Assignment Details:
Choose one of the following prompts found in Maus. Your thesis will contain the answer to whichever question you choose.
How does Spiegelman honor the victims without trivializing the Holocaust?
How is Maus more about Art Spiegelman, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, than about Vladek?
How is his use of a cat/mouse metaphor beneficial to understanding Maus and why might it be detrimental?
How are both Vladek and Art Spiegelman unreliable narrators?
What is the purpose of including “Prisoner on Hell Planet” in the middle of the graphic novel Maus?
Since Maus is a graphic novel, don’t forget that at least half of the things you know come from the drawings, so comment as appropriate on the panels, as well as the narrative which support the answer to the question you will investigate. Your essay must be a minimum of 1500-words, use MLA style, and have a works cited. You must quote or paraphrase from all six of the secondary sources, as well as your primary source Maus. Your essay must be written in the 3rd person and include all appropriate graphic novel and literary terms in your essay.
The introduction paragraph should introduce your thesis. Your thesis should answer your research question. This is what makes your thesis argumentative. It also needs to contain the novel's title and author’s name.
Example Thesis: The problem of memory in Art Spiegelman’s Maus is compounded by Vladek’s unreliability and Artie’s estrangement from his parents.
You will have multiple body paragraphs. The first sentence of each body paragraph needs to identify the subject of that paragraph and should tie in directly with the thesis.
Body Paragraph Formula:
Remember to use the formula:
Themes to consider as you add topic and keyword terms to your searches are: Anti-semitism, Bigotry, Civilians in wartime, Class, Families, Genocide, Grief, Identification, Isolation, Luck, Marginalized individuals, memory, nature, Nazism, parent-child relationships, post-traumatic stress disorder, race, redemption, survivor's guilt, survivor stories, transmission of trauma from one generation to the next.
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