The emergence of the graphic novel has allowed new forms of representation to come to the forefront. By combining the visual and the textual, these novels present narratives in a hybrid form that add an extra dimension to our understanding. Often these texts deal with difficult or traumatic experiences, as is the case with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Art Spiegalman’s Maus. These two texts use their own styles to present their history and trauma, by analyzing how the authors accomplish this we can better understand what makes the graphic novel such a successful medium.
Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus, is a biographical account of his fathers survival as a Jew living in Nazi occupied Poland. The novel is a harrowing account of the lengths Art’s father Vladek went to survive the war. It depicts Vladek’s traumatic struggle in a country where being Jewish was most often a death sentence, he was forced into a ghetto alongside his family and friends and narrowly avoided being shipped to Auschwitz like many he knew. This story is drawn in black and white in a realistic but gritty form, unlike Satrapi’s Persepolis however Spiegelman makes use of shading in the form of cross-hatching in order to add depth to the panels. One of the most interesting choices Spiegelman makes in the novel is his use of zoomorphism, in which every nationality or minority group is depicted as an animal species. The Jews are mice being hunted by the Cat like Germans. The Polish are given the identity of pigs to visibly distinguish themselves from the other non Jewish Poles. This addition to the graphic novel adds a surreal aspect to the real and tragic events of the story. It creates an obvious distinction between groups that allows the reader to distinguish exactly who is dominant of whom. Spiegelman also uses this in a clever manner through the use of animal masks on different species. For instance, Vladek is often depicted with a pig mask when attempting to blend into the Polish population; this demonstrates how perilous it was for the Jews to be spotted in Nazi controlled territory. Spigelman’s Maus provides readers a look into the traumatic events of World War II from a survivor’s perspective, his choice of surrealism allows us imagine the graphic events without seeing truly realistic visuals.
Marjanes Satrapi’s Persepolis also uses surrealism in order to depict real and traumatic events in a manner that the reader can process. Through out the graphic novel the reader is faced with panels of corpses and violence. Satrapi does not shy from drawing these scenes; they allow her to demonstrate the horrors of the time period whilst also contrasting it to her life. The surreal aspect within Persepolis differs from the style in which it’s used in Maus however. Persepolis presents violence in the manner a young mind would imagine. With neat and tidy bodies bearing symmetrical fatal injuries. This is what Hillary Chute calls “productive disjuncture” in her study of Persepolis (Chute 103). Chute states that through this technique it becomes apparent of the inability of a naïve and young imagination to depict such traumatic events (Chute 103).
The use of surrealistic elements in both Maus and Persepolis to demonstrate historical and personal trauma pushes readers to imagine and comprehend these events for themselves. This disjuncture between accurate textual narrative and surreal visual depictions creates unique and impactful representation of trauma. The graphic novel format allows this method of narration to be possible, as the authors are able to combine both the visual and textual into unique styles that tell diverse narratives.
Works Cited
Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis.’” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1/2, 2008, pp. 92–110. www.jstor.org/stable/27649737.
Spiegelman, Art, and Art Spiegelman. Maus. London: Penguin, 1992. Print.
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. Paris, France: L’Association, 2003
