Authenticity

In Maus, Art Spiegelman portrayed the Holocaust in a very unique way.  He write this story as a graphic novel with the Germans as cats, the Jews as mice, and the Poles as pigs.  I found this to be very effective because it shows us how the people thought of each other in that time.  Although everyone in the story is a human, Spiegelman depicts them as different species.  The jews were no different from the Poles. A lot of the Jews were Poles, but it just showed how the Nazis saw them as different from themselves, as inhuman because of their religion.
Additionally, Art Spiegelman did not only tell the story of his father in the Holocaust, but he also included the stories of his visits with his father.  It shows the readers not only the man he was during the war, but also the man he became afterwards.  The readers get to see how the war affected Vladek even many years later. It completely shifted his personality and changed him from this kind loving man to a sad stingy one. 
Lastly, I really enjoyed how accurate Spiegelman was with his father's words.  While reading, I can hear his fathers accent by the way he phrases sentences.  I could really connect with it because it reminds me of the way my exchange student speaks English.  The translations arent always the same between languages and Spiegelman does a great job of capturing that.  It makes the story feel more authentic.

Art Spiegelman's Storytelling

Spiegelman's storytelling is incredibly engaging and, in a sense, almost lighthearted. Using the concept of animals as depiction of the Nazis, Polish, and Jews, one can quickly find themselves reading what could almost be a children's book. Moreover, Spiegelman's use of his father's ability to get sidetracked adds for a unique sense of comic relief. Additionally during the storytelling, Spiegelman's father recalls events in a humorous tone. For example, when his father and mother gave birth to Spiegelman's late brother, they called him "Heil Hitler" because of a hand motion his brother would always do when he was an infant. It is interesting that Spiegelman and his father have the ability to provide comic relief when telling such a tragic and unfortunate story.

When Spiegelman's father recalls his story, the stream of conscious-like method puts the reader in the room with the two of them. This type of story telling is very intimate and oftentimes makes the book engaging and hard to put down. In addition, when his father gets sidetracked from telling the "meaty" details and starts talking about his love interests etc., the reader gets to see a true, forthcoming side of the two Spiegelman's. Although Art feels obvious frustration when his father does get off topic, it remains very interesting to the reader because of the insight you can get about how their family is/was.

Anthropomorphism

Art Spiegelman's depiction of the Jewish people as mice, the Polish as pigs and the Nazi's as cats completely changes the way you perceive the characters. Mice invoke an image of infestation, that they are not supposed to be here and they need to be exterminated from their lands. This would be used in German propaganda to convince the people that this was necessary to win the war and be the superior race. By convincing their citizens that the Jewish were an infestation it allowed for them to "disappear"  and the citizens to rejoice. This image is used directly by Spiegleman when he shows the town with banner hanging over head reading "This town is Jew free". The use of mice also induces images of science experiments preformed on mice in labs. The Nazi's would preform all different kinds of experiments on the Jewish people in concentration camps, specifically Auschwitz and Mauthausen.

The imagery behind the cat as the Nazi's is a pretty obvious choice after picking mice for the Jews. While it is known that cat catch mice this maybe the first representation in media that I have seen where the cat actually catches the mice. But the cat does not get Vladek or the other survivors in the end which is the point of part one titled "The Survivors Tale".

The one imagery I did not understand was the Polish peoples depiction as pigs. I would have understood had this been written from the German perspective as they held an extremely low view of Pol's. But the Spiegelman's knew good Polish people and while there were obviously Pol's who were anti-Semitic to categorize them all as pigs seems harsh.

Similarities & Differences

One of the main differences between O’brien’s storytelling and speigelman’s is Speigelman’s use of pictures throughout his story telling. I find that these little portraits pertaining to the story help the reader connect better with what he is saying as the readers can get a visual image of Speigelman rather than creating their own. Preferably I like Speigleman’s way of storytelling mainly because the pictures are entertaining. Another thing different between the two are all of O’brien’s stories may not be the truth as a true war story is never a true one he mentions. So far Speigelman’s stories seem to be true rather than exaggerated or told a different way from what actually happened. One thing similar I noticed between O’brien’s and Speigleman’s writing style is they seem to stop in the middle of telling a story and say something completely random for example in Maus he is in the middle of explaining how he had one hour to clean a stable and in the middle of it he stops to say “you’re dropping on the carpet cigarette ashes. You want it should be like a stable here?” (Speigleman 52). Throughout The Things They Carried O’brien does this much throughout his book.

Universality Through Images

The main difference between Spiegelman's writing and O'Brien's writing is that Spiegelman makes the reader feel as if they are a part of the story, while O'Brien alienates the reader and informs the reader that they will never understand the soldier's experiences. It is a great choice of Spiegelman not to separate the reader from the story because it allows the reader to connect with the characters on a deeper level. O'Brien does not allow for that connection to take place nor does he want it to. And while this distance does serve a higher purpose in his writing in order to present examples of PTSD, I find that Spiegelman's writing is more universal.

I also find Spiegelman's simplistic stylization a genius choice alongside his comics. The images like a film very much speak for themselves. His word choice becomes more selective and therefore, he is able to shed more depth. Many of his sentences contain such definitive wisdom. For example after Art falls down from playing with his friends and they refuse to help him, his father, Vladeck reflects, "Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week then you could see what it is, friends!" (Spiegelman 6). This line is filled with so much memory and emotion of a Holocaust survivor that the reader is left awed before the book has even begun.

O'Brien and Spiegelman

 O’Brien and Spiegelman are similar storytellers in the way they both jump from past to present. For example in O’Brien’s story “Speaking of Courage,” the character Bowker goes back and forth from telling his story of war, to his currently situation, driving around the lake in his home town. In Maus, Spiegelman writes in a similar manner, sharing his father’s story, than jumping to his current situation, which is sitting in a room talking to his father. Another similarity both storytellers share is the technique of avoidance. In the story, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien uses the avoidance technique when sharing the story about his comrade dying. He shares the story, then interrupts the story to tell a different story, and then he returns to finishing the original story. Spiegelman does something similar in his story telling when talking about when he was drafted to war. Right after he tells his son about his drafting letter he follows up by saying that’s enough for today, and ends the conversation.

Both novels are different for obvious reasons. Maus is written as a comic strip in and a more creative fashion. Maus uses symbolism by portraying the Nazi’s as cats and the Jew’s as mice. The Things They Carried is written in a more realistic fashion. I enjoy the way Maus is written because it keeps my attention and draws me in with the illustrations and the story line jumping from past to present. 

Similarities

One scene in Maus really reminded me of The Things They Carried. On pages 46-50, Vladek gets drafted into the war, but his father tries to starve him so Vladek would fail his medical examination. He did fail the first time but the second time, Vladek couldn’t deal with the starvation again and ended up on the battlefield where he shot a man dressed as a tree. This is like how Tim O’Brien drove all the way to the boarder of Canada only to give up and go to war. And the tree man is like the Vietnamese soldier in “The Man I Killed” that O’Brien’s character kills. However, Vladek is much less shaken about the experience than O'brien is. Instead of staring at the man and thinking about what sort of life he might have had, Vladek thinks to himself, “Well at least I did something” (50). This difference in reaction probably has something to do with the nobility of the cause. While O'Brien never believed in the Vietnam War, Vladek was fighting for his freedom and that of his family.