Thursday, October 1, 2015
Realism in Cartoon: Heavy Drama in Maus
In Spiegelman's Maus, he discusses his father's experience from the start of World War II through his internment at a concentration camp. The thing that makes the novel super interesting and worthy of praise is Spiegelman's use of cartoon - Maus is a graphic novel - to portray the story. We typically associate comic books and graphic novels with funny or heroic storytelling. However, Maus is very different. The book is incredibly sad - it deals with the Holocaust! The Jewish characters are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats, and others as pigs. This personification of animals lends itself really well to the situation of the time, namely how the Nazis viewed themselves as higher on the food chain than the lowly Jews. Maus expertly incorporates this surrealistic element into a very heavily dramatic story to create a new genre of gritty realism that is unlike anything ever seen before. It's absolutely brilliant, and I could not put the book down. The fact that it was a graphic novel also made the books a much faster read than a traditional novel would have, despite the fact that it dealt with such a dense subject. I could not get enough, and I cannot wait to read the sequel.
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I agree wholeheartedly with you on the format of Maus and that being it's original appeal for me. This was such a quick and interesting read, I found myself flying through the novel. Moreso, I like the way in which Spiegelmen tells his father's story in comparison with that of O'Brien's style of storytelling. I think there is a more concrete realness to the way in which Spiegelmen goes about writing the book versus O'Brien who gives the reader a lot of uncertainty just to contrast it with vivid imagery and events. I can't wait to discuss this more in class.
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