All The Light We Cannot See Compare And Contrast

The Holocaust was a devastating time for all, especially the Jewish. Awareness should be spread so that it is well-known how detrimental and impactful this era was. However, what if someone did this in an entertaining, yet informative way? Maybe a book based on a true story from the Holocaust, except with mice and cats representing the characters? Fortunately for readers, this has been done by writer Art Spiegelman, and it is a remarkable book. However, there is another book that also depicts the story of the Holocaust. All the Light We Cannot See by author Anthony Doerr is another fantastic tale of the Holocaust. Although each is similar in the fact of surrounding the same historical era, they differ from each other as well. With that being

This is a given since both stories take place in the same era, and are both historically accurate. Both stories send the message of the monstrosity and atrocity of the Holocaust. It caused great depression and melancholia among those present. Spiegelman expresses this in the writing of Maus “But I don’t care, I just don’t want to live” (31). This expresses the character, Anja’s, misery. In All the Light We Cannot See, the characters also go through such dreadful events, most of which traumatize them. In fact, some of the characters become so traumatized that they begin to see ghosts. One must be unbelievably scarred and terrorized in order to start hallucinating. Both books showcase a suspenseful, dreadful demeanor, hoping to inform the reader of this time's importance and its

Maus depicts the message best through its creative use of symbolism and illustrations. Of course All the Light We Cannot See has symbolism as well. However, the symbolism shown in Maus is far more captivating. Spiegelman portrays the characters as animals, with mice being the Jewish, and cats being the Germans. Spiegelman shows this through illustrations, with one captioned “...The Gestapo came that afternoon” (Maus 113). The Gestapo are a group of secret Nazi police, who are on the hunt for the Jewish. The Gestapo are pictured as cats on this page. This gives the sense of the well-known idiom of cat and mouse. Just as cats chase and hunt mice, the Germans chased and hunted the Jewish. This is an ingenious way to depict a historical event, as well as