Survivor's Guilt

Maus Volume 1, page 102

In a book called Maus, with a picture of mice on the cover, and mice mostly throughout all the pages, this excerpt of the book was an extreme anomaly. This excerpt details the aftermath of Anja's suicide, specifically, her funeral. While there are less words, the illustrations are very elaborate and symbolic. For example, Art himself is wearing same uniform that many Jews would in the camps: a striped uniform. Although he's thousands of miles away from any camp, he still feels imprisoned. In Panel 2, a family friend says "Now you cry! Better you cried when your mother was still alive!". After he admonishes Art, the following boxes are surrounded with elaborate stripes, culminating in the third box, in which every aspect of it is various stripes. This is because what Art is imprisoned in is guilt. The guilt of not being there when it happened, of not being able to stop it, of surviving. In fact, the coffin itself is surrounded in the stripes of guilt, and not only Art is imprisoned, but also Vladek. Sadly, this is one of the several instances Vladek has been imprisoned.
Furthermore, the characters in this excerpt are portrayed as humans, not mice. While the motif of the stripes remains in the illustrations, the motif of mice is gone. This could be because in coping with the death of Anja, Art only had the raw, innate emotions of a human. He could not be classified as a mouse equals Jew in this, but as a human who is just a human. If he was portrayed as a mouse, the sunken, sorrowful look of his eyes could not be depicted, not in black dot equals eye format.

On an unrelated note, these illustrations remind me of Picasso's Blue period, during which Pablo Picasso went through severe depression after the suicide of his good friend. Although the colors and style are different, the tone and mood of both these sets of illustrations struck me as similar. Do you think it's a coincidence?