There are more differences than similarities between the storytelling of Tim O’Brien and Art Spiegelman.
There are several differences
between the storytelling of Tim O’Brien and Art Spiegelman. Much of this
difference can be rooted in their perspective. O’Brien has firsthand knowledge
of the stories he is telling. Despite some aspects of the stories being false,
he is in many ways a primary source for the experience he relays to his reader.
Spiegelman on the other hand has no firsthand knowledge of the holocaust or of the
experiences in Europe that he writes about. He experiences firsthand the parts
of the novel where it is him and his father in modern day New York, but not of
the experiences his father shares with him. Spiegelman is a secondary source
for this reason.
Another
difference between the storytelling of Tim O’Brien and Art Spiegelman is the
different writing styles they make use of. O’Brien’s novel is a collection of
short stories loosely based on his time in Vietnam. Spiegalman’s novel makes
use of visuals and O’Brien’s does not. Maus
is a graphic novel, and is almost all dialogue and conversation, as opposed to The Things they Carried, which has much
descriptive portions to create a picture in your mind of what O’Brien is
describing. In Maus there is no descriptive
language about what Art, Vladeck, or any of the other characters are feeling. The
reader is forced to interpret Spiegelman’s dialogue, conversations, and actions
that occur between the characters in the graphic novel in order to interpret
their emotions and motivations.
The similarity comes in that both
writers are telling war stories, stories in which the primary characters
overcome adversity, hardship and death. In both stories the primary characters
deal with the deaths of people close to them as well as being forced to travel
to new places.
No comments:
Post a Comment