As Art sits at the drawing table, beneath him lies a pile of emaciated Jewish bodies, seemingly unnoticed as journalists and businessmen clamber over them (II.41 ). These bodies represent the grave nature of Art's subject matter, the millions of dead Jews demanding that their story be told accurately, that the atrocity of their killers not be trivialized. And at first glance, as we see loosely drawn animal versions of the soldiers fighting in one of history's most terrible wars, it may seem that Art's book embodies this trivialization. But as we delve deeper into his world, we soon discover the rich depth his medium offers in its opportunity for vivid metaphors and illuminating perspectives. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. Maus tells not only the heartbreaking story of Vladek's survival, but also the story of Artie coming to terms with his father's experiences. These two worlds and the cultural contexts associated with them are constantly juxtaposed as the narrative seamlessly switches between them, the characters and backdrop instantly providing context for any given panel. For example, among the myriad examples of how Vladek was the victim of Nazi anti-Semitic treatment is a scene in which we learn that he himself is just as racist towards blacks, or “shvartsers”, as he calls them, as the Nazis were towards him (II.98-100). Vladek doesn't even think it makes sense to compare blacks and Jews. This stark contrast between what we read and what we would expect at first glance exists because the two stories are so intertwined; we can't help but compare Vladek and the Nazis, and the similarities we find are uncanny. Art's choice to include his previous work, Prisoner on the Infernal Planet (I.100-103), without modification is interesting. The short segment is chronologically midway between the two main narratives and helps tie them together. We get a sense of how the Holocaust affected Art's parents and how they in turn affected him, their emotional instability mixes his emotions so that he ends up blaming them, the Holocaust and everything that crosses the mind. By including the main autobiographical narrative, we get a glimpse of both Art's difficulty understanding his parents' experiences and his father's difficulty understanding that his son is living in a new era, far removed from the Holocaust. We can take the familiar place of Art and, like him, see his father's story through his father's eyes. Some memories are so important to us, so fiercely terrifying or intensely pleasurable, that the sight sticks in our minds, every little detail of the Art. the scene captured unforgettably. No representation, whether words, images, or film, can do these moments the justice they deserve, but Art's expressive drawings come very close. We get a glimpse of what it might have been like for Vladek, watching the burning bodies, watching the gasoline and human fat poured to speed up the fire (II.72). The art depicts these intense memories of Vladek's experience with subtly different drawings, using heavy lines and deep, dark shadows so that the emotion fades from the page. There are no comics to represent a passage of time; the memory is condensed into a single moment, frozen, captured on the page as it was captured in Vladek's memory. These evocative panels transport us directly into Vladek's point of view and could never exist in any other medium. Therecomic form also allows Spiegelman to use symbols to express moods and feelings. When Vladek and Anja leave the ghetto and start walking towards Sosnowiec, they feel lost, they don't know what comes next as they look for a place to stay and hide (I.125). The art encapsulates this feeling of nervous suspense with the casual inclusion of swastika-shaped crosses, and this subtle symbolism immediately conveys a torrent of information. Even though they are close to home, they feel like they are in a foreign world. They realize that they have no choice but to go down the Nazi path, knowing that they could get into trouble at any moment. And what appears to be a crematorium in the background suggests that, if they chose the wrong path, they would end up like their many relatives and friends, annihilated by the Nazis. All of this information and emotion is communicated through the powerful illustration of a single panel, a testament to the suitability of the comic medium for the subject matter of Art. One of the most obvious examples of symbolism in Maus are the animal-headed characters. Anthropomorphic animals, of course, are nothing new in the world of comics; we don't think twice about the absurdity of talking rodents and easily accept the almost cliché relationship between cats and mice that we find in Maus. But unlike Tom and Jerry, whose animal roles are only depicted literally, Art's animal heads are used to represent stereotypes associated with different groups in the social arena of the time. The Germans are represented by cats, instinctive Jewish mouse hunters, seen in turn as parasites to be exterminated; This association of rats with Jews may be based on the German anti-Semitic propaganda film, The Eternal Jew, in which a pack of rats emerging from a sewer is juxtaposed with Jews in a crowded street of a Polish ghetto1. The mouse metaphor also captures the resourcefulness and scavenger nature of mice, as well as their inability to ever be completely wiped out. And just as cats see mice less as bitter enemies than as instinctive food, many Germans were not fully aware of their antagonism towards the Jews, but simply swallowed the propaganda and obeyed orders. The separation of the characters into distinct species may at first appear to be trivializing and unnecessary, but it effectively captures the harsh stratification that existed during the World War II era. Adolf Hitler's quote, "the Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human", embodies the view of many Nazis who truly saw the Jews as a separate species. At one point, a mouse claims that he is actually German and that he should be relieved of the harsh treatment meted out to Jews. Spiegelman drew the character twice, once as a mouse and once as a cat; for the Germans there was no middle ground and their identification of the man as Jewish ensured his premature death (II.50). However, individual characters are given the choice to live up to those stereotypes or move away from them. We see the Jewish police forcibly send Vladek's grandparents – fellow mice – to Auschwitz to be killed along with millions of other Jews (II.87). We hear about a German officer's girlfriend who convinced him to spare hundreds of Jews (II.108). And we meet both a Pole who informs the Gestapo to hide Jews (I.113), and a Pole who accepts Jews into his home to hide them from Nazi patrols (I.141). What transpires is not how each character conforms to the stereotypes linked to their species, but how, fundamentally, there is no difference between mice, cats and pigs; how, indeed, there are cruel members and.