Post 13 - Davis

When considering all of the books we've read throughout this course, I would have to say that Maus is far more similar to Jonathan Safran-Foer's Eating Animals than Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, in a rhetorical sense. The most apparent similarity between the two, in my opinion, would be the ways that both Safran-Foer and Spiegelman both manage to utilize their respective personal experiences to effectively inform readers of real-world issues. The overall tone of both works is very empathetic and haunted by regret, with Safran-Foer persuading readers that they need to question the feelings of animals, and Spiegelman struggling to cope with the guilt imposed upon him by both his mother's suicide, and his father's traumatic war experiences. This is in stark contrast to The Shallows; its tone comes across as somewhat of a droning lecture in comparison, and a rather dry one at that. I think this is mainly due to the issues addressed by each particular book, as people are generally aware of the impacts of World War II and the meat industry, and Spiegelman and Safran-Foer make it relatively clear that they expect this. The internet's impact on human thought processes, however, is a controversy still in its infancy, and Carr's tone seems rather pretentious in addressing this, as if it's his duty to inform the world of such an important issue.