Maus (4 points)

Starting out, I was a bit hesitant to read this week’s comic simply because of the themes alone. I know previously we have read some shocking comics but I tend to shy away towards historical/political comics, especially with Nnazi imagery just because I feel rather uncomfortable by them, though I do understand how reflecting on humanity’s history of war and prejudice is important to take a look at. The most recent piece of media I’ve seen dealing with Nazi Germany and the Jewish escape was the film Jojo Rabbit, which I believed did an excellent job to give a realistic yet humorous/satirical undertone to its darker source material. However, this week is about Maus, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it held up as well. While there were certainly some panels and real-life events that were horrifying, I liked the author’s choice to portray these characters as animals. I see often in a lot of media that when real-world problems are expressed through animals it can just give off an easier understanding of the messages and possibly the contrasting themes within the human race. To me, it also helped give a sort of lighter tone too, with the simpler expressions of the mice giving me all the information I needed about the story without really making me too scared to look away. The section where the man’s story was told with sort of an etched style with real human expressions particularly struck me because its style was almost too much to look at sometimes. While the grief was still apparent in both case styles of animals and humans, sometimes the human representation just felt a lot more overwhelming to me for some reason. In terms of the storytelling, I thought it was interesting how we started out in the future, with a majority of these events being a retelling. It gave me some relief to know that during the retelling of these events that there were survivors, but more than that it gave me a more inclusive perspective. We are hearing these events being told from a survivor, so what we are being told is exactly how it is to our characters, with the only real difference is being able to see these things being played out in a comic style. I thought it was interesting how we got to take a break from the story every now and then to jump back to present reality to have the journalist tell him to slow down or to have the survivor say he’s had enough for the day. You can see the real-time effects that both the war and the retelling are having on him, and how a newer generation can also experience these stories through the ones that survived.