The contrast between the cartoon characteristics of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, and it’s dark, re-telling of the Holocaust allows readers to relate and connect to an event that is often times removed from their own lives both historically and geographically. Contemporary society can easily relate to graphic novels. Comic books have been a source of entertainment, expression, and inspiration for decades. However, traditionally, comics and graphic novels are geared towards the humorous side of story telling. The story of Maus is interesting in that it takes a traditionally stark and sensitive subject and translates it into a contemporary, light-hearted medium. By transforming the players or WWII into cleverly illustrated animals, the Holocaust becomes an easily relatable story for all readers of all ages. It loses some of the abstract, political context and becomes an age-old struggle between cat and mouse. For example, early on in the story Spiegelman begins to give the reader glimpses of the uprising. Beneath an illustration of cats clubbing mice it reads “another fellow told us of a relative in Brandenberg - the police came to his house and no one heard again from him” (Spiegelman 33). The next panel shows a town with a banner that says “This Town Is Jew Free.” The way Spiegelman moves in and out of metaphorical imagery and realistic depictions of the holocaust creates a tension that allows the reader to relate easily to these distant events in a contemporary method.
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