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.

Comments

Junji Ito and the Art of the Uncanny

As discussed in Chapter 2 of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics , the Japanese style of comic book art holds several notable quirks. While early manga artists tended to favor simplistic, yet distinct styles that paved the way for a number of internationally renowned characters, contemporary manga artists have since favored a hybrid style that juxtaposes the cutesy, rounded characters of yesteryear with the realistic and richly shaded settings that have since become popular. Building on this, McCloud describes a phenomenon in which Japanese comic artists have used realism to objectify--that is, to emphasize the "otherness" of certain characters, objects, or places--elements of their work and further separate these elements from the reader. I have chosen the work of one of my favorite comic artists, Japanese horror icon Junji Ito, to further illustrate McCloud's point. Though McCloud describes this phenomenon in the context of Japanese comic book art, he is usi...

The Two Faces of Anarchy in V for Vendetta

As someone who has only seen the movie version of V for Vendetta once many years ago and have never read the graphic novel, I wasn’t exactly sure how similar or different the movie version would be to the graphic novel. I was in for a surprise when I discovered just how vastly different, they are from each other. With that being said, they do have some similarities when strictly looking at the motives of the characters. Let’s dive into those motives and how the author and illustrator of V for Vendetta achieved getting these motives across to their readers. In Scott McCloud’s chapter of Understanding Comics “ Blood in the Gutter ” we are presented with different panel – to – panel transitions, and an introduction to the term “gutter” as being the white space between the panels which is where the audience of reader “takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea” (McCloud, 66). After finishing reading V for Vendetta , several themes or ideas that were most prevalent...

Maus: A New Type of Nonfiction

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the nonfiction genre is the biography. A thick book full of pages about the life of a specific individual. Barely any visual aids, if any, and a monotonous voice throughout that makes these great to fall asleep to. In summation, I had a very rigid and bland view on the nonfiction genre before reading Maus by Art Spiegelman . This graphic novel is so entertaining that it was hard for me to believe that it is nonfiction. I did not think that nonfiction books could be anything but a glamorized version of a textbook. However, Spiegelman was able to prove everyone that nonfiction was not such an inflexible genre, and could tell a story instead of simply informing. He incorporated many other creative elements to make his story different from all the other Holocaust tales in existence. Firstly, by making the characters animals, he adds a somewhat otherworldly aspect to this retelling of his own father's experiences. I think t...

ENG 4433: Topics in World Lit

Search This Blog