The second book of Maus depicts Jews burning in the ovens of aushwitgz. Vladeck provides a horrifying narration of how this takes place, and the image itself does not hold back. This scene can be interpreted as representative of what the book is trying to do overall. Because the book is dealing in simplistic, cartoon drawings, it is able to show graphic and disturbing content in an objective way. If the book contained drawings of real people, it wouldn't be able to display the same horrific details. A book that illustrated people burning alive,as well as other horrific events would not be a very successful one. But with the simplistic drawings employed by Spiegelman, the reader can feel more detached, much as Spiegelman himself does. The story is being told by someone who wasn't actually there, so even though the events are very accurate, they feel less disturbing. Because the cartoons are easier to swallow, many people can read about horrifying events that would otherwise be nearly unreadable. The lack of detail in the panels removes subjectivity, and allows the book to show only the facts. We see only what actually happen, and Spiegelman doesn't attempt a guess at facial expressions or excess dialogue. Maus gets away with so much because of all that it chooses to leave out
Allow me to play you out...
(I don't have a lot of holocaust themed music so instead here's one of the happiest songs I know to balance out all the Maus discussion)
