MAUS

I don't know that I fully understood the message of the MAUS comic. I think that Spiegelman depicted Jewish people as mice because back in the time when there was a lot of open Jewish hate during the Holocaust, many newspapers would draw cartoons in them making fun of the way Jews looked and because they had characteristically larger noses people drew them as long nosed rats or mice. I think Spiegelman depicted Jews that way as sort of a play on that idea.I think things that uses visuals have more of an immediate impact on the reader and i think that's how the use of the comic influenced the text.

After reading this I don't think I've changed my ideas about the purpose of art. I don't think that art has an "obligation" to improve the human condition but i think it makes it better if it does, but even just making the human condition know through art is something that's good.