GRAPHIC NOVEL

Choose ONE of the graphic novels listed above (Maus or Persepolis).

Discuss the content and visual strategies the author/illustrator uses to convey complex cultural, personal,

and historical information. Apply at least 3 specific concepts learned from ‘Understanding Comics’ to the

visual strategies employed by the author / artist.  You can describe specific plot points of the story if

they inform your discussion but, DO NOT SUMMARIZE the entire book. Do you think the graphic novel an

effective tool to deal with complex issues? Yes or no, describe specific sequences in the book that support

your argument.   Cite any sources.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Volume 1, By Art Spiegelman

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about

the Holocaust’. The first volume introduces readers to Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s

Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story,

and history itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in

shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does,

the unspeakable through the diminutive.

OR

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful

black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen,

years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the

devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the

great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined

with the history of her country.

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