her own life by that point he'd suffered two heart attacks he'd remarried into a
relationship of constant strain and bickering he has a lot of rough edges terse language
pessimism lingering Shame about some sexual encounters in his youth even a moment of racism
he's a pretty flawed character All Things Considered thawed but sympathetic this is
ultimately the story of a man reliving one of the most horrifying experiences in modern history
through the frame of his experience and character we get a very specific window on
the war one shaped by survivor's guilt and Lasting intergenerational trauma an angle
most of us could never have viewed this story from on our own over the course of mouse we
encounter some truly horrifying stories from the concentration camps vladek spent time at
the suffering experienced by those imprisoned there is difficult to Fathom and the book doesn't
spare us the details but through the surrounding story of vladek and the man he's become the ways
the ripples of that experience have moved through his life we see a larger picture
the lessons he learned during that hellish time shape who he is now
how he sees the world how he interacts with his loved ones sadly these lessons aren't always
compatible with a gentler post Holocaust world when something breaks vladek tries to fix it
Arts tried to help him in the past but only to be criticized and berated so instead he tells
his father to hire someone get some help but as we see in the embedded narrative vadek survived
the camps by being useful having skills to fix things like tin roofs and shoes he learned how to
be self-reliant for self-preservation a valuable lesson from the war that just doesn't translate as
well to the new world he occupies in his old age he'd do well to let someone help alas he cannot in
a similar vein he's also learned to be a bit of a hoarder another acquired facet of his personality
which frustrates art of course vladek isn't the only one who suffered I mentioned earlier that his
wife Anya tragically took her own life that was in 1968 after her only surviving brother died art was
only 20 years old at the time and fresh out of a mental hospital after a nervous breakdown in
telling his father's story he'd also hope to tell his mothers but we learned that vladek scarred by
the war by the loss of his wife lost in his grief destroyed all her existing Diaries when art learns
about this he flies into a rage because now the only window we have to look through is his father
the vision his mother would have provided the frame of reference she would have given to the
story is lost forever art even calls his father a murderer for what he did and I also have to
wonder how different might Mouse have been with Anya to provide that additional window
remember this is a true story the author didn't simply get to decide this detail the frame story
the story of the story's telling matters even in reality perhaps especially in reality but mouse
gets even Wilder with its frame story it's not all vladic's experience in one part of the book
The Frame shifts to art as a younger man working through his grief following his mother's death he
pens a comic called prisoner on the hell Planet a case history which appears in its entirety within
the pages of mouse it's an interesting and pretty horrifying read in and of itself but there's an
important moment of connection this project creates for art his father with whom he has
such a hard time connecting who is so reserved and divested who has never read anything else
art has made happens to find the comic during the months of interviews and reads it and like
us he's able to see the experience of grieving through his son's eyes the frame story matters
and finally one of the strangest and most moving parts of the entire story
the frame shifts to the story of the story art illustrates himself illustrating Mouse
by now it's been years since his father's death the first volume of the book was wildly successful
and is getting printed in multiple different languages movie and tv offers are rolling in
he has a baby on the way but success doesn't mean happiness he's stuck now unsure how to
write and draw about the horrors of Auschwitz for volume 2 without his father's guidance
as he attends therapy with another Survivor as he listens to his father's voice on tape as he
works through the grief that's rippled through his life as a result of the terrible tragedies
his family has had to endure he slowly begins to shrink he becomes a child again
and we see one time in one time only that he isn't actually a mouse he's only wearing a mouse mask
not all narratives need that kind of framework but I think Mouse really shows us how it can matter
to know a story's narrator to know the story of the story's telling changes things a story told
by a politician will sound very different from the same story told by a coal miner not only because
their voices are different but also because our perspectives of them are different to see them
hear them know the person who the events of the story produced the consequence of the narrative
that is quite a window to look through a little ironic to be talking so much about the story
behind the story when you know you hardly even get to see the people who actually make this show
the taloids and I we're just the talent happy to be here and we love what we're doing but ninety
percent of the work behind this show comes from our amazing team of humans audio engineering video
editing Art and Design and Direction that's all them and it is a lot of work so much work that our
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that's all for this video thanks for watching and keep making stuff up I'll see you next time bye
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