I have read Maus four times now. Every single time I take back a different emotion, sense, and overall opinion of the work. I agree with Pierce’s “first reader” comment that approaching Maus on the blog is intimidating, even a bit cold, because of the nature of the content. However, after reading this book in different contexts (for myself, for a history class, for English in high school, and now for graphic novel) I am still moved by the work every time. Some critics will say that Spiegelman chose to portray a horrible event such as the Holocaust through the character depictions of mice, cats, and pigs to further desensitize the event but I strongly disagree. There are certain panels of Maus that are so graphic, clearly not as graphic as the real thing, but they pull at your heartstrings nonetheless. In my previous readings of the work in addition to doing a ton of research, I have noticed that in Maus that the physical pen strokes made by Speigelman makes carry just as much emotional weight as the dialogue and images themselves. The stern, thick marks are as influential are the words. A lot of the frames appear to be overbearing with small text and images of despair but I find that the nature of the images bear the most emotional weight.

I will be interested to see how everyone else perceives the books after further discussion and a more in-depth look of the plot and text; and will be interested to see if anyone agrees with me.