The "time-flies" and Longfellow

(I was supposed to post on Monday but it's been so long and I completely forgot. Sorry!) Anyways...
Discussing the "time-flies" in class that appeared on the opening illustration of chapter two reminded me of a phrase I'd heard a long time ago--the "sands of time". After a bit of research, I found out the famous poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow originally coined the phrase in one of his works, "A Psalm of Life", written in 1839. The seventh stanza of the poem goes:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

To relate and understand the two works, I compared them. In MAUS II, the time-flies hover around Art at the start and finish of chapter three. I was curious as to the reasons for these specific appearances, and examined the characters' actions at those two places in the book. In the beginning, Art compares the past and present. But the ending caught my eye:

Francoise remarks, "It's almost impossible to believe Auschwitz ever happened." (74,6) Immediately afterward, Art exclaims, "But these damn bugs are eating me alive!"

After reading Longfellow's poem, seeing the juxtaposition of the two statements gave me an "aha!" moment. Until then, I hadn't really known what to make of the time-flies. But now, I am prepared to enlighten you all with my discovery: the time-flies are not meant to mark the passage of time, as I had previously thought. They are not Longfellow's "sands of time", rather they are Longfellow's"footprints"--the impact--one leaves on the sands of time. Spiegelman meant the time-flies to reflect the way the past seems to constantly affect Art in the present. Spiegelman shows how a can of bug spray, with one effortless squirt, kills bugs--just as a denial of Auschwitz, with one effortless breath, "kills" the significance the Holocaust holds with many people today.