Nobody Can Understand: A Short Essay on Art Spiegelman’s Maus

723 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Hitler's role in ww2

In a world where obsessive power, manipulation, hatred, and the desire to obliterate a single population reign, no one survives untarnished. The Holocaust was a horrific event led by Adolf Hitler that resulted in the persecution, torment, and suffering of millions of Jewish people all over Europe. Vladek Spiegelman survived the ruthless torture from the largest concentration camp during World War II in Auschwitz. His son, Art Spiegelman, tells two stories at once in his book Maus: one of his father’s experiences during the Holocaust and another of his present adversities with his father. Spiegelman’s book is unlike many of this genre. Written as a graphic novel, Maus allows readers to visualize Spiegelman’s feelings giving a new meaning to the famed maxim, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Spiegelman doesn’t simply write another historical account of the Holocaust. Instead, he writes of his father’s experience during the Holocaust as an attempt to not only portray the life of a Jew during that time, but to better understand the relationship he has with his father.
By writing two separate stories within one, Spiegelman is able to represent the life of his father and other Jewish people during the Holocaust. Spiegelman struggles to depict an accurate representation of life during the Holocaust because he never personally experienced it. He is able to give a more honest approach to the horrendous story by replacing humans with animals. The facts from the Holocaust can be easier to accept if there isn’t a human face attached to the terror. He portrays Jews as mice, and Nazis as cats. The relationship of cats and mice is known as constant pursuing and hunting which is symbolic of the relationship between the Jews and...

... middle of paper ...

... survivors often felt indebted to their parents and searched for ways to honor those who survived and remember those who died. The children of survivors will forever be unable to understand the full extent of what their parents went through. While talking to his father about a stolen box, Spiegelman has a revelation. ‘“You left the box in the barrack? How could it not be taken?” “I didn’t think on it…” “But everyone was starving to death! Sigh- I guess I just don’t understand” “Yes… About Auschwitz, nobody can understand.”’ (Spiegelman, 224). It is difficult, maybe even impossible to fully understand the magnitude of the Holocaust and its impact on not just one generations, but multiple generations after. Questions still remain. Questions will always remain. “Nobody can understand.”

Works Cited

Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. New York: Pantheon, 1997. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Elie Wiesel's Night

    880 Words  | 2 Pages

    The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.

    Read More

  • Human Nature In Night By Elie Wiesel

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since the publication of, Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the holocaust has been deemed one of the darkest times in humanity, from the eradication of Jewish people to killing of innocents. Wiesel was one of the Jewish people to be in the holocaust and from his experience he gave us a memoir that manages to capture the dark side of human nature in the holocaust. He demonstrates the dark side of human nature through the cruelty the guards treat the Jews and how the Jews became cold hearted to each other. Wiesel uses foreshadowing and imagery, and metaphors to describe these events.

    Read More

  • Father and Son Relationship in Elie Wiesel´s Night

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.

    Read More

  • Inhumane Treatment in "Night"

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of A Lucky Child By Thomas Buergenthal

    1157 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is a memoir about his time as a Jewish child in multiple ghettos and death camps in and around Germany during World War II. The author shares about his reunions with family and acquaintances from the war in the years between then and now. Buergenthal wished to share his Holocaust story for a number of reasons: to prevent himself from just being another number, to contribute to history, to show the power and necessity of forgiveness, the will to not give up, and to question how people change in war allowing them to do unspeakable things. The memoir is not a cry for private attention, but a call to break the cycle of hatred and violence to end mass crimes.

    Read More

  • Three Aspects of Night by Elie Wiesel

    514 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many different responses have occurred to readers after their perusal of this novel. Those that doubt the stories of the holocaust’s reality see Night as lies and propaganda designed to further the myth of the holocaust. Yet, for those people believing in the reality, the feelings proffered by the book are quite different. Many feel outrage at the extent of human maliciousness towards other humans. Others experience pity for the loss of family, friends, and self that is felt by the Holocaust victims.

    Read More

  • Animals In Art Spiegelman's Maus

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    Firstly, there were many incidents where the Jewish people were trying to escape the Germans, and so they had to hide their identities. The author represented this disguise by drawing cat masks on his mouse characters (MAUS 1 page 136). These thin masks symbolized how easily they could have been recognized and caught; thus it accurately details how dire the situation was for those who were in hiding. It also helped the reader consciously think about who the oppressor and the oppressed is. Secondly, the animals that represented each race, accurately symbolized what role they played in the events of the Shoah. The Jewish people were represented by a vulnerable animal, mice, and were hunted down by the German people, who were the cats. The Polish people were represented as pigs, because they often sold out the Jewish people (i.e., page 143 MAUS 1). The Americans were drawn as dogs, because they chased cats, and sympathized with the mice. The author’s choice to use mice as the representation of the Jewish people is multifold. The Nazi’s themselves negatively propagated the Jewish people as the “vermin of mankind” who “infected” society. They were treated as subhuman, caged like animals, and forced to live in ghettos where they would be swarming in tight quarters. Its as if the perpetrators, in this symbolic imagery, were

    Read More

  • The Use Of Humor In Art Spiegelman's Maus

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the audience is led through a very emotional story of a Holocaust survivor’s life and the present day consequences that the event has placed on his relationship with the author, who is his son, and his wife. Throughout this novel, the audience constantly is reminded of how horrific the Holocaust was to the Jewish people. Nevertheless, the novel finds very effective ways to insert forms of humor in the inner story and outer story of Maus. Although the Holocaust has a heart wrenching effect on the novel as a whole, the effective use of humor allows for the story to become slightly less severe and a more tolerable read.

    Read More

  • Surviving Hitler Essay

    698 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Silber Medal winning biography, “Surviving Hitler," written by Andrea Warren paints picture of life for teenagers during the Holocaust, mainly by telling the story of Jack Mandelbaum. Avoiding the use of historical analysis, Warren, along with Mandelbaum’s experiences, explains how Jack, along with a few other Jewish and non-Jewish people survived.

    Read More

  • Racism in Art Spiegelman's Maus

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author illustrated his characters as different types of animals where in the Jews are represented as mice and the Germans as cats. This representation proposes how the Jews facing the Nazis are as helpless as a mouse caught by a cat. The first part for instance, is introduced by a quotation from Hitler in which he deprives the Jewish race of human qualities by reducing them to a mere vermin: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race but they are not human: (Spiegelman I, 4).

    Read More

  • The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Art Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Brutality In Elie Wiesel's Night

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    The brutality the Germans displayed in the 1930s through the 1940s was utterly horrifying. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author’s harrowing experience is shared. The Holocaust is worldly known as being one of the largest genocides in history, but not many truly understand what it was like to live through and witness. A lot of people had their life taken away whether figuratively or literally and many discovered so much loss that they became unphased by it after a while. Many who encountered the cruelty and merciless of the Germans have passed but a few remain that live to tell their story to the world and try to explain the feelings that coursed through them during the genocide and even now. Wiesel, who lived in Auschwitz for

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The impact of survivor’s guilt in Art Spiegelman’s Maus

    699 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comparison between Maus & Anne Frank

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Nobody Can Understand: A Short Essay on Art Spiegelman’s Maus

Open Document