In Jim Powell's Postmodernism for Beginners, he says "To attempt to represent Auschwitz in language--to reduce the degradation, death and stench to a concept--drowns out the screams.  According to Lyotard, it is therefore necessary that the Holocaust remains immemorial--that it remains that which cannot be remembered--but also that which cannot be forgotten.  Thus, any art attempting to represent the Holocaust should continue to haunt us with its inability to represent the unrepresentable, to say the unsayable.  It should continue to haunt us with the feeling that there is something Other than representation."  This brings to light a very important question: How can we talk about heavy, heavy topics like the holocaust without belittling the magnitude of the horror?  Is it through, art?  Literature?  Music?!??  Personal relationships?!?!?!?  Art Spiegelman attempts to talk about the holocaust in his graphic novel Maus.  His use of the graphic novel provides several aspects that are able to attempt to represent the horrors of Auschwitz for better than some trashy novella.  One way he does this is through his explicit use of visual rhetoric.

some visual rhetoric

A Map is shown above, showing the logistics of a long arduous march, as well as showing the realities of discrimination put on the shoulders of countless victims by showing a large mass of people on march.  A level of verisimilitude is also shown here by including an actual map layered over a mass of suffering individuals.  Maus embellishes the piece with symbolism, motifs, character develop, and like 18 layers of "meta"

Another example of World War Two literature to Maus to is Shostakovitch's Eighth Symphony, a powerful Russian piece of music about tragedy and chaos.  It was written right after the Russian won battle of Stalingrad, the turning point in the war for Russia.  It's dissonant patterns and tortured attitude allows for pensive thematic development and rich emotional context.

For the narrative type story that Maus is, a piece of music, or even straight up literature does not do it justice.  Maus creates a level of verisimilitude and nonlinear storytelling that is simply not suited for other mediums.  The graphic novel guides the reader to impactful realizations about the supported themes while not force feeding the information to the reader.