How does the comic strip "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" depict Artie and his family? Why do you think he has chosen to draw himself in a prison uniform? What is the effect of suddenly seeing these mice depicted as human beings?

In this section, we see that Artie is clothed in attire that was worn during the holocaust, or prison clothing. This meant that he felt as if he commited his mother's death by killing her, without actually doing it. We are taken back of earlier during the day when Anja asks him if he loves her, and being the teen that he was, he just blew her off. Maybe he felt that him not answering her question, or responding back with an "I love you too mom", was what triggered her suicide. Artie probably felt that Anja killed herself because she wasn't receiving the love that she wanted, and she felt like she had no other reason to live because nobody loved her enough to tell her, or to convince her to stay. It is a possibility that maybe if Artie did tell his mom that he loved her, then she would still be alive.

Unlike the rest of the story, this section is actually drawn in human form. The character's are not animals, but they are actual people. The reason for this could be because it is significant to Artie and Vladek. Although we do not get Anja's point of view of the holocaust, she has a part in his book. Because Artie wasn't there with his parents to actually experience the holocaust, he cannot really place himself in their shoes and cannot take it seriously. The holocaust is something that one has to really experience in order to understand what those people went through. As for his mother's death, he wasn't there to discover her body, but he saw her previous to her death, which signifies the intensity of the situation.