Maus vs. O'Brien

When examining Art Spiegelman’s Maus to O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, the writing styles of each appear very different to one another. Maus is a graphic novel where most of the language is in dialogue and the images set the scene and represent the action. In this novel, Spiegelman is telling his father’s story from his point of view, being his son. He express his father’s story about his experience during the horrific Holocaust through the use of pictures and cartoons. A more comfortable way of expressing it is through the use of art because it diminishes the impact of violence. He uses animals to represent humans in order to set a more calm tone to the inhuman actions that occurred during the Holocaust. Making his characters mice is probably also a way for him to take a step back and away so he can write honestly. Nonetheless, his tone still makes it feel like an emotional story. On the contrary, O’Brien does not try to set any calm tone, his writing is very undisguised, shameless, and upfront about the violence. He is very open about the events that happened during the Vietnam war. He tries to focus mainly on the violence and negative aspects of the war.