One element is ‘imagery’, and that technique in Maus compares with Night because Maus is a graphic novel with explanations and Night is a literary novel where one draws out his own picture in his mind. With Night, it all depends on the person’s imagination and how they create their own illustrations in their head by reading the text. While in Maus, Spiegelman shows us his illustrations to give his own perspective on the story. In the first and second panel on page 85 in Maus, the reader can see the normal layout of a strip, but in panels’ three to four, things start to get interesting. First of all, we see a frame within a frame such that when the reader reads the third panel, his eyes will skim over the illustrations on the fourth panel to read the next narrative block. It goes from “I saw them…”, and then we look at the illustrations, to “They hanged there one full week”. The illustration in the fourth panel is probably one of the most horrific in the whole of Maus because the reader sees four Jews/mice hanging with crowds of people staring at the gallows and a German/cat standing guard. There is a definite sense of personification as the German cat looks very human since he has his helmet on and is facing away from us, and we do not see the four Jew mice’s face. In Night however, the Jews’ faces are described in detail. “He was pale but seemed more solemn than frightened. His manacled hands did not tremble.” “… filed past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue hanging
One element is ‘imagery’, and that technique in Maus compares with Night because Maus is a graphic novel with explanations and Night is a literary novel where one draws out his own picture in his mind. With Night, it all depends on the person’s imagination and how they create their own illustrations in their head by reading the text. While in Maus, Spiegelman shows us his illustrations to give his own perspective on the story. In the first and second panel on page 85 in Maus, the reader can see the normal layout of a strip, but in panels’ three to four, things start to get interesting. First of all, we see a frame within a frame such that when the reader reads the third panel, his eyes will skim over the illustrations on the fourth panel to read the next narrative block. It goes from “I saw them…”, and then we look at the illustrations, to “They hanged there one full week”. The illustration in the fourth panel is probably one of the most horrific in the whole of Maus because the reader sees four Jews/mice hanging with crowds of people staring at the gallows and a German/cat standing guard. There is a definite sense of personification as the German cat looks very human since he has his helmet on and is facing away from us, and we do not see the four Jew mice’s face. In Night however, the Jews’ faces are described in detail. “He was pale but seemed more solemn than frightened. His manacled hands did not tremble.” “… filed past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue hanging