Racism is a very touchy topic but it has existed throughout human history. Racism may be defined as the hatred of one person by another, or the belief that another person is less than human because of their skin color, language, customs, and place of birth or any factor that reveals the basic nature of that person. Racism has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and most of all GENOCIDE. Maus 1 and 2 is a memoir by Art Spiegelman about his father’s survival from the holocaust. He uses the past and present narratives throughout his book. The past narrative is often briefly interrupted by small sections of present narrative. These past and present narratives represent the majority of the pages within Maus. Maus has different themes but the most striking of them is the issue of race and class. The issues of race and class figure heavily in the plot, themes, and structure of Maus.
At the most basic level, issues of race play themselves out on the grand scale of the Holocaust, a terrible culmination of senseless racism that is drawn and described in all its brutality and efficiency (Muller-Hill 98). This is seen in the brutal killing of the Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Homosexuals and Jehovah’s witnesses. The holocaust was possible because of the active or passive participation and compliance of many groups and individuals within Germany, Austria and other countries under Nazi occupation or sway. The Nazis were not interested in converting the Jews to Christianity, because they viewed the Jews entirely on racial terms; that they were less than humans.
Maus also deals with these racial issues in other, more subtle ways, through the use of different animal...
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...ups of men” (Muller-Hill). It is impossible to predict a person’s character based on the persons race or color. There is only one race on this earth and that is the human race.
In the book Maus, Art Spiegelman did not try to portray his father Vladek as a
saint, he tried to show him as human as he was.
Works Cited
Friedlander, Henry. "The Manipulation Of Language." Milton, Sybil. The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy and Genocide. New York: Kraus International Publication, 1980. 103-111. Print.
Landau, Ronnie S. The Nazi Holocaust. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992. Print.
Muller-Hill, Benno. Murderous Science. New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1998. Print.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Print.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. Web page. 3 March 2014.
This book addresses the issue of race all throughout the story, which is while it is probably the most discussed aspects of it. The books presentation is very complex in many ways. There is no clear-cut stance on race but the book uses racist language. The racist language durin...
Conclusion: In all, racial oppression and identification is a concurrent theme in Butler’s works that have been discussed. Butler’s examinations involving the sense of pride and passion towards uniqueness and individualism are evident in many different perspectives. In Butler’s works, the passion the main characters have towards themselves in an alien world teach the reader important values and lessons against negativity and racial discrimination.
The graphic novels Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman possess the power to make the reader understand the pain and suffering that takes place during the Holocaust. Spiegelman uses animals instead of humans in his graphic novels to represent the different races of people. The use of visual mediums in Art Spiegelman’s Maus enhances the reading of the narrative. The graphics throughout the novel help the reader fully understand everything that is happening.
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is The Holocaust Unique?. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008. 387. Print.
The format of "Maus" is an effective way of telling a Holocaust narrative because it gives Art Spiegelman the chance to expresses his father 's story without disrespecting him at the same
In Art Spiegelman’s comic series, MAUS, each race in the storyline is analogously depicted as a different animal. This essay will explore the various benefits, drawbacks and their counteractions, that are confounded with author’s choice of this illustration. It can be argued that choosing animals to represent humans, in an event as complex as the Shoah, dehumanizes victims even more. Humans conventionally see species of animals as collective entities rather than individual beings. Thus, by representing all the Jewish people as one type of animal, the reader might unconsciously generalize all the victims’ sufferings and discourses into one coherent image, in order to make sense of things. On the other hand, depicting each race as a certain animal
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.
...t can be argued that Art Spielgelman’s Maus is a work which portrays racism. The concept of racism and discrimination is evident in various parts and scenes of the book. In particular, racism is portrayed with how the author used stereotyping, in this case, the Polish are stereotyped as a race which is not only dirty but indifferent as well. Lastly, racism is portrayed with how the author used his protagonist to represent the complexity of racism.
Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print.
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.
“Holocaust, 1933-1945, The” World Without Genocide. William Mitchell College of Law, 2013. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
Bard, Mitchell G., ed. "Introduction." Introduction. The Holocaust. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2001.
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.