I, like many people, have had to read Maus prior to taking this class, but I find myself getting so much more out of it in this second reading. I had grown up in a house that comics were definitely seen as legitimate media especially considering we had just as many comics on our shelves as we did 'ordinary' books, but even then I found it odd that we were covering a comic in an English class. The moment we started discussing the novel though, we didn't treat it much different than any other book. Honestly I'm not surprised that Maus is considered to be the graphic novel that really legitimized the medium.
The non-fictional nature of the story has a lot to do with how accepted it was amongst general audiences. The subject matter, being a holocaust survivor's tale, is probably about as serious as you can get as far as literary topics. It would be much harder for people to dismiss Maus as being 'a thing for kids' or as 'just a cartoon' since everything written in it is an actual account of one of the most terrible events to occur in human history. The only thing that really 'softens' the account too is the fact that the people are drawn as animals. Interestingly, anthropomorphic characters is very common amongst 'cartoons' but even so its practically impossible to confuse Maus for a cartoon.
While the words of Maus would easily be enough to tell the story and get the mood across, the art adds an extra level of understanding to the mood Art is trying to get across. By casting the groups of people as animals, it helps to express how these people were seen as. Cats are predators so its not a stretch to see why Art portrays Nazis as them. Mice are the usual prey of Cats so the Jewish people as Mice makes sense as well. The Americans rescued the Jewish people from camps so they are Dogs which are usually portrayed as being the enemies of Cats. Pigs are outside this food chain so they represent the Polish people who were overall neutral aside from Germany invading them. Some could see this animal comparison as offensive, but I believe the visual difference of having each 'race' as being a different animal helps to show exactly how they were seen during the time all of these events were going on. Other books have used animals in a similar way, the novel Animal Farm coming to mind, but in Maus it feels more metaphorical.
The way the story is told is also odd. It's not an auto biography at least not in the usual sense. The history in Poland is not Art's but a large portion of the story is just Art talking to his dad, giving the reader a feeling of practically being in the room as Vladek is talking. It's told in the style of an interview but Vladek keeps breaking away the story as he does things like drop his pill bottle and complain. I heard that Art took audio recordings as he talked to his dad. Its interesting that he would keep these distractions and actually illustrate them. These even evolve into an odd 'side plot' that deals with the relationship between Art and his father.
Despite it being a Holocaust survival tale, in the 'modern' story, Art doesn't particularly portray his dad in the best light. He constantly complains and is generally unpleasant to Mala. This is all understandable why he acts this way since Art opens the graphic novel saying how his mother committed suicide and Valdek has suffered two heart attacks.
All this together makes Maus a very raw tale. It has great literary and historical merit while also being a very raw, amazing comic.
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