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Analysis of maus by art spiegelman
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Art Spiegelman's Maus is a renowned comic book that won a Pulitzer Prize. The book was published in two parts, Volume I: "My Father Bleeds History," in 1986, and Volume II: "And Here My Troubles Began," in 1991. It was later integrated into one single volume. The book told Spiegelman's desire to write about his father's experiences during the Holocaust, as well as the experiences themselves. There had been numbers of Holocaust books over the decades, but Maus is different among all. After reading numerous Holocaust books, they become repetitive, because most people are aware of the tragic event. Maus offers not only the tale of the Holocaust, but stories about its victims, and the next generation as well. Its distinction was already displayed through Spiegelman's use of animals for nationalities. This method was perhaps Spiegelman's way to show readers the race hierarchy. Also, this comic book is not of a typical Holocaust story, because it is a legacy of the event. The comic has stories within stories, Vladek Spiegelman's (Art's father), and Art's himself. The comic tells how the Holocaust affected Vladek's life after, and as Vladek told his experiences to Art, it showed how their relationship was affected as well. As Art took in everything his father told him throughout the book, he tried to understand his father. What Art had to make of his father was through the stories during the Holocaust, while he tried to relate to him. All these notions that the comic has makes it distinctive among all other Holocaust books. Maus has aspects to it that other books about the Holocaust do not include. The strategies Spiegelman used, for example, depictions of nationalities through animals. The woman animals are: mice for Jews, and cats... ... middle of paper ... ...ents what happened after the victim told his or her story to the readers. Perhaps that part was more important than the actual circumstance, because of what it did to people. Also, it accounted a relationship between those two generations joined together in discussion of what happened. In this case, it was Vladek and Art's - their relationship was negatively affected by the power of Vladek's past. Vladek was unable to move ahead with his life as a result of the trauma he received. His marriage with Mala was also destroyed because of old habits formed by his past. Confused and complicated emotions formed in Art for the overall sense of the book. This work showed how the past ruined the present and potentially the future as well. The stylistic features included in this comic, along with literary themes, created a peculiar book - dissimilar to other Holocaust works.
Maus, written by Art Spiegelman, is a graphic novel that tells the story of Art’s father, Vladek and his experiences during the holocaust as a German Jew. In this book, many instances of Nazi propaganda are shown being used to deceive the German public. Such deception, despite being evil, was simply ingenious on the Nazi’s part. This cleverness of the Nazis can help one understand that the Jews that survived this ordeal had to be equally or more clever than the Nazis.
Maus is a graphic novel about the Holocaust where all the characters are depicted as animals. Cats are Germans, dogs are Americans, pigs are Polish, and Mice are Jews. The story is told through the eyes of Vladek Spiegelman who is also the author's father. Vladek Spiegelman survived the Holocaust, because of his abundance amount of money and the ability to get on everyone's good side. Maus has many limitations to the story such as point of view, lack of experience, and depiction of characters. Those limitations could be advantages as well as not experiencing the Holocaust means there are no biases towards people or places. Even so, the author wrote his book through the eyes of Vladek Spiegelman.
In the history of this world, there have been many important events that have changed how we see things. In the novels Maus written by Art Spiegalman and How It Feels to Be Colored Me written by Zora Neale Hurston discuss some of these events. Both authors use their experiences from the past to show racial differences, the mistreatment of humans, and injustices. While being a college dropout Art Spiegalman found himself to be very creative in making graphic comics. Art Spiegalman is the son of a Polish Jew who survived the holocaust, his mother survived as well but committed suicide when Art was twenty years old. Maus I and II is more of a personal story with events that occurred before and after the holocaust and is being
In this peer reviewed article, Park’s subcategories include “Trauma, Postmemory, and Generational Transmission, Autobiography, History/PostHistory, Ethics of Representation, Postmodernism, Narrotology, Photography and Art, Gender, Jewish Identity, and Use of English”. In each subcategory, Park goes into deep detail, critiquing the book’s discourse. In the first category, Park examines how the Holocaust has affected not only Vladek, a first-generation survivor, but also his son Artie, a second-generation survivor. He explains how “the critical discourse focusing on trauma, postmemory, and generational transmission often aims to reevaluate the impact that the Holocaust has upon the second generation of the historical event” (Park 149).
It shows this through its comic book style drawings on a topic that is difficult to explain. With the illustration throughout the story it shows the true meaning of a picture is worth a thousand words. Compared to any other type of Holocaust book it would be hard for a person who did not go through the Holocaust to understand what was taking place during that time. Most books are just written, no images. It is just a plain book with many descriptions. Unlike those "Maus" took on another type of perception. Humans have the ability to understand and reason things but with all of that it is hard to understand the extent of the Holocaust through just words. So Art decided to included drawings in a comic book form to allow readers to understand what was going on without having to imagine it. His book allowed its readers to see what was taking place while reading it. That is what the main difference is compared to other narratives. Also, his use of symbolism allowed the reading to understand what was going on without drawings of humans but animals. An example of this was the Nazis being represented by cats and the Jews represented as mice. In reality we know that the cat always tries to kill the mouse. During that time Jews were the pest to societies and the Nazis had to fix that. Also, with this in reality it is normal for a cat
During World War II there was event that lead to deaths of millions of innocent people. This even is known as the holocaust, millions of innocent people were killed violently, there was mass murders, rapes and horrific tortures. The question I will attempt to answer in the course of this paper is if the holocaust was a unique event in history. In my opinion there were other mass murders that people committed justified by the feeling of being threatened. But I don 't believe that any were as horrific and inhumane as Germany’s genocide of the Jewish people.
For some, it seems that the Holocaust in another lifetime, but for others it will be something they will never forget. Holocaust was a time for fighting. The Jewish would fight for the right to live as they were killed solely for being Jewish. The Holocaust began in 1939 and would continue through 1945. It was introduced by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, although he did not act alone. His mission would be to “exterminate” all minorities, but most abundantly, the Jews. Based on information given by About.com, it is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.
In Maus, Art Spiegelman does not make any apologies about what he includes or leaves out from his story. Maus is not meant to be a story that encompasses World War II or the Holocaust, but rather, a story about the life of his father, Vladek Spiegelman:
The Maus series of books tell a very powerful story about one man’s experience in the Holocaust. They do not tell the story in the conventional novel fashion. Instead, the books take on an approach that uses comic windows as a method of conveying the story. One of the most controversial aspects of this method was the use of animals to portray different races of people. The use of animals as human races shows the reader the ideas of the Holocaust a lot more forcefully than simply using humans as the characters.
The delineation of human life is perceiving existence through resolute contrasts. The difference between day and night is defined by an absolute line of division. For the Jewish culture in the twentieth century, the dissimilarity between life and death is bisected by a definitive line - the Holocaust. Accounts of life during the genocide of the Jewish culture emerged from within the considerable array of Holocaust survivors, among of which are Elie Wiesel’s Night and Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower. Both accounts of the Holocaust diverge in the main concepts in each work; Wiesel and Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their survivals. Aside from the themes, various aspects, including perception, structure, organization, and flow of arguments in each work, also contrast from one another. Although both Night and The Sunflower are recollections of the persistence of life during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their existence during the atrocity in their corresponding works.
If the “killers” of the Holocaust were not put in the situations they were in, many of them would not have committed the crimes they did; whether they were killing the Jews or just delivering the Jews to camps, they were part of the extermination of innocent people. Most of them were killing in fear, they didn’t want to be persecuted and murdered so they made it look like they were for the Nazi party. Anne Frank once said, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” I believe that this quote, which is saying that some people do bad things but that does not mean they are bad people, many are doing things out of fright, hoping it will save their lives, is very true. All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein which is about a Jewish family, mainly on the little girl in the family who goes through the unimaginable during the Holocaust, popped into mind when I heard the quote. Also two short stories called “Tiengen” by Maurice Meier and “Rescuers” by Irene Opdyke came to mind when I read this quote.
Why didn't the non Jewish people fight for their friends, family, and acquaintances? If the non Jews would have collaborated then they would have had capitulate from the Nazis. Were they scared, or were they afraid that they could not do anything? Well, if enough of the non Jews had fought back they could have helped the Jews out of the Concentration camps and all of the torture that they were being put through. One reason that the non Jews should have fought back was if they were in the Jews predicament then they would want help too. The non Jews could have been triumphant. The non Jews should have had an aspiration for saving their friends. Hitler was putting them through the worst possible treatment. I know that I would want help. I would help it is the right thing to do and that the Jews have a right to believe what they want. Everybody has the right to believe what they want.
Using lines and basic shapes to emphasize shading and detail and then teamed with such a complex theme, Art’s story and graphics join together in a complimentary marriage. With the nearly childlike drawings and the intense mature storyline, there is a message that this is being written by the child telling the story of the parent. The story emphasizes his father’s inability to grow and repair from his past but even without the words you can almost see that Art has never truly be able to move past his the trauma of growing up with his parents. Using his frustrations and the need to explore the history of his father’s idiosyncrasies, Art creates a poignant story not only about the tragedy of the holocaust, but of the realities of being a child growing up with survivor parents.
Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus unfolds the story about his father Vladek Spiegleman, and his life during the WWII. Since Vladek and Art are both the narrators of the story, the story not only focuses on Vladek's survival, but also the writing process and the organization of the book itself. Through these two narrators, the book explores various themes such as identity, perspective, survival and guilt. More specifically, Maus suggests that surviving an atrocity results in survivor’s guilt, which wrecks one’s everyday life and their relationships with those around them. It accomplishes this through symbolism and through characterization of Vladek and Anja.
The books Maus I and Maus II, written by Art Spiegelman over a thirteen-year period from 1978-1991, are books that on the surface are written about the Holocaust. The books specifically relate to the author’s father’s experiences pre and post-war as well as his experiences in Auschwitz. The book also explores the author’s very complex relationship between himself and his father, and how the Holocaust further complicates this relationship. On a deeper level the book also dances around the idea of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. The two books are presented in a very interesting way; they are shown in comic form, which provides the ability for Spiegelman to incorporate numerous ideas and complexities to his work.