Lit of Comics #7

Maus

Maus used startling imagery to really portray the victims of the Holocaust as just that, helpless victims. Portraying them as mice being hunted by cats is especially effective, as they are being hunted and played with. It can be hard to convey the deeply emotional effects of trauma to those who didn’t not directly experience that which caused trauma, but visual images can effect people emotionally, making this an effective piece about the trauma of the Holocaust. It is, at times, hard to swallow, much like Barefoot Gen/I Saw It, but I think it's important to read these. It would be easy to try to think of these as fiction, fiction that tells horrific stories. But when I think of the fact that these events happened to people, it makes it all the more horrific. In order to connect and become immersed in a story, we have to see or put ourselves in the place of the characters. Imagining myself in the place of these characters is difficult, but knowing that the real people experienced this, and that they couldn't put the graphic novel down, they couldn't pause the movie, or close the comic. These people had no choice but to go through this and live with the trauma, and it makes comics/graphic novels all the more effective as a storytelling medium.