Personal, social, and cultural contexts established by the frame story in MAUSThe use of the frame story, an overarching narrative used to connect a series of loosely related stories, permeate literature. An example of a large-scale frame story - tying together an entire book, not just a short story - can be found in the graphic novel MAUS by Art Spiegelman. Each of the six sections of the story is framed with excerpts of the interaction between Vladek and Art during the "interview" that supposedly took place to create the book. This framing helps us learn more about Vladek's character, which we wouldn't know from his rather flat and emotionless account of the Holocaust. To understand this book, we must also take into account that no literary work exists in a vacuum, and all literature is affected by the social and cultural contexts of its author and reader. MAUS is no exception. In MAUS, the use of frame stories helps establish personal, social, and cultural context for the “main” stories being told. In this effort to give literary works some sort of context, it seems that there are three "filters" through which any literary work can be viewed. The first of these is what I will call “personal context,” that is, the information we gather about the prior experiences of the protagonist and other central characters in the work. Obviously, what happened to a person, real or fictional, in the past will indelibly influence their present and future actions and emotions. The second “filter” is the “social context”: the relationships that the characters form with each other. (In MAUS, I will also call this the "family" context, since the central relationship in the book is...... middle of paper ...... the graphic novel. This helps clarify the cultural context .context in which Vladek sees himself. In conclusion, three different types of context are established by the "framework story" in the book. These are the personal, social and cultural contexts that I have described. -may be others, but these three seem to be the most essential elements for understanding the interaction of literature with its culture of origin. Since there is a reader response critique, perhaps we could. be propose a school of cultural response criticism, dedicated to understanding the ideas represented in literature in light of the environment in which they were created "Captured in a photograph, without a frame, you see it standing but. you see no face to blame. "Tara MacLean, "Let Her Smell the Rain" Works Cited: Spiegelman, Art. York, Toronto: Random House, Inc... 1973.