Maus By Art Spielgem Literary Analysis

Maus Maus, by Art Spielgeman is a graphic novel, probably the best of the genre. A sad novel, the story is the biography of author’s father, Vladek, a Polish Jew, who during the Second World War was imprisoned in Auschwitz, but fortunately survived though the Holocaust. Vladek’s drama, however, is terrifying. There are moments when he escapes through the work of certain suffering, are moments where he got rid of friends (too few in those days) or those requesting certain material benefits, also there are critical moments in which he is on the brink of death, there are times when everyone around him die, all relatives. The time after the war are not gentle, too, his wife commits suicide “your mother killed herself…she’s dead!” (Spiegelman, 101), departs from his son Art “I remembered last time I saw her. She came

As in the story of Art Spiegelman, racism no longer knows what it means family, friendship, mercy, kindness. People can’t trust each other, they must fight for their own life, using the strangest ways. “Wouldn’t they have helped you even if you couldn’t pay? I mean, you were from the same family…Hah! you don’t understand…At that time it wasn’t anymore families. It was everybody to take care for himself!” (Spielgeman, 114). The reader can notice the sad fact that racism begins in the family. Art, highlights the reaction of German kids when they see his father, Vladek, “I had to pass where some children were playing. A Jew! A Jew!…The mothers always told so: ‘Be careful! A Jew will catch you to a bag and eat you!’ So they taught to their children.” (151). It is a sad reality that even today, sometimes kids learn from home how they must treat people which are different from them. Even in our society there is still racism and people continue to fight with each other despite all the efforts for a better and equal world for all