Free Report on Visual Narratives: Unveiling the Power of Graphics in 'Maus' and Literary Forms

Literature is a classic form of art that is expressive and symbolic. It utilizes various stylistic devices to help model a delivery to the best form it can be presented. There are various styles of delivery of content in literature, and each carries its relevance and varies in levels of relevance depending on the context. There is a misconception that literature is delivered using simple devices that are textual; it goes beyond that. That is based on the fact that novels were traditionally textual. The use of graphics alongside text offers a better experience and delivers the plot more efficiently than forms of literature that use text exclusively.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The use of graphics to deliver literary content is a tactic that has been around for a long time, having peaked just before the advent and introduction of digital media. The development and adoption of digital media did not do away with it but instead changed the mode of delivery from paper to electronic formats. Graphic novels and short stories still exist in the present but are now common in digital formats. This essay compares and contrasts “Maus” to other literary forms that include but are not limited to plays, textual novels, and poems.

Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” is a graphic novel that depicts his father’s experiences in an interview. The novel was serialized for 11 years between 1980 and 1991 as a memoir covering the author’s father, who was a survivor of the Holocaust and a Jew from Poland. There is no specific genre to classify the text into, but it remains the only one to have won the Pulitzer Prize as a graphic novel. The story is set in New York in 1978 as the author and his father, Vladek, talk about the experiences his father had in the Holocaust. It starts as the Maus project for which Spiegelman is collecting information. “Maus” is in a category of its own considering the nature of issues covered in the plot of the novel.

Plays, films, poems, and some prose are meant to serve a relatively similar purpose. They deliver the literary work to the audience clearly and concisely (Dallacqua, 2012). There are various challenges and strengths of each form of delivery. The main challenge with this is that there comes a time when some text can have more than one meaning. Ambiguity is more likely to occur in such a case as the audience can have different meanings of the same text. While using accurate and complete descriptions for the plot and events can be dealt with, there is always a chance for an author to go overboard. The use of graphic novels keeps text usage at a minimum as the plot’s complex parts can be delivered via images.

Graphic novels and plays are relatively similar. They use graphical material, still images, and motion pictures, respectively, as delivery tools but in different ways. A graphic novel can be equated to a summarized form of a play delivered using still images of some of the scenes in the play. Graphic novels’ images are good for reluctant readers. It is an alternative that can keep them engaged and motivated to read plots instead of how they feel when dealing with textual material. While it has close similarities to plays, graphic novels are a much cheaper way of delivering content to a wider audience.

Illustrations are an added advantage when portraying other literary content elements, especially when it is young minds that are engaged. Children and young people can understand the concept of character development and follow the plot. Graphic novels are also known to be superior to other forms of literature that consist of text only in this context. The novel’s graphical material makes it easier for a child to follow the story and comprehend it faster. That is because the minds of readers are wired to process graphics faster than text. The eyes are drawn to images more compared to text because images are good to look at.

Symbols and metaphors used in the “Maus” text are supplemented with images to understand the novel with ease. Some Jews in one of the episodes said, “The Germans intended to make an example of them!” (Spiegelman, 1986) The text supplements graphics comprehension and makes the novel easier to comprehend as it is decoded faster and analyzed more easily. Images do not replace the text in the story but instead reinforce it. Fast readers can skim through a novel by previewing the images to get the story’s general plot.

Spiegelman used graphics to reinforce his story. Another reason was to shorten the script of the novel by using images. The images accurately describe his father’s experiences in the interview that sets up the novel; content acquired through the Maus project. More importantly, it allowed the readers to read “Maus” with more ease and faster and consequently read the novel repeatedly. That cemented the story with the help of this simple technique. In “Maus,” Spiegelman paired text with great illustrations to deliver the best version of the story, which was also captivating.

Even so, that does not mean that graphic novels are the best way to deliver content to readers. One of the biggest challenges to its usage is the cost and time required to produce graphic novels. It would be more costly to print the images and other graphics for a graphic novel than the print a normal textual novel. It also takes more time to print and prepare the whole novel’s parts because of the graphics.

The experience of reading “Maus” compares to that of reading comic books as per the present-day scenario. One can read the story, which, in most cases, is short and clear in terms of text. To ensure that content is not lost, images are leveraged to understand better which is also easier to get. Maus’s images enhanced the novel’s text and made it even better to read as captivating images. The delivery was also good, and the images portrayed a clear plot as it developed.

The images also made it easier to navigate the small divide that exists between creativity and marginalization. The Holocaust story is very sensitive but was effectively handled with the use of imagery and symbolism in the novel. It was crucial to eliminate any elements that could have proven offensive in the text, and Spiegelman achieved that with perfection.

References

Dallacqua, A. K. (2012). Exploring the Connection between Graphic Novel and Film. English Journal, 102(2), 64. http://search.proquest.com/openview/4a3475a89f842efc18cc1d0733cfcb9a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=42045Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus I. Pantheon.

Valcheff, M. (2015). Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, “Maus” tells the story of his family, in particular his father’s…. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@mvalche/art-spiegelman-s-graphic-novel-maus-tells-the-story-of-his-family-in-particular-his-father-s-f4312d3e682.