Use of Animals in Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale

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 Power of the Animal Imagery in Maus 　　Art Spiegelman, an American cartoonist, takes advantages of postmodern principles in his best known graphic novel Maus. He successfully used the related characteristics between animals and humans to demonstrate a cruel and bloody historical event, the Holocaust to the readers. Art Spiegelman, as the second generation of the survivors, had only experienced the Holocaust from the point view of a listener but not really participate in the event, therefore, demonstrate the Holocaust in an authentic way in Maus will be difficult things to him. As the peer reviewed articles, “Studies in American Jewish Literature", "Visual Narrative: Art Spiegelman 's "Maus"" and ""Well Intended Liberal Slop": Allegories

The Americans were drawn as dogs to show how they help the Jewish mice free themselves from the German cats. The relationship between the Jewish mice, German cats, and American dogs represents a dog-cat-mouse food chain. The Jewish rats are attacked by the German cats, and the Jewish mice are freed by the American dogs, by the Americans successful attempt to conquer the German cats. Also in the story, there is evidence of relationships and stereotypes of Poles, French, and Gypsies. The use of animals gives readers a better understanding of the Holocaust.

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.

The book has three main types of animals that each symbolizes the different cultures during the Holocaust. The Jews are symbolized as mice, the Nazi Germans as cats, and the Poles as pigs. The reason why Spiegelman uses animals instead of humans is because he wants to give the reader a better understanding of what type of animal symbolizes the different types of social classes that are being address. The power hungry Nazis are symbolized as cats because of a cat’s constant starvation and tend to be stronger compared to mice and pigs. The Jews are symbolized as mice to show how weak they were and how they were treated during World War II.

She was surprised and accidentally threw her lamp onto to the tower which sent it up into flames. All the rats ran back to their camp. Cluny had captured a family of field mice and sent the father in to unlock the abbey’s gates. If he refused, Cluny would kill his family. The guards let him in and later during the night, the father field mouse unlocked the gate.

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). In the second part, Spiegelman further emphasized the lowly qualities of mice and associate it with the Nazi’s lowly perception of the Jewish race. “Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed… Health emotions tell every independent young man and every honourable youth that the dirty and filth-covered ver... ... middle of paper ... ...t can be argued that Art Spielgelman’s Maus is a work which portrays racism.

And there are various grotesque ironies that Spiegelman noted in the course of his research; for instance, Zyklon B, the poison used in the gas chambers, was first developed as a pesticide. Loman demonstrates that Spiegelman did not just randomly choose these animals to represent all the people during the Holocaust. Spiegelman used these animals to help demonstrate how these people were feeling. The Jewish people during the Holocaust suffered from dehumanization and treated like vermin. All the advertisements used by Nazi Germany during this time depict th... ... middle of paper ... ...ader understand what people go through during the Holocaust.

11, panel 1, Art drew a sketch of different animals to represent characters for his father’s story. In Maus, each animal represents a different community. As an example, mice portrayed Jews, cats represented the German Nazis and pigs represented the Polish. With this representation in mind, the choice of Jews drawn as mice demonstrated that the Nazis view of them as vermin. According to the Nazis, the Jews were pests because they were everywhere and acted secretly to harm the Germans.

In reality we know that the cat always tries to kill the mouse. During that time Jews were the pest to societies and the Nazis had to fix that. Also, with this in reality it is normal for a cat