Maus And Fun Home Analysis

Maus and Fun Home both use the medium of comics to tell very personal and delicate stories. Art Spiegelman uses Maus to tell the moving and emotional story of his father’s survival of the Holocaust; Alison Bechdel uses Fun Home to tell the story of her father’s death and the exploration of her identity. Although both texts are different in many ways, the both use the comic medium to portray an outsider experience. While Spiegelman uses the medium to construct an animal hierarchy and Bechdel uses the medium to combine multiple moments in her life into one story, both authors use pictorial detail to shed light on the outsider experience they are each trying to portray. In his graphic novel, Maus, Spiegelman makes his father’s exclusion from

On Page 118, in the diner with her father, Bechdel sees a woman “who [is wearing] men’s clothes and [has a] men’s haircut” (118). On her journey of sexual exploration, this frame serves as something “from home” as Bechdel “recognize[s] [the woman] with a surge of joy” (118). Apart from the narrative boxes that communicate her watershed moment in text form, the immense detail provides a greater sense of authenticity to her story. With you Bechdel and her father sitting in a booth at the far side of a simple diner, Bechdel focuses on the masculine woman on the left side of the frame with her manly plaid button-down shirt and big, black belt. As Bechdel reveals to her father later on Page 221, she “want[s] to be a boy” during her childhood as she “dress[es] in boys’ clothes,” and her moment at the diner helps her explore her sexual identity

The Holocaust, death, and sexual identity are three very deep and profound subjects, and the comic medium helps bring these topics to life. No longer is the comic the silly humor on the back of your newspaper. Before comics used to be a form of cheap, low-class art. Spiegelman and Bechdel show that comics are even more complex than the most sophisticated high-class art. The graphic novel is a powerful literary weapon that helps authors explain the complicated and subtle nuances that are crucial to the greater story. Images and text help challenge the reader to become more entwined with the story. Through his creation of the animals representing race and religion, Spiegelman uses the comic medium to make the racial discrimination more approachable to his audience. Helping the audience enter Vladek’s world shines light on his outsider status, showing what the comic genre is truly capable of. Same story with Bechdel and Fun Home. Bechdel uses the art of her drawings and words to bring the reader with her from her childhood to her adulthood; from her low points and chaos, to high points and acceptance of her true identity. In the end, both texts use the comic medium in their own unique ways to describe and bring an outsider experience to