week 7 maus: 6

 I found the narrative style of Maus was extremely effective, jumping between the stories of the father telling his story and the actual story itself. It also helped to make it feel more real. with things like how the son is a comic artist who wants to do a story on the war, and also elements like the father telling his son not to include certain stories, helps to show just how autobiographical this narrative is. It helps to ground this story where most of the characters are anamorphic mice.

I will say I wasn't super pleased with the art style and mouse imagery the author used. There is no real reason to draw them as mice, the story works just as well if not better with real humans. it's not even an allegory they talk about real people, places and events throughout the story and it would help to better sell the biopic nature of the narrative. also the drawings are not the best with facial expressions minimized due to the style of the artist. This hindered a lot of the emotional beats of the story. His gestures are very nice, but the lack of facial expressions is really killing a lot of the narrative beats for me.  That being said, I do think the scratchy style of drawing did well to help the dramatic and dark tone of the narrative.

it can be argued that by turning the characters into mice, the author is seeking to make the story more digestible for a wider range of audiences. making them human can be seen as being too real and too graphic and too traumatic for people who might be directly connected to it, so this adds a level of abstraction that may be necessary for the story to become as widespread as it has become. Thus you could say the style led directly to the success of the book and even more so then translating the emotional beats of the story, it allowed the story and its messages to reach more people.

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