What Are Graphic Novels: Are They Worthy Of Being Taught?
Graphic Novels: Are They Worthy of Being Taught?
Since the dawn of man to present day, illustrations have always been an effective way of storytelling. From cave paintings to graphic novels, this form of literature has always been able to tell stories the same way more traditional works have done. In Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels Maus I and Maus II, he looks into the horrid events of the Holocaust by interviewing his father, Vladek Spiegelman, who was a Jew living in Auschwitz, Poland at the time. Through interviewing his father, Spiegelman learns of the vile events that his father has gone through. He retells his father’s experiences through his detailed works of art. Although many are against graphic novels and call them unorthodox, graphic …show more content…
This is shown in Spiegelman's Maus I when Vladek talks about how the Jews children were treated. He says, "Some kids were screaming and screaming. They couldn’t stop. So the Germans swinged them by the legs against the wall…and they never anymore screamed" (Spiegelman 108). Vladek’s witness to these gruesome executions show us what victims of the Holocaust endured. It educates the audience and it puts the readers in the shoes of the victims and what they underwent. Graphic novels also serve a purpose of educating readers through the use of short texts in the panels. When Art was driving with his wife he tells her of his conflicting feelings by stating, “I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having an easier life than they did… I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest dream” (Spiegelman 16). Since his father went through the Holocaust while he didn't, it makes him think about his father’s perspective and it educates him about what his father endured. Just as Art analysed the Holocaust from interviewing his father, through his art, his graphic novels also allows the reader to look into the events of the Holocaust. There may be a lot of lessons students are missing out on just because graphic novels are not used very often within an English
Since the dawn of man to present day, illustrations have always been an effective way of storytelling. From cave paintings to graphic novels, this form of literature has always been able to tell stories the same way more traditional works have done. In Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels Maus I and Maus II, he looks into the horrid events of the Holocaust by interviewing his father, Vladek Spiegelman, who was a Jew living in Auschwitz, Poland at the time. Through interviewing his father, Spiegelman learns of the vile events that his father has gone through. He retells his father’s experiences through his detailed works of art. Although many are against graphic novels and call them unorthodox, graphic …show more content…
This is shown in Spiegelman's Maus I when Vladek talks about how the Jews children were treated. He says, "Some kids were screaming and screaming. They couldn’t stop. So the Germans swinged them by the legs against the wall…and they never anymore screamed" (Spiegelman 108). Vladek’s witness to these gruesome executions show us what victims of the Holocaust endured. It educates the audience and it puts the readers in the shoes of the victims and what they underwent. Graphic novels also serve a purpose of educating readers through the use of short texts in the panels. When Art was driving with his wife he tells her of his conflicting feelings by stating, “I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having an easier life than they did… I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest dream” (Spiegelman 16). Since his father went through the Holocaust while he didn't, it makes him think about his father’s perspective and it educates him about what his father endured. Just as Art analysed the Holocaust from interviewing his father, through his art, his graphic novels also allows the reader to look into the events of the Holocaust. There may be a lot of lessons students are missing out on just because graphic novels are not used very often within an English