Spiral into suffering

When I first heard of Maus, I immediately compared it to Animal Farm.

But it wasn't until I had read the first book of it, that I realized how much the "graphic" part of the novel helped in developing the story and making it easier to understand and possibly to relive. 

I chose to review this page in the book. It wasn't until recently that I realized that the path they're on resembles that of a Swastika, a symbol of the Nazi power at the time. There is nowhere they can go that they will escape the Nazis. 

The line on the top of the page itself says, "Anja and I didn't have where to go". Vladek says this, but I think Art meant to have "from the Nazis" at the end of that. It was meant to be implied. The more you inspect Art's drawings, nothing is done unintentionally. Every single picture, frame, and spacing is intentional and serves the purpose of furthering the story without any words. Simply pictures. Truthfully, I think this novel was driven not by the words, but the pictures. As we talked about it in class, had it been a regular novel, not a graphic novel, it would not have had the same moving effect.

The Swastika ultimately leads back to itself, a sort of square spiral. It appears never-ending, just like the continuous suffering faced by the persecuted Jews, the Holocaust didn't end. There were those whom the Holocaust had taken their lives away.  And then there were those people who had lost their sense of living to the Holocaust, the survivors, not really survivors, just there. Not part of the world, but lost in their own world of memories, nightmares, and thoughts.