Spiegelman and Vonnegut

There are many differences between Spiegelman’s and Vonnegut’s story telling. The most obvious is that Vonnegut’s is a novel and Spiegelman’s is a graphic novel. Spiegelman shows no signs that he is going to drift into the land of science fiction, while one could argue that Vonnegut’s book clearly fits into the science fiction genre. It is interesting that all of the Jewish characters in Spiegelman’s story are represented as mice, yet if one was to read the text without the graphics, they would have no idea of this. To me, this is nowhere near as strange as the aliens in Vonnegut’s story. In fact, while I have little experience with graphic novels, I do know that several comic strips have animal characters who seem to live human lives. One similarity between the way that Vonnegut and Spiegelman tell their stories is that the narrative of the war is not presented straight through, it is broken up. In Vonnegut, this was quite a bit more confusing because even the overall order was not chronological. In Spiegelman the narrative is broken up because the father, Vladek, becomes distracted by things while telling his son, Art, about the war. Vladek also sometimes briefly skips ahead to share a shorter anecdote, but this is usually set straight by Art bringing his dad back to what they were previously talking about. One thing that I like about Spiegelman’s story is the voice. Vladek, who is telling the majority of the story, has an accent and sometimes his diction and syntax show this clearly. I like that the way the story is written does not correct these deviations from what we would likely consider normal or fluent english. I also enjoy that the manner in which the narrative is structured really conveys the feeling of a father talking to his son and telling his son about his past. I find that it makes it easier to follow the chronology of the story, even with the interruptions in the war narrative, such as when Art dropps ashes on the floor. I usually do not care for graphic novels, but I prefer Spiegelman to Vonnegut. (Of course, I do not tend to enjoy science fiction either.)