Comparison of The Shining and Maus I

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The Shining is a 1977 horror novel by Stephen King that is based on events at the Overlook Hotel where the Torrance family is snowed in for the winter which leads to some unfortunate events. Maus I: a Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History is a 1986 graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about the story of his father during the Holocaust. Both of these novels are good stories that are filled with episodes and events that are demonstrated differently. Although the plots of The Shining and Maus 1 bear some minor similarities, the difference between them are more clear, which includes whether the plot is linear and sequential, and the use of stream of consciousness, foreshadowing, and flashbacks. The novel Maus I is story within a story so it goes back and forth from the present and the past, which means the plot is not completely linear and sequential. In the other hand, the novel The Shining is more linear and sequential than Maus I. Both of the novels contains flashbacks and has foreshadowing but The Shining has more foreshadowing than Maus I but less flashbacks. The Shining clearly includes stream of consciousness while in Maus I it is not.
In The Shining, the plot is sequential and linear. The plot is a typical pyramid structure with a steeper falling action. The novel starts with the exposition which states who the novel is about, which in this case is the Torrance family, their background, their characteristics, the setting of the story, and what the problem might be. This goes on until they start to settle in the Overlook Hotel. Then it goes on to the rising actions, which are the supernatural events that happened like the shining with Danny and Holloran, room 217, the hedges, and the elevator incident. Then it reaches the cli...

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...th from the past and present it gives the reader a better understanding of how not only it has effected him but also his son Artie and Anja. A stream of consciousness was not very much used in Maus I because everything was told as a story.
Maus I and The Shining are completely different types of novels, one graphic and the other horror. The differences between the plots of both are more pronounced. One of them has the typical pyramid structure plot while the other has more of a half pyramid and being continued in Maus II. The Shining is sequential and linear and Maus I is not sequential and non-linear. Flashbacks are more essential to Maus I and foreshadow is more to The Shining.

Works Cited
King, Stephen. The Shining. New York: Doubleday, 1977. Print.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: a Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Print.

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