English critical/review/response essay on MAUS 1&2 by Art Spiegelman

Hello everyone,

Here are the questions/topics for the next essay.

Whichever topic you choose, I expect that your essay will include an analysis of specific portions of the text (including drawing of course), and though you may write without making reference to both books as a totality (as a whole), you need to keep the whole in mind.

Topic 1.  Did the experience of reading the Maus books change anything about your understanding of any (or all) of the following: the value or importance of sharing stories; the nature of human nature; the nature of social reality; ethnic relations?

Topic 2.  Write a paper on the Maus texts that reconstructs (or deconstructs) your experience of reading them. Show how your response changed, how portions affected you emotionally (viscerally) and intellectually, what questions the text brought to you and vice versa, how your response changed over time, and your overall impression (once finished).

Topic 3. Do you feel you have personally benefitted from reading Art Spiegelman's Maus I and Maus II? (Why or why not?)

The above topics are also 'negotiable' to some extent. What is most important is that I know what topic you are writing on before (or shortly after) you begin writing.