Maus: Is it nonfiction or a novel? Or maybe both?

As an English major and being a lover of books, I have a great idea on what fiction and non-fiction books differ. Non-fiction works is something that is based on a true story. It is based on facts, real people, and real events. Whereas fiction means something that is false. Something that is make believe and made up of people’s imagination.

The real question is…. can a novel be a non-fiction text? Yes, yes it can. It would be classified as history, or a biography. Maus by Art Spiegelman is a non-fiction novel that is indeed based on a true story. It uses story telling techniques of fiction, while also giving a sense of a novel since it is indeed a book length story.

A story can be non-fiction and have the art form be in comics, or any other kind of medium. Just because an author chooses to use art forms and sequential art, it does not take away from a story being true. If anything, portraying a non-fiction story and then adding it to a comic makes it even more fun and worth reading. Images to go along with a true story can be beneficial for readers to grasp details that one wouldn’t catch if it was only in text form. Graphics along with text are a bonus to explaining or should I say introducing a story based on real events. What I am trying to say is that if something is real, then nothing can stop it from being that.

In Maus, the graphics helped me to see which dialect was in the past and current. It helped me to better understand which characters were speaking. One of the images from page 17, captures Lucia viewing a photo. Without the graphics showing Lucia’s expression, then the comment she made could not have been positive. From Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics,” chapter 5 living in the line really shows its definition explained that “art makes itself visible.”

Overall, the graphic made the character’s emotions more influential on how the text was interpreted. The visual sequential art allowed Spiegelman to give the readers a more of an emotional ride to fully introduce and show readers the true story while keeping it that way overall. The graphics help the reader understand that the word “excited’ used to describe the Jews could have a positive meaning, but the graphics in contrast help the reader understand that the actual meaning of the word in the context was negative (Spiegelman 32). The graphics in this non-fiction novel helped me to better understand the novel. It made me even more emotional to see the graphics alongside with the text.

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ENG 4433: Topics in World Lit

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