The first time I read Maus was in my freshman year of high school in English class, and I remember feeling for the first time the true horror of the Holocaust. Of course, I had always known it was horrific, but this biographical account, compiled with the striking visuals, made it hit me hard. Speigelman may use cute animals in place of humans, but does not soften the depictions of torture and killings. It is a relief to cut back to modern scenes of Speigelman and his father, as a reminder that they did make it out of the concentration camps and live peacefully, though haunted by the past. Speigelman's decision to tell the story in his father's exact words, rather than reword it, lets us see the real struggle faced by his father to recount the story, often trying to avoid getting to the grittiness of his trauma.