I feel that Maus would be a complicated novel if the characters we not animals.
The drawings in the novel really come to life when you are reading it. You forget that you are looking at mice on the page, because you just want to know what is going to happen next. Art Spiegleman, i believe, did an excellent job to make the reader be able to read a novel about such a terrible event. I also believe, if Art did not put animals as people in the novel, it would be rather difficult. Reason being is, even though people do not like seeing animals get hurt, it puts a different perspective on how the reader thinks of the characters.
I agree with Shelby that Art makes the story easier to read by presenting the characters as animals. Recalling to one part in MAUS I about Art's comics of his mother's death, we almost felt a relief when we flipped the page over and went back into the "animal world". Additionally, it is more obvious to tell the different social ranks between different characters by looking at different type of animals.
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