Introduction: Maus is a graphic story derived from visits Art Spiegelman made to New York to visit his father Vladek. Vladek was a Polish Jew and a survivor of the Holocaust of World War 11. This survival and the visits made by Art brought to life Maus which is a reflection of what exactly happened. In the comics, all the characters are given animal names: frogs, mice, cats, etc. Thesis Statement: Cats eat mice, which is why Art chose to illustrate how the Jews, who were the mice, were massacred by the cats. (Miller, 2011)Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Topic Sentence: Maus' artistic writing style involves moving back and forth between the past and the present, which was a way for him to bring out originality. of his work and for the reader to understand the growth of the story. Evidence and Quote: Additionally, the way Vladek tells his life story to his son does not follow any pattern and he is also limited by his poor English language. And this is part of how a reader is able to tell the difference between the past and the present: the past, Vladeks's English is very broken and the present, it is improved. (Boin, 1997) Topic Sentence: The way the author chose to tell this story is also a clear strategy he used throughout the comic and follows a pattern related to the same things he has made to tell the story. He would visit his father to get content for his story, then they would have lunch and take a walk that described an everyday thing. There was no spontaneity when Art hung out with Vladek either, there was order as if he had his own seat. finally, the last part connected the sequence to this estranged father-son relationship. And by following such a routine, Art was able to follow a sequence that brought some life to the story. Vladek reveals certain traumatic characteristics due to the Holocaust which are in turn reflected in his relationships. He started from the bottom once and eventually married, from a wealthy family, to his first wife Anja. Afterwards, he was compassionate and caring for his family until the German invasion. He subsequently lost everything, including his first son Richiue, when he was poisoned by his aunt to protect him from the massacre. All this affected his behavior, hence his withdrawal from his son Art and lack of affection with Mala, his second wife. To a certain extent, Vladek is depicted as miserly with everything he had after World War II. image of his rather detached relationship with his father. At one point, he wished he had been born earlier. Vladek criticized everything Art did and constantly picked on him over small issues. He was a handy man and his son chose something his father could not do, which was to be an artist. Contrary to this, Art loved his mother, he mentions that if the rain falling on the roof was gas and he had to choose between which parent he should save, he would save his mother. (Miller2011).Topic Sentence: These two relationships clearly show that Art's childhood was troubled and as such, for a reader to understand this, the past and present had to be interconnected to not make that one.Evidence and Quote: Part of the reason Art chose to engage the past and present in this narrative was to try to understand how the genocide and holocaust unfolded through experience of his father and, in turn, to paint a pictureclearer of these events to the reader. Comment: The combination of the events before the Holocaust and those after it, namely the genocide, is part of the philosophy known as postmodernism. This form of philosophy and the structure of Maus essentially explains the relationship between how time in narrative is processed and remembered. [Steingold 2015]. With this in mind, we can therefore understand the use of post memory to interweave the artistic style of the writing and the survival story of his father. (Shoomp, 2008) Topic Sentence: Vladek's survival of the Auschwitz camp and the horrors he experienced after losing everything then took a toll on Art, directly and indirectly due to the trauma. Evidence and Citation: Her parenting skills were drawn entirely from her survival tactics during and after the war. [Steingold 2015]. depicting a story while taking into account its accompanying difficulties such as memory distortion and/or prejudice, Art kept in mind that Maus was a simple representation of history. The Holocaust cannot be truly represented in all its aspects and he knew it. (Powell, 1998) Evidence and Quote: Spielgman uses story telling in a story written about the Holocaust, it is him telling his version of the event. It was he who consciously represented the holocaust from the way he captured it from what he heard. He really wanted his readers to sympathize with him; he speaks to his wife about his feeling of inability to recount the events of the holocaust. (Powell, 1998) The use of juxtaposition and framing of contradictory thoughts so that the truth is perceptible was achieved by bringing together present conversations between Arts and Vladek's past, thus contrasting two time periods placed side by side. Initially, this juxtaposition came from Vladek's haphazard way of telling his story and for Art to create his comedic narrative, he had to follow a certain order. Using this style helped the author maintain the originality of the story.Topic Sentence: Finally, Maus's visual style serves to distance Spiegelman from his own past. Evidence and Citation: Additionally, the visual style is used to add humor into the work while simultaneously employing metaphor. The illustration of Jews as mice and Nazis as cats is explicit, and Spiegelman skillfully uses the comic book format to express a serious issue. Commentary: Spiegelman uses the postmodern style of adult comics to add historical racism and anti-Semitism recorded as metaphor. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Topic Sentence: Metaphorical descriptions are meant to elicit this type of response. Evidence and Citations: According to the author's description, "It's crazy to divide things along nationalist, racial, or religious lines, and that's the whole point" (Spielgman, The Complete Maus). Commentary: This quote, and the cartoon metaphor in general, is an allusion to the Nazi belief that "the Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human." Spiegelman thus invents the twisted concept of racial theory. The use of metaphor is repeated when Art visits his therapist. At the beginning of Maus, when asked by a journalist how he would depict Israeli Jews as animals, Art responds: “I have no idea… porcupines? (Spielgman). In this scene and the next, all the characters wear masks, one of the only occasions where this occurs in the.