Maus is the printed story of Vladek, and how the Nazis see themselves as a completely different race. Art Spiegelman takes a unique approach in portraying his characters during the Holocaust. The author compares the Jewish people to mice since they lived like mice to survive. By using animals instead of humans, the author shows the predator and prey relationship, which was shown between the Nazis and the Jewish people. In the book of Maus, Art makes the Nazis the cats and he compares how cats would play with the mice before they killed them, just like how the Nazis would send them away to concentration camps before they died. The author uses animals instead of humans to show the power relationship between the Nazis and the Jewish people, also …show more content…
With the Jewish people as mice and Nazis as cats. Spiegelman shows how divided they are: the Nazis see the Jewish people as a completely different species than them, and by using different animals Spiegelman shows how separated they are. The Nazis did not see the Jewish community as humans, rather they saw them as vermin that needed to be exterminated. As they sent them to concentration camps they treated them as rodents, “made to liquidate completely our ghetto” (Spiegelman 112) the Nazis saw them as targets - and those targets needed to be shot down. They made it loud and clear that they were hunting down the Jewish people; anyone to shelter them would have dire consequences. Vladek and Anja have escaped their ghetto and are sneaking to Sosnowiec. Where they thought they could seek shelter but be mistaken - “ There’s a Jewess in the courtyard police!” (137) the Nazis have dehumanized the Jewish people so …show more content…
Art Spiegelman uses the stereotypical relationship of cat vs mice - to show the relationship between Jewish people and Nazis. The Nazis would not just dispose of the Jewish people, they would make the process slow and painful. They would make them do hard labor “we had to move mountains” (56), if they did not want to be kept as war prisoners - they would get sent to work to replace the Germans in war. But we all know what the outcome was, even if they got sent somewhere else - there was no escaping. Vladek thinks he is finally free now, free from the Germans at last - but that was not the case. Vladek thinks he is an escaped war prisoner, he has signed everything and is on the train on the way home. As they came to a stop in Lubin, and there happened the unexpected. As of the released war prisoners sat and waited in tents they received news “They shot and killed all of them - they killed 600 people!” (61.) As the law protected them as polish war prisoners, but if you were a Jew - there was nothing the law could do for you. The Germans had used them and gave them some hope of returning - before they slaughtered them like animals. The Germans this far into the war were looking for any small reason to arrest a Jew, they were squeezing them alive. As time went by it slowly became worse and worse - they would tighten their
The violent actions of the Germans during this event force an image upon them that conveys the message that the Germans had little respect for the life of a person, specifically that of a follower of Judaism, and their capability to act viciously. If the Germans are acting so cruelly and begin to act this way as an instinct towards the Jews, they are losing the ability to sympathize with other people. This would be losing the one thing that distinguishes a human from any other species, and this quote is an example of the dehumanization of the victim, as well as the perpetrator. Later on in the night, all the Jewish prisoners discover their fate at the camps and what will happen to people at the crematorium. They respond by saying to the people around them that they “.can’t let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse” (Wiesel 31).
Art Spiegelman, the son of Holocaust survivors, is best known for authoring of the graphic novel Maus. In Spiegelman's Maus, he correlates the main characters to his father, mother, and deceased brother. This paper will analyze Spiegelman's motifs, symbolisms and overall motivation for such a work as Maus. Notably, experiences shape people mentally, emotionally, and physically, which then leads them to find coping mechanisms, whether consciously or subconsciously. Anja Spiegelman, the author's mother, sought release from her tormented memories of the Holocaust through suicide, which left Vladeck, the author's father, to bare the memories himself. Vladeck, who himself is a writer, battles through this tragedy by drawing for his son’s graphic
For many reasons, the translation of the cat-and-mouse metaphor from America to Nazi Germany succeeds brilliantly. As Spiegelman’s research incontrovertibly bears out, in many instances Nazi propagandists represented Jews as mice or rats, claiming thereby that the Jewish presence in Europe was an infestation of vermin that needed to be wiped out. 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.
The format of "Maus" is an effective way of telling a Holocaust narrative because it gives Art Spiegelman the chance to expresses his father's story without disrespecting him at the same time. It shows this through its comic book style drawings on a topic that is difficult to explain. With the illustrations throughout the story, it shows the true meaning of a picture is worth a thousand words. Compared to any other type of Holocaust book, it would be hard for a person who did not go through the Holocaust to understand what was taking place during that time.
Blood runs thicker than water. Art Spiegelman portrays a story through a non-traditional form of literature. Humans are not drawn; however, animals are used to represent a different group of individuals. The mice are the Jews, the Cats are the Germans, and the pigs are the Poles. Albeit the clear-cut framework, Maus is a novel that paints the horrors of the Holocaust and the aftermath. Spiegelman interviews his father, Vladek, for his personal recollection and experience from the tragedy. The novel itself is divided into two volumes, developing the characters over the span of both. The concept of family is emphasized through Vladek’s relationship with Art. The past serves as a barrier between Vladek and Art; creating communicational issues,
"The persecution of the Jews in the General Government in Polish territory gradually worsened in its cruelty. In 1939 and 1940 they were forced to wear the Star of David and were herded together and confined in ghettos. In 1941 and 1942 this unadulterated sadism was fully revealed. And then a thinking man, who had overcome his inner cowardice, simply had to help. There was no other choice."
We trembled in the cold." They had all their personal belongings taken away from them they were nothing. They were prisoners, for being hardly any different. Next, once prisoners lost their humanity, they treat each others as crudely as the Nazis treated them. You build so much anger you eventually need to take it out on someone or something. They were slaves and had no rights, not able to speak or ,move at certain times of the day. Nazis made sure they were suffering and wanted to die. Jews eventually would crush others to better themselves. Thousands of people died in Auschwitz and Birkenau daily.
The Maus series of books tell a very powerful story about one man’s experience in the Holocaust. They do not tell the story in the conventional novel fashion. Instead, the books take on an approach that uses comic windows as a method of conveying the story. One of the most controversial aspects of this method was the use of animals to portray different races of people. The use of animals as human races shows the reader the ideas of the Holocaust a lot more forcefully than simply using humans as the characters.
Art Spiegelman’s Maus is a novel about the Vladek and his experience as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust. It narrates the reality of the Holocaust wherein millions and millions of Jews were systematically killed by the Nazi regime. One of the themes in the story is racism which is evident in the employment of animal characters and its relationship with one another.
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.
When reading a traditional book, it is up to the reader to imagine the faces and landscapes that are described within. A well written story will describe the images clearly so that you can easily picture the details. In Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, the use of the animals in place of the humans offers a rather comical view in its simplistic relation to the subject and at the same time develops a cryptic mood within the story. His drawings of living conditions in Auschwitz; expressions on the faces of people enduring torture, starvation, and despair; his experience with the mental institution and his mother’s suicide; and occasional snapshots of certain individuals, create a new dynamic between book and reader. By using the form of the graphic novel, Art Spiegelman created a narrative accompanied by pictures instead of needing to use immense worded detail.
Art Spiegelman's Maus II is a book that tells more than the story of one family's struggle to live thought the Holocaust. It gives us a look into the psyche of a survivor's child and how the Holocaust affected him and many other generations of people who were never there at all. Maus II gives the reader a peek into the psyche of Art Spiegelman and the affects of having two parents that survived the Holocaust had on him. Spiegelman demonstrates the affects of being a survivor's child in many ways throughout the book. Examining some of these will give us a better understanding of what it was like to be a part of the Holocaust.
During the Holocaust in Poland, thousands of Jewish people were taken out the comfort of their homes and even their cities. They were separated from their loved ones and taken away to places completely foreign to them. The Nazis reduced the Jewish community during the Holocaust drastically by killing anyone that produced the slightest amount of trouble or if they didn’t contribute in the camps as productively as others due to health or old age. All of the old customs and traditions that the Jewish people used to have were all stopped. All the money, food, and even the homes they used to own were all taken away from them. Without their approval, the Nazis went in and practically took all the valuables that they could find inside the homes. There are many movies and books that try to explain the brutality of this event but the high majority underestimate how terrible this event is. The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski shows the event in the eyes of a famous Jewish pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman.# This movie accurately portrays the the extreme differences of the Polish town...
The books Maus I and Maus II, written by Art Spiegelman over a thirteen-year period from 1978-1991, are books that on the surface are written about the Holocaust. The books specifically relate to the author’s father’s experiences pre and post-war as well as his experiences in Auschwitz. The book also explores the author’s very complex relationship between himself and his father, and how the Holocaust further complicates this relationship. On a deeper level the book also dances around the idea of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. The two books are presented in a very interesting way; they are shown in comic form, which provides the ability for Spiegelman to incorporate numerous ideas and complexities to his work.
This book left me with a deeper sense of the horrors experienced by the Polish people, especially the Jews and the gypsies, at the hands of the Germans, while illustrating the combination of hope and incredible resilience that kept them going.