Maus Rhetoric Analysis

The Holocaust was a terrible event that resulted from a world at war, but it wasn’t just an event that made it so tragic, it was the destruction of the lives of Jewish people who did not deserve what they got. Rhetoric is a tool used by authors or creators to express their ideas and convey social commentary on their subject matter. Pathos is a form of rhetoric that is meant to provoke pity or sadness in the person receiving the subject work. In the graphic novel Maus, author and son, Art Spiegelman, uses rhetoric through pathos when he tells the story of his father’s life being a Jew in Nazi Germany before being put into the Auschwitz concentration camp. He also includes drawings of how the world was for them when his father was actually telling …show more content…
One day when visiting his father, Art ran into Male who was crying. Worried for her, they started a conversation where she told him how tired she was about his father being so cheap. She said,” Fah! I went through the camps. All our friends went through the camps. Nobody is like him!” (133). Here Mala discusses how upset she is about how Vladek acts. She understands what it was like to go through the camps and how terrible they were but she was able to heal herself. This could show how not everyone who goes through war experiences the same thing. However, war does change people because of the terrible experiences they faced in that time. In Maus II: And Then My Troubles Began, Art and his wife, Françoise, accompany Vladek to the store to go get groceries. However when they become aware that he intends to return food that has been half eaten they stay in the car so they won't be embarrassed. While watching Vladek and the manager yelling at each other, the two discuss their worry for him now that his wife has left. Françoise said,” No. Everything Vladek went through. It’s a miracle he survived.” Art responded,” Uh-huh. But in some ways he didn’t survive” (250 in the complete edition). This shows that Art does not believe his father truly recovered from the war. He was a different man before he was in Auschwitz it's because of everything that he saw and experienced he felt guilt. The war changed him and not for the better. The moral that he had before was lost. He could no longer live the way he did before the war because the memories held him back from moving on. After the war he continued to face tragedy and that made it difficult for him to take back control of his life. Mala also unable to take control of her life. She was a tragic character who complained because of Vladek’s actions, but continued to follow what he said and gave him control over her. The war created an insecurity in

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