Potential Maus Thesis Ideas

Okay so this week we are supposed to think about possible thesis topics for the Maus essay. This is definitely one of the more interesting books that I have read in my day but writing an essay for it might be a little harder than I originally thought it would be. I think that in my essay I will most likely be talking about point of view, what it does for the story, how it does it, and why it does it. I will go with point of view mainly because I was interested in how the story switches from Vladek telling his story about Auschwitz to Artie telling about Vladek’s personal life as well as parts of his own. I haven’t ironed out the details yet but that is what the last two days of Christmas break will be for.

I will most definitely use some of the sources that we have gotten in class. I really found that McCloud one to be very interesting and think that it will help prove the point I will be arguing. I don’t know how but I might try to incorporate common misconceptions about graphic novels and how they can tell just as good stories as all other novels if not better than some. I also might use the other article by Linda Hutcheon we got in class. That also had some good insight into this book. I don’t know exactly if I will be using postmodernism, it just seems a little irrelevant to what I will potentially be trying to prove. But if I have a good idea/epiphany I will surely incorporate it into my essay.

Although I haven’t done so yet I most likely will go and look at additional outside sources and see if they can help me in better understanding the seemingly simple yet multi-layered book. So that’s about all for right now.