Maus Limitations

1341 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: A research paper on the Holocaust

Maus is a graphic novel about the Holocaust where all the characters are depicted as animals. Cats are Germans, dogs are Americans, pigs are Polish, and Mice are Jews. The story is told through the eyes of Vladek Spiegelman who is also the author's father. Vladek Spiegelman survived the Holocaust, because of his abundance amount of money and the ability to get on everyone's good side. Maus has many limitations to the story such as point of view, lack of experience, and depiction of characters. Those limitations could be advantages as well as not experiencing the Holocaust means there are no biases towards people or places. Even so, the author wrote his book through the eyes of Vladek Spiegelman.
The experience of the author not going through the Holocaust makes it so Vladek is the only reference he has and he might not remember every detail as clearly thus altering the true story. Vladek talks about many other people along the telling of his story, but the author only gets Vladek’s side of the story maybe if someone in the book read Maus and their character did not act like the actual person. Vladek’s second wife survived the Holocaust, but the author …show more content…

The book skips some days which would raise the question of what happened that day. One page skips a whole day during the Holocaust that day could have been filled to make the story connect more without holes (143). The book has it a few pages after, again the author skips a few days of the story which adds more holes to the story (159). Yet if the author chose to take out those days they must not have been important. On the other hand who are we to say what the author includes and does not include in the story. Even so, the main point of the story is Vladek’s Holocaust story so skipping days takes away from the story. Lack of text makes the story feel as if something is missing that is very important raising many questions for

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of the Efficiency of a Graphic Novel portraying a Holocaust Narrative

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    First, Art Spiegelman represents humans as animals to show how the Nazis categorized the world by race which is of historical importance to the Holocaust narrative. In Book II, pg. 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 addition, Jews were portrayed in Nazi propaganda as sneaky people who would steal your food and money. For these reasons, the author chose to represent the Jewish community as mice in order to show the Nazis point of view at that time. Additionally, the symbolism of the cats as predators and the mice as prey is depicted. Overall, mice symbolize victims because they can’t defend themselves.

    Read More

  • Maus Two by Art Spiegelman

    444 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Night By Elie Wiesel

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many people have different explanation about the Holocaust. They have different explanations because they might have lived it in a different way. Each person may have worst moments than other people. It also depends if they don't want to talk about it because it brings them horrible memories. So many survivors have a story to tell, so many people have a point to make. But what all of them are going to say is that it was horrible that they don't want to talk and remember about it. Elie Wiesel’s Night and the book Maus reveal the following theme; Never give up even when life is tough (or when things seems hopeless). These two books talk about the horrible moments and stories that happened in the Holocaust. They have many subject in common as differences. So many people want to try to understand the horror or maybe help others to understand it better.

    Read More

  • Comparison between Maus & Anne Frank

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Holocaust was a terrible time, where the Nazis were eliminating Jews due to a misunderstanding that was passed down from Adolf Hitler to the Germans. Hilter filled the minds of Germans with hatred against Jews. Books such as Maus and Anne Frank has been able to suppress the horror of the holocaust. Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is about Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek Spriegelman and his experiences enduring the holocaust. Anne Frank, by Ann Kramer is about Frank and her friends and family struggling to survive the holocaust, yet in the end only her dad, Otto Frank is the only survivor. The author of the book Anne...

    Read More

  • A Comparison Of The Life Of Maus By Vladek Spiegelman

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    Vladek has clearly never fully recovered from the horrors of the Holocaust. Because he was once wealthy and carefree now he’s cheap and pragmatic. Once a generous businessman now he’s a selfish miser. The Holocaust affect each survivor differently. Art notes on a few separate occasions, the Holocaust cannot be the reason for all of Vladek’s behavior. “I used to think the war made him this way.” Art says to Mala. In which, she responds that "all our friends went through the camps; nobody is like him!” It may be that no survivor is like him, but it’s the way he copes with what he went through. Basically, he’s still living his life as if he were still in those concentration camps in the present time.

    Read More

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

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

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

    699 Words  | 2 Pages

    The comic implies that surviving the holocaust affects Vladek’s life and wrecks his relationship with his son and his wife. In some parts of the story, Vladek rides a stationary bike while narrating his story (I, 81, panel 7-9). Given the fact that it is a stationary bike, it stays immobile: no matter how hard Vladek pedals, he cannot move forward. The immobility of the bike symbolizes how survivor’s guilt will never let him escape his past. Vladek can never really move past the holocaust: he cannot even fall asleep without shouting from the nightmares (II, 74, panel 4-5). Moreover, throughout the story, the two narrators depict Vladek before, during and after the war. Before the war, Vladek is characterized as a pragmatic and resourceful man. He is resourceful as he is able to continue his black business and make money even under the strengthened control of the Nazi right before the war (I, 77 panel 1-7). However, after surviving the holocaust, Vladek feels an obligation to prove to himself and to others that his survival was not simply by mere luck, but because h...

    Read More

  • Stripped Pajamas Archetypes

    612 Words  | 2 Pages

    Holocaust is a point in history that everyone at the time had different views. The novel not

    Read More

  • Maus and the Holocaust

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Holocaust took a great toll on many lives in one way or another, one in particular being Vladek

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Book 'Maus'

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Comic Format of Spiegelman's Books Maus I and Maus II

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Maus By Art Spielgem Literary Analysis

    1123 Words  | 3 Pages

    Maus, by Art Spielgeman is a graphic novel, probably the best of the genre. A sad novel, the story is the biography of author’s father, Vladek, a Polish Jew, who during the Second World War was imprisoned in Auschwitz, but fortunately survived though the Holocaust. Vladek’s drama, however, is terrifying. There are moments when he escapes through the work of certain suffering, are moments where he got rid of friends (too few in those days) or those requesting certain material benefits, also there are critical moments in which he is on the brink of death, there are times when everyone around him die, all relatives. The time after the war are not gentle, too, his wife commits suicide “your mother killed herself…she’s dead!” (Spiegelman, 101), departs from his son Art “I remembered last time I saw her. She came

    Read More

  • Hidden Like Anne Frank

    1125 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Holocaust is a big event in world history, this event should be talked about and educate people about it. The Holocaust is a reminder to the world that discrimination and social injustice in the wrong hands can lead to horrible consequences. The stories in this book all hit me, I already knew the effects of the Holocaust, I knew that the holocaust was a genocide, around six million jews were murdered, most in death camps/ labor camps. I knew about the mass deportations, I can't imagine what it was like, even with these personal stories based on what these survivors went through is still hard to imagine. All the stories start with the victims, either in elementary or middle school, would be forced to leave their school, which they had been in for years, had friends, and felt like home. They would be placed in jewish schools with complete strangers, just waiting to be sent away into the labor camps. Then there was the people who chose to go into hiding, which is very risky. There was two parts to hiding, one, the people going into hiding. They would not be able to go to out, they would stay in one place until it was time to go to the next.The second part, the people providing hiding. They would risk everything as well. They knew the consequences they could face for housing jews. Most kids hid for several years, with some having their parents by their side, and others lost their

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Racism in Art Spiegelman's Maus

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Maus Limitations

Open Document