Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, The Complete Maus, depicts the different nationalities, religious group, and political group as animals. In this graphic novel, the Jewish people are mice, the Nazis as cats, Polish as pigs. The culture that each animal depicts shows us how Spiegelman sees these different groups. In addition, this depiction of them as animals shows how each culture is broken down into the essence of their life during WWII. The mice as the Jewish religion and the cat as the Nazi fascists show an enemy relationship; just like the Nazi cats and Americans, dogs. The cultures divided into animals of prey and predator shows how these cultures have strife in real life during this time. Then there is the aspect of some humans wearing …show more content…
In the beginning of The Complete Maus Part II, Chapter 2, Spiegelman talks about time flying while he draws something on his easel, he wears a mouse mask over his human face. The meaning of this mask could mean many different things, depending on how you look at it. For one, this could show how after his father dies, he loses the piece of himself that is Jewish. He begins to become his own person, but feels he needs to hold onto a bit of his Jewish culture to write the novel. As the chapter goes on, he begins to shrink. Overwhelmed after the first novel was published; he feels small compared to the big picture of what happened to his father and other relatives during the holocaust. This brings about another point; he could be wearing the mask to show how he feels about being Jewish. It is as if he feels like a poser, because he did not go through the holocaust as they did. He feels like he is not Jewish, as if he should not be writing this book because he did not go through it. As he talks to his therapist, he states, “Some part of me doesn’t want to draw or think about Auschwitz. I can’t visualize it clearly, and I can’t begin to imagine what it felt like” (Spiegelman 204). This shows how hard it is for him to right the novel that because of his lack of experience with the …show more content…
In life, we depict mice as being dirty creatures that take food and other objects from us; they are pests. Likewise, cats, on many occasions, are taken in to rid the house of these pests. They will either eat these mice or run them out of the house. During the Holocaust, in Spiegelman’s novel, the Nazi’s do just that. In Part I of his graphic novel, My Father Bleeds History, he shows these same Germans starting to take the Jewish people out one group at a time, beginning with the elderly. On page 88, Vladek and his family got a notice from the German’s which stated “All Jews over 70 years old will be transferred to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia on May 10, 1942” this was the first step the Nazi’s took to eradicate the Jews. After the old people where sent off, the Nazi’s began to weed out the Jews that could and could not work. The Jews that could work were given stamps and sent home, those that could not work or looked weak were sent away “And those on the bad side never came anymore home” (Spiegelman 93). With each day, less and less Jews remained due to the Nazi’s getting rid of
In Maus, Spiegelman shows how jews were being dehumanized by using mice to represent the Jews and cats to represent the Germans.Cats hunt and attack mice just like Germans killed and attacked many Jews. Like in Night, Spiegelman father went through the same thing, the Germans took Jews to Auschwitz, they took mostly kids some only two or three years old, “ The kids would scream and scream, so the Germans would swing them by the legs against a wall and they never screamed again.” (Spiegelman, 108). The Germans did not care if the Jew was a child they would still hurt them. The Jews would hide from Germans so they would not be taken away, “ A tunnel made from shoes! be prepared on a moments notice, everything was ready here so 15 or 16 people could hide.” (Spiegelman, 121).Just like mice hide to not get killed so did the Jews, they would hide from the Germans so they would not get hurt or killed. The Germans treated the Jews horribly, “ We knew the stories- they will gas us and throw us in the ovens.This was late 1944… we knew everything. And here we were.” (Spiegelman, 157) The Jews were scared because of all the bad stories they heard from others and their experience. The mice were not accepted by the Germans, they did not like them which is why the were seen as
During that time Jews were the pest to society and the Nazis had to fix that. Also, with this in reality, it is normal for a cat to try to kill a mouse.
From Hitler throughout the Holocaust, Maus the graphic novel has brought a story of a survivor, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew. Vladek has been there when the Swastika was a symbol of well-being and the goods. From the start of World War II and sustained until the war ended. Vladek survived the war because of luckiness, after that, being resourceful was the reason he lived. Lost his first born son in the process, moved to the United States. Lost his wife and lived with a fear it might happen all over again, he is a survivor of the Holocaust.
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.
Art Spiegelman’s Maus is a novel about the Vladek and his experience as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust. It narrates the reality of the Holocaust wherein millions and millions of Jews were systematically killed by the Nazi regime. One of the themes in the story is racism which is evident in the employment of animal characters and its relationship with one another.
By means of comic illustration and parody, Art Spiegelman wrote a graphic novel about the lives of his parents, Vladek and Anja, before and during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II delves into the emotional struggle he faced as a result of his father’s failure to recover from the trauma he suffered during the Holocaust. In the novel, Vladek’s inability to cope with the horrors he faced while imprisoned, along with his wife’s tragic death, causes him to become emotionally detached from his son, Art. Consequently, Vladek hinders Art’s emotional growth. However, Art overcomes the emotional trauma his father instilled in him through his writing.
During 1925, Mein Kampf was published by the Nazi Leader Adolf Hitler. In this autobiography, where Nazi racist ideas originated, he depicted his struggle with the Jews in Germany. These ideas sparked World War 2 and the Genocide of the Jews. The tragedy of the Holocaust inspired authors, such as Art Spiegelman who produced a Graphic novel, where both the text and images helped him convey his own ideas and messages. In fact, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus is an effective medium for telling a Holocaust narrative and specifically his father’s story of survival. Through this medium, he is able to captivate the readers while providing interesting insight into the tragedy of the Holocaust by using the symbols of animals, the contrast between realism and cartoon imagery and the various basic elements of a graphic novel.
In The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman, a son of the Holocaust survivor, Art Spiegelman, learns the story of his father, Vladek Spiegelman. Art Spiegelman learns the causes of why his father acts the way he does and the reason for the eccentric nature he has. Although Vladek Spiegelman physically survives the Holocaust, his actions show that he is psychologically affected by his experience in the camps.
When reading a traditional book, it is up to the reader to imagine the faces and landscapes that are described within. A well written story will describe the images clearly so that you can easily picture the details. In Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, the use of the animals in place of the humans offers a rather comical view in its simplistic relation to the subject and at the same time develops a cryptic mood within the story. His drawings of living conditions in Auschwitz; expressions on the faces of people enduring torture, starvation, and despair; his experience with the mental institution and his mother’s suicide; and occasional snapshots of certain individuals, create a new dynamic between book and reader. By using the form of the graphic novel, Art Spiegelman created a narrative accompanied by pictures instead of needing to use immense worded detail.
Art Spiegelman's Maus II is a book that tells more than the story of one family's struggle to live thought the Holocaust. It gives us a look into the psyche of a survivor's child and how the Holocaust affected him and many other generations of people who were never there at all. Maus II gives the reader a peek into the psyche of Art Spiegelman and the affects of having two parents that survived the Holocaust had on him. Spiegelman demonstrates the affects of being a survivor's child in many ways throughout the book. Examining some of these will give us a better understanding of what it was like to be a part of the Holocaust.
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.
Art Spiegleman's comic book within the comic book Maus is titled "Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History." This text within a text describes, in horrific detail through pictures, Artie's failed effort to get through the painful loss of his mother due to suicide. This text also in a way, represents a part of Artie's mind where he expresses his feelings of loneliness, doubt, fear, anger, and blame through the form of a dark, gloomy, depressing cartoon.
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.
What if you were a holocaust survivor and asked to describe your catastrophic experience? What part of the event would you begin with, the struggle, the death of innocent Jews, or the cruel witnessed? When survivors are questioned about their experience they shiver from head to toe, recalling what they have been through. Therefore, they use substitutes such as books and diaries to expose these catastrophic events internationally. Books such as Maus, A survivor’s tale by Art Spiegelman, and Anne Frank by Ann Kramer. Spiegelman presents Maus in a comical format; he integrated the significance of Holocaust while maintaining the comic frame structure format, whereas comic books are theoretically supposed to be entertaining. Also, Maus uses a brilliant technique of integrating real life people as animal figures in the book. Individually, both stories involve conflicts among relationships with parents. Furthermore, Maus jumps back and forth in time. Although, Anne Frank by Ann Kramer, uses a completely different technique. Comparatively, both the books have a lot in common, but each book has their own distinctive alterations.