Maus2.

So as I sit here, 6:30 in the morning because I caught senioritis, I did not check if any others used this website, so this link might have been repeated.
http://www.docshare.com/doc/158846/Textual-Analysis-of-Art-Spiegelmans-Maus-I-am
            "The comic strip format comes together in a story like this almost like it's the fragments of a photographic memory." Within this "photographic memory," however, the people are portrayed as animals, where each race is assigned a specific animal. Spiegelman presents his characters as animals so we are not reduced down to the stereotypes of what each ethnicity looks like. Either way, we are presented with the stereotype due to the animals. The Nazis are cats, but according to the article, they are not the typical "gentle house cats but as dark dominating figures." Jews are the mice- what cats typically tend to chase and kill- therefore, the mice are the undermined race and portrayed as the weaker ones, the captives. The subject of racism is not just presented in the father’s past. Even though he has gone through so much dealing with racism towards him and the Jewish race, he turns the racism around to an African –American who hitch hikes in Art’s car with him.
            Another helpful thing by using animals instead of humans is that all people can relate to the story if the actual people are not used.  It restricts the personal pain one would feel if they were to read Maus. When you read about the mice as Jews, or cats as Nazis, it distracts the reader in a way we would not connect all Germans to one side and Jews to another. Like when a German reporter is trying to get a story on Art in chapter 2 (I think), the reporter says something like do the German children have to carry the burden of another holocaust story and the depiction that all Germans are bad? Using the animals, it sheds a different kind of light to the holocaust where Spiegelman is trying to minimize the racial connection, but the animals still do in a way that is less noticeable to all. The stereotypes are still presented of each race when using the animals, but if one does not know much of the Jews or Germans, then it is less noticeable. The usage of animals “exaggerates the stereotypical qualities of not only the Jews but the Germans, Poles, and Allies.”