Post #13

Art Spiegleman's Maus is a piece of work that uses anecdotal evidence to tell a story about the Holocaust, on the surface. However, it also employs many underlying themes to tell that story. Maus is also a story about luck and survival of the fittest, but it is also a story about guilt, personal survivor's guilt that Vladek feels, and guilt that Art feels, when he feels that he isn't a good son to his father. The other two books also employ the usage of guilt in order to make us see their argument, however, not in the same way that Spiegelman has used it. Carr makes us feel guilty of abandoning the simple pleasure of human company for the use of technology, while Safran Foer uses guilt to a much more elevated scale, in having us feel guilty for eating animals. All three authors use guilt as a tool to convey their argument, and they also use that guilt to make the audience think about their text outside of the confines of the book. Spiegelman, just like the other two authors, uses a (long) anecdote to stir up that guilt, while the other two authors use many anecdotes to force that guilt out.