The Significance of Cartoons

What is the significance of cartoon illustrations in Maus on a serious and sensitive historical topic?

Spiegelman's approach to drawing the faces of his charachters is very iconic. Throughout the book all of the mice look the same, as do all the pigs and cats. The only way you have a chance of telling them apart is if you pay close attention to wardrobe or flow of dialouge. I think that he did it this way because the story of the Holocaust relates and touches so many different groups of people. He didn’t want it to be about just one person or just another "survival story" of the Holocaust. He also wants to show that all Jews were targeted with no exception by the Germans. I don’t think Spiegelmen drew the Jews as vermin off of his own persnoal opinion, but as the opinion of the Germans during that time period. Germans saw the Jews as dirty vermin so portraying them as mice was the easiest animal to dervie those characteristics from. The Germans were drawn as cats because of cats animalistic nature to hunt mice. The poles were drawn as pigs to show that they were higher rank then the Jews but not as powerful as the Germans. Could someone even go as far to say that the concentration camps could have been seen as the "mouse traps" for the Jews plotted by the Germans?

Spieglman's narration tactic was to allow his readers to hear the same Holocaust story, but from a different perspective. It allows us to let go of our natural senses and see the Holocaust represented differently through the use of animals as main charachters. With the way the dialouge is set up you almost hear the retold story of the Holocaust as a story within a story as Artie talked to his father.

The whole structure and dialouge set up of Maus really relates to Hayden White's essay. White's essay questions why human beings have the need to tell stories. The whole book of Maus is set up for the reader to see a story unfold in front of them. White makes it clear in his essay that the reason humans love to tell stories is because we can all relate to stories in some way. The way Maus is structured it allows the reader to see and feel the story from a different perspective. Just as the mice were victims, someone who reads Maus might be able to relate to the victimized and suppression by a preditor bond.