Maus A Survivor's Tale Analysis

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel consisting of two narratives, one telling the story of Nazi persecution of Jews during the Holocaust and the other telling how Spiegelman’s father, Vladek lived in New York in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Specifically, it is an account told by Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, who was a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Poland, as a narrator about his experience during the war to Art, who is ‘interviewing’ him. Maus belongs to what is known as second-generation Holocaust literature, which tells stories of how the children and descendants of survivors were impacted by the tragedy. In the years from 1933-1945, the Nazi Party ruled Germany. Extreme racist and in particular anti-Semitism

Comic strips are normally associated with cartoons of a humorous or happy tone, not the serious, grim material associated with the Holocaust and this challenges the cultural norm of how cartoons are viewed. Because most of the text is dialogue, it follows a conversational pattern between Vladek and Art. Vladek’s broken English is left in the book because it gives the readers the feeling that they’re being told the story directly, by the person who’s experience it is. Maus shines due to its impressive ability to "speak the unspeakable" by using the popular maxim, "a picture is worth a thousand words," to perfection

Spiegelman pours his heart and soul into this book to try and tell his fathers story of suffering as well, as his own. The difficulties of being a second-generation Holocaust survivor are shown as him and his father sometimes struggle to mesh and understand each other. Spiegelman succeeds in writing a stark semi-personal account of the tragedy of the