Who are we?

The author of this moving comic portrays these stories through powerful images of light and dark which signify many different things. Some images are shaded while others are not, even though all the characters in the comic are of the same species. In this comic, the Jews are shaded and the Nazi's are white. Art Spiegelman chooses to portray these characters in light and dark to symbolize the similarities about salvery vs. WWII. Both races were treated immensely incorrectly. The colors of the people play a major role, concerning the reader, because it shows how the father felt about the war and how he felt about talking about the war. As Spiegelman states before the comic begins, the father was very "reluctant to talk about the war."

If there were no visuals in the Spiegelman comic, then it would be difficult to feel as the father felt when he was talking about the war. The black and white of the comic, and the shading of only selected people force the reading to think about why he uses these effects in his writing, and about how he feels toward the shaded characters and the white ones. The images interact intensely with the text because they help to describe in detail the feelings that the author felt that are hard to assume with out the added images. The visuals serve the purpose to make the reader feel how the father felt and what he thinks about the war and the situation as a hole. Speigelman sets the tone of sadness and disappointment, but also of forgiveness. The layers that you see are his feelings coming out onto paper.