Reading Comic Books Essay -- Literary Analysis, Maus, Holocaust

When students learn how to read in elementary school, teachers would teach students how to read comic books and as students we see that the comics would give the animals multiple human traits. Many comic books substitute animals and give them human-like characteristics, such as the ability to talk and walk upright. However, the debate rages on as to what type of animal makes a good character and what type of animal makes a bad character. Comic writers would often use different types of animals that are naturally seen in the real world and they would determine what type of role they would have in the comic book. Also the cartoonist would determine who should prevail, who should not, and their emotions towards one another. In the book called Maus by Art Spiegelman, it tells the story about a mouse named Valdek Spiegelman, who is a Holocaust survivor, and his son Artie. Artie writes a book on his father and the terrifying experience he dealt with when surviving the Holocaust. The book uses animals instead of human characters. The book has three main types of animals that each symbolizes the different cultures during the Holocaust. The Jews are symbolized as mice, the Nazi Germans as cats, and the Poles as pigs. The reason why Spiegelman uses animals instead of humans is because he wants to give the reader a better understanding of what type of animal symbolizes the different types of social classes that are being address. The power hungry Nazis are symbolized as cats because of a cat’s constant starvation and tend to be stronger compared to mice and pigs. The Jews are symbolized as mice to show how weak they were and how they were treated during World War II. Spiegelman puts a focus on the mice and the struggle that Vladek went thr... ...he way Ripley talks about comics and animals is how humans have similar traits as animals and act like animals. The traits that come out in some humans are the â€Å"Biology in one personality, the geography location of where one lives, and the facts about one person and how they express it?† This would explain one interpretation of having animals in comics and explains how humans tend to act more like animals. Many different comics have animals in the short stories and interpret the animals in many different ways. Some comics illustrate animals more as simple creatures that are shy and away from humans. Other comics write about animals and how they are treated more like humans with horrible characteristics. It is important to have an understanding of the animal and how it interacts in nature to be able to compare it to a human in a short story comic.