Art Spiegleman’s Maus, a graphic novel depicting his father’s experiences during World War two is one of the most internationally recognised and respected pieces of literature to ever attempt at emulating the Holocaust. Maus is a combination of genres and literacy techniques placing it in the realm of post modernism. There are many themes evident throughout Maus and to accurately convey these to the reader, Spiegleman uses meta-fiction and the technique of anthropomorphism. These techniques immerse the audience in the Holocaust, as well as expressing Spiegleman’s own struggle in retelling his father’s horrendous story with empathy and humility. Metafiction the literary equivalent of breaking the fourth wall, occurs when the author steps outside of his own work to address the reader directly or subtly. This technique - is used progressively throughout the novel to demonstrate Spiegelman’s own inability’s to right a grand narrative. Through metafiction, Spiegleman displays his own struggles with …show more content…
Right through Maus, Spiegleman portrays the Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Polish as pigs and Americans as dogs. Through this act Spiegleman assigns the stereotypes associated to these individual animals to the respective races and in doing so shows the role of racism graphically. An extract from a German newspaper is incorporated into Maus on page 164, “Healthy emotions tell every independent young man that the dirty and filth covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom cannot be the ideal type of animal”. By including this article describing mice as vermin and by association attacking the Jewish community, Spiegleman illustrates how the Jewish community were viewed by the Germans as vermin and consequently justifying why he represented the Jews as