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The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in "drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust" (The New York Times). Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.… (more)
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In any case, yes, when I lived in Israel as a child, we were repeatedly "reminded" of these horrors of the holocaust and taken to various holocaust museums and shown footage in the classroom, especially on Yom HaShoah, which is a commemoration day held in Israel and abroad. I remember being horror stricken, yet completely fascinated by those images of hundreds of skeletal naked bodies heaped into piles, which have never left my mind. I've always known of course that the better part of my Jewish father's side of the family had ended up killed in the camps, and how my father himself remained alive, although he was born in Siberia in 1940 is entirely owing to my grandmother who apparently had nerves of steel and was endlessly resourceful, which of course is the first thing you find out about any Jew who came out of WWII and lived to tell about it, though luck also plays a large role in a great many of those stories. If anything, Spiegelman's book has reminded me once again that I need to sit down and record my father's stories about the past before they are gone along with him.
So, those are my overall random impressions about the Holocaust. Now what about the book itself? I remember well when the first book was published in the mid-80s and I saw it displayed at my favourite book shop, which held all kinds of nifty titles which were hard to find everywhere else, and where graphic novels and comics held a place of honour. I wanted badly to buy it, but there was the price, which was steep for one like me who's income came for occasional babysitting gigs. But beyond that, I was terrified to find out what Art Spiegelman's version of the Holocaust was, having been exposed to a great many already, none of which were pretty or joyful affairs (which goes without saying). But about a week or so ago, I finally got my courage up to pick up the omnibus version containing both volumes, which I had finally purchased a number of years ago, yet didn't have the nerve to actually read until then.
Spiegelman's approach is unique not only for the obvious reason that he chose to tell his father's story in a comic strip format, but also because, instead of simply relating his father's story as a simple observer, he chose to include himself in it too, describing his misgivings about his approach to writing and illustrating the book and his anxieties as to whether he would manage to convey the story in a convincing way yet be respectful too. What I found especially touching was that the book delves just as much into his own relationship with his father as it does into his father's past. Like countless other survivors, Spiegelman senior carried deep emotional scars which gave expression to a full range of neurotic behaviour. Far from glossing over the old man's maddening personality traits, Art Spiegelman shared with us even those aspects which gave truth to the anti-semitic and stereotypical view that Jews are miserly to the extreme, though he did so with trepidation, which he also shared with the reader. His father was so strongly attached to his money and possessions that he was not beyond rationing out wood matches, returning half-eaten cereal boxes to the supermarket, and refusing to pay for his second wife's basic personal expenses, though it was given to us to understand that he had plenty of money in the bank. I could only too well sympathize with the author's overbearing guilt about how difficult it was for him to spend time with the old man, even if only on rare occasions and for short amounts of time. Seen from the outside, a Jewish man's neuroses can be seen as funny in the extreme, which is something Woody Allen has capitalized on during his whole career to often hilarious effect. At one point in the book, his father, who had been in ill health for some time, got extremely sick and evidently needed constant care. His wife had left him at the point, unwilling to continue living with the generally ill-tempered, close-fisted man. Yet one can completely understand Art's categorical refusal—which he had to express repeatedly—of living in the same household with his father, who, as he was all too realistically described, must have been impossible to live with. I've often heard, that children of Holocaust survivors are victims and survivors themselves, as was confirmed to me by one such daughter I had many conversations with, a woman who had become a psychologist and therefore had plenty of interesting insights to share. It seems inevitable that parents who have suffered great trauma, as have Holocaust survivors, often make their children feel that their trials and tribulations can never equal that which they experienced. And perhaps as a consequence, the survivor's guilt the parents are plagued with is all too often shared by their children, an aspect also presented in Maus very convincingly, though in Art Spiegelman's case this guilt was augmented by the fact that his mother had taken her own life without leaving a note when he was a young man.
The first book covers a period from the mid-1930s and into the early 40s, and describes how Spiegelman Sr., living in Poland, met his wife, and his relationship with her extremely wealthy family, the fruit of which they generously shared with the young and attractive man he had been. Then soon enough came the oppressive restriction which continued increasing over the years until they lost all their possessions and liberty. Art's father was an amazing resourceful man, and he shows how he was able to avoid capture for he and his wife, even as the rest of the family were taken one by one. I was absolutely engrossed with this first part, which in many ways is pure action adventure, though mixed in with the author's own existential questioning, which creates a very unique context for a Holocaust story. The illustrations are fairly simply rendered with plenty of amusing details. Here, I should probably mention that one of the most important aspects of the book, which also explains the title, is that Spiegelman chose to represent the Jews at mice, and the Nazis as cats, and I suppose the anthropomorphism was meant to create an emotional remove from the horrors beings described. In many ways this is an effective device, but my experience was that I did not see the animals and couldn't simply stay on the page and the illustrations without imagining the actual people and settings. This is probably part of the reason I found book II: And Here my Troubles Began, so very difficult, because in this volume, we witness the concentration camps, particularly Auschwitz, where the living conditions and the daily struggle to survive, as so many are put to death in a variety of ways, are described in quite some detail. Yet, there is also the incredible story of resilience and survival against the odds, all of which makes for a powerful experience. No wonder this comic book won a Pulitzer prize, this is most definitely deep stuff and very original in it's presentation. A must.
I don't know how to review this really, but it
People can be very snotty about graphic novels, but if they're written well and designed in such a format, it can be a fantastic way to add an extra layer to a story. Spiegelman does this extremely well - the images allowing a subtle satire that is only once directly commented on, but somehow, because of that, has a greater impact.
The story may be straightforward, but the complexity of human interaction is never obscured: Spiegelman doesn't paint his father as anything but a lucky survivor - in many ways a broken, ravaged man. Nor does he flinch from relating the story of his mother, Anja, who, despite surviving Auschwitz, still committed suicide in America. Why did she kill herself? Art seems as perplexed as the reader. I think it reflects, in many way, the knottiness of all human life. Art doesn't understand - perhaps cannot - understand her death, in the same way that he can neverr really understand his father's experience of Auschwitz.
In the end, the story of Spiegelman facing his dead leaves us with the same unanswerable questions: Why? How could any of this really have happened? And will it happen again?
This is truth-telling at its best. Not only does
Very highly recommended for the estimated 7% of avid readers who have not yet read this one. If it doesn't make you flinch, you need to have your heart checked.
A.S. gives animal identities to all persons according to their race: Jews are drawn as mice quoting Hitler saying that Jews are not human and a mid 30s German newspaper article claiming Mickey Mouse, that miserable vermin, to be the Jew’s ideal; the Germans become cats, the Polish pigs, the U.S. American dogs, a gipsy (Roma) woman becomes a butterfly, a Frenchman a frog. This stereotypes them (although ‘pigs’ are encountered that are good, others vicious) and removes any emotional response from their faces; at times a light-hearted note is created: Gipsy-butterfly, French-frog.
We get a glimpse of the conditions father and mother lived through but, by being narrated, once removed: perhaps the true horror of the camps can never been communicated (A.S. is aware of this of course). (I-16)
The people-as-animals gimmick (Jewish as rats, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs) often works, but sometimes feels cheap. And
The second book is even better than the first. Spiegelman achieves an exploration of the complex and difficult personality of his father in comic book form.
Review: There are two things that, in my mind, elevate Maus from being just another Holocaust story to really being something unique, and something special. First, the decision to present the story in comic form, and second, the inclusion of the framing story of Art and his father. Both of those were risky choices that could easily have backfired, but in the end, I think both of them worked to Spiegleman's advantage.
On the first point: if nothing else, Maus deserves a huge amount of credit for proving that just because it's a comic does not necessarily mean that the story or the subject matter is trivial. The decision to depict everyone involved as animals (Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Polish are pigs, French are frogs, Americans are dogs, etc.) could have easily become silly and made everything inappropriately cutesy, but I think it actually allowed both Spiegleman and the reader to explore the horror of the story without being thoroughly overwhelmed, and while the characters were literally de-humanized, the underlying humanity of the story bled through on every page. The animalizing of the characters did make them all look somewhat alike - it's harder to draw hundreds of distinct-looking mice than it would be for humans - but it was always clear from the context what was going on, and who was supposed to be in the panel.
The meta-story, of Art dealing with his father, was another brave choice that worked out wonderfully well. Vladek Spiegleman is not a particularly pleasant man; he's so frugal that he's almost miserly, he fights constantly with his wife, has no qualms about emotionally manipulating his son, and is more than a little bit racist. At the same time, you just can't think those things about a Holocaust survivor - he's been through so much, shouldn't he be allowed to be difficult if he wants to be? By letting Vladek tell the story in his own voice, Art lets us wrestle with these issues for ourselves, and thus gives us an inside view on his own emotional struggles. It makes the book not just about surviving the Holocaust, but what it's like to deal with - and to be - a Holocaust survivor.
There were a few meta-meta-story bits that I'm still not sure whether I liked or not. Spiegleman, in the comic, talking about the process of writing the comic, or to his therapist about dealing with the success of the comic, etc. (on one occasion drawn as human but with a tied-on mouse mask) - on the one hand, these things all break the fourth wall and were kind of distracting, but on the other hand, they also add an interesting layer of complexity to the story.
Recommendation: Overall, it's an amazing book, if not a particularly comfortable one to read, and it's one that I suspect will stay with me for a long time, and that I think will convince even the most ardent graphic-novel hater that the medium can be used to powerful effect. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
This will be a good book to use during history class. While studying the holocaust in history, a teacher could take parts of the book and make copies and ask the students how accurate the information is based on what they have learned. Most students will like this activity since the book is written with the use of comics. The pictures in the book will help the students comprehend the story better. On the other hand, this book can be used as a text-to-text connection. The teacher could use this book to compare it to the book "The Diary of Anne Frank". The students could be assigned to read both books and see what story they liked best and find the differences in each story while studying the Holocaust.
As a reader, I did not particularly like this book. The story line was good and informative, but I did not like reading the whole book in comic form. I would rather read this same book, but in a regular written book form. I believe Vladek was a very wise man and did all he could do to keep his family alive. Since only Vladek and his wife, out of his immediate family, survived, I believe this is the stress that eventually led to his wife's suicide. Also I think the author/ illustrator was very creative when he used the mice to represent the Jews, the cats to represent the Germans, the pigs to represent the Polish, and the dogs to represent the Americans. I feel that by using these animals he portrayed the totem pole of the races during this time. Overall the book was good, but I did not like ready a novel full of comics.
However, 'Maus' isn't really a holocaust story - it's really about a parent-child relationship. 'Art' the protagonist listens to his father's amazing story of courage, resilience and resourcefulness and admires him - at the same time as finding him as irritating and frustrating as he always did. You don't have to have a parent who has lived through important events in history to feel a gulf between their life achievements and the person you've always known: that's something most of us can identify with. And something I found funny and painful as the best stories of this kind are.
The difficult relationship between art and his father in the present-time of the book is beautifully counter-poised with the father's story
I admire this book on so many levels. The drawing is almost crude, but carries huge emotions and meanings. The arrangement of frames on the pages creates telling emphases. Moving in and out of the present and the past is managed in ways that reinforce both.
This was a very interesting story that told a personal story of struggle and survival. I liked that the Vladek’s past was told while telling his story in the present. It really made him come alive. I liked that the story was told through graphics because it gave a different level to a story like this. I never really felt connected with any of the characters though. There were times that I disliked every character. However, the story is an important one that warrants a read.
We get not only an account of the horrors of the Nazi treatment of Jews but how it had lasting consequences too. Spiegelman carefully and subtly lays out how the Auschwitz ordeal left its mark, inevitably warping the survivors , through his portrayal of his father. Spiegelman’s father isn’t a particularly sympathetic protagonist, particularly as an old mouse. What we get is far better, a character who, despite being a mouse, is more human for all the flaws he demonstrates. Eschewing the simple option of a lovable, heroic narrator for a complex and flawed ‘human’ being is another brave move that emphasises the horror. A hero would, by nature, react heroically, a human being’s actions are more recognisable as the ones we probably would make, as opposed to the ones we’d hope we would make. It gives the persecuted a more recognisable face and character.
If there was a minor niggle I can’t say Spiegelman’s exploration of his difficult relationship with his father engaged me, it’s one of those elements that’s been worn into meaningless by overuse, particularly in American fiction. But it’s inextricably linked with the telling of the story, the device that allows him to frame the recollections and bring them to life.
In lesser hands the cocktail of cute animals, cannibalisation of family history and the horror of the Holocaust could have ended up seeming maudlin or exploitatitve. Instead, the strength of the storytelling and characterisation means it This is a story that simply wouldn’t have been half as powerful or effective in any other medium. In short, Maus is the single most powerful argument you’ll ever see for the graphic novel.