Maus Limitations

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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.
The experience of the author not going through the Holocaust makes it so Vladek is the only reference he has and he might not remember every detail as clearly thus altering the true story. Vladek talks about many other people along the telling of his story, but the author only gets Vladek’s side of the story maybe if someone in the book read Maus and their character did not act like the actual person. Vladek’s second wife survived the Holocaust, but the author …show more content…

The book skips some days which would raise the question of what happened that day. One page skips a whole day during the Holocaust that day could have been filled to make the story connect more without holes (143). The book has it a few pages after, again the author skips a few days of the story which adds more holes to the story (159). Yet if the author chose to take out those days they must not have been important. On the other hand who are we to say what the author includes and does not include in the story. Even so, the main point of the story is Vladek’s Holocaust story so skipping days takes away from the story. Lack of text makes the story feel as if something is missing that is very important raising many questions for

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