Let's Talk about Maus

Just from day one of our Graphic Novel class, I 've learned there is so much that readers and audiences have to learn about comics. There are so many misconceptions and preconceived notions about comics, that a general audience does not realize that the appeal comics have and their role in our lives is so much more apparent than what we know. As Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, notes that comic appeal to us because humans have a tendency to assign identities where none exist, and how not only we make out our world in our image, but how we can project that image on to other symbols and images to better understand the human experience.McCloud argues that audiences pay too much attention to the messenger (of an idea or story) and not the message. In Art Spiegelman's Maus, a novel depicting one experience of the Nazi regime around WWII, Spiegelman uses the idea of assigning human identity to his 'mice' characters, in an attempt to make the audience focus more on story events, rather than the characters themselves. 

Art Spigelman, author of Maus.
Photo by Nadja Spiegelman, 2006

In Maus, all characters are personified mice (though some are other animals, but mice mostly) , though they do have distinct personalities and character traits, I found as a reader that I focused more on the text of the frame, rather than the image to understand what was happening.  I wasn't as focused on their facial expressions, which I think helps me as reader take away more from what characters say. Main character Artie's, father's recollections of the first Nazi takeover in Germany create more of an environment for a reader to lose themselves in, rather than a character's specfic thoughts or motives. The readers do not care that the characters are not human after awhile because it doesn't matter. We've all heard stories about the Nazi regime, and anyone can tell what a Holocaust victim was or looks like. We know as humans the differences in the appearances of our race and the qualities and characteristics that each person is supposed to have. We know what Jews look like, what Aryans look like. But what does a mouse Jew look like? What do we care? All mice look the same to us. We look at the events that Artie's father is retelling, but our lens is different.  Identity is challenged, we are forced to revist our concepts of race, of character. Maus is successful because of the environment that the author has put the reader in. Almost all of the time, readers are forced to make connections with the characters, because we empathize with them as humans do to each other. Very rarely are we forced to make it through a setting or through events by ourselves,  because we can rely on the characters to help us or to guide us. But if we experience it ourselves, we understand what the story is about, what it is trying to present without out filtering out character development or influence, because then it is like "we" experience it
.