Maus (comics) - Style

Style

Spiegelman's perceived audacity in using the Holocaust as his subject was compounded by his use of comics to tell the story. The medium itself was viewed in the English-speaking world as being inherently trivial, thus degrading the subject matter, especially as he used animal heads in place of recognizably human ones. Funny animals have been a staple of comics, and while they have traditionally been thought of as being for children, the underground had long made use of them in adult stories, notably in Robert Crumb's work (such as Fritz the Cat) which showed that the genre could "open up the way to a paradoxical narrative realism" that Maus would exploit.

Ostensibly about the Holocaust, the story becomes sublimated by the frame tale of Art interviewing and interacting with his father. Art's "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" is also encompassed by the frame. It is a striking visual and thematic contrast with the rest of the book. It depicts all the characters in human form in a surreal, German Expressionist woodcut style inspired by Lynd Ward.

The line between the frame and the world is bolded by comments such as when Spiegelman, neurotically trying to deal with what Maus is becoming for him, says to his wife, "You'd never let me do so much talking without interrupting if this were real life." When a prisoner whom the Nazis believe to be a Jew claims to be German, Spiegelman is confronted with the difficulty of whether to present this character as a cat or a mouse. Throughout the book, Spiegelman incorporates and highlights banal details from his father's tales, sometimes humorous or ironic, giving a lightness and humanity to the story which "helps carry the weight of the unbearable historical realities".

Spiegelman started taking down his interviews with Vladek on paper, but quickly switched to a tape recorder, face-to-face or over the phone. Spiegelman often condensed Vladek's words, but occasionally added to the dialogue, or synthesized multiple retellings into a single portrayal.

Spiegelman worried about the effect that his organizing of Vladek's story would have on its authenticity. In the end, he eschewed a more Joycean approach and settled on a linear narrative he thought would be better at "getting things across". He also strove to present how the book was recorded and organized as an important part of the book itself, expressing the "sense of an interview shaped by a relationship".