Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis are both considered graphic novels by a multitude of critics, yet some critics think of them in a more specific sense. Common genres used for the two books are memoir and biography. Although Maus and Persepolis are both graphic novels and can be considered memoirs or biographies, they can be more specifically categorized with the genre creative nonfiction, because of the authors’ use of modern frameworks, round characters, and juxtaposition.
Overall, the term graphic novel is not an awful one, both Maus and Persepolis are graphic novels. By the definition in the Encyclopædia Britannica, a graphic novel is “a type of text combining words and images—essentially a comic, although the term …show more content…
In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud states that “the world of comics is a huge and varied one,” (4) which goes for both traditional non-pictorial literature and graphic novels. To solve the problem of the broad cloaking terms, we can turn to the filing folders of literature:genres. Maus and Persepolis both seem to fit better under the nonfiction genre, as a good portion of critics define the two books as biographies. Encyclopædia Britannica defines a biography as a “form of literature, commonly considered nonfictional, the subject of which is the life of an individual” (Kendall). Still, this definition holds us back in one sense, are Maus and Persepolis truly …show more content…
In one scene of the book, an image of young boys being blown apart is put just above an image of the author dancing with her friends (Satrapi 102). This image can shock the reader as a result of the immense difference between the two images, drawing them into the story. Darda writes that the scene has the “...jarring gutter points to the impossibility of the face to represent or capture Marji, an impossibility that, Butler suggests, indirectly affirms the human” (43). Using Darda’s and Butler’s idea, one can trace that Satrapi uses the juxtaposition to show that her story was not nearly as difficult as what happened around her, which on form makes her character even more human than
Overall, the term graphic novel is not an awful one, both Maus and Persepolis are graphic novels. By the definition in the Encyclopædia Britannica, a graphic novel is “a type of text combining words and images—essentially a comic, although the term …show more content…
In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud states that “the world of comics is a huge and varied one,” (4) which goes for both traditional non-pictorial literature and graphic novels. To solve the problem of the broad cloaking terms, we can turn to the filing folders of literature:genres. Maus and Persepolis both seem to fit better under the nonfiction genre, as a good portion of critics define the two books as biographies. Encyclopædia Britannica defines a biography as a “form of literature, commonly considered nonfictional, the subject of which is the life of an individual” (Kendall). Still, this definition holds us back in one sense, are Maus and Persepolis truly …show more content…
In one scene of the book, an image of young boys being blown apart is put just above an image of the author dancing with her friends (Satrapi 102). This image can shock the reader as a result of the immense difference between the two images, drawing them into the story. Darda writes that the scene has the “...jarring gutter points to the impossibility of the face to represent or capture Marji, an impossibility that, Butler suggests, indirectly affirms the human” (43). Using Darda’s and Butler’s idea, one can trace that Satrapi uses the juxtaposition to show that her story was not nearly as difficult as what happened around her, which on form makes her character even more human than