Stereotypes In Maus

1. The definition of “stereotype” is “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing”. Many stereotypes are held today, and some are very harmful. An example of a stereotype is that girls aren’t good at sports. People might be playing a sport, and automatically assume that the boy is better than the girl. This is not true at all because some of the greatest athletes in the world are girls. Another stereotype is that all asians are very smart. This may be true for some asians, but just because some are smart, doesn’t mean that one can automatically group them together. These stereotypes can offend the people involved in the grouping, or anybody at all. In Maus, many stereotypes are used. The Holocaust is filled with stereotypes. The main stereotype was that Jews were bad people. In Maus, the quote is included by Hitler, “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human”. This proves that Hitler, and the Nazis thought ALL Jews were

The portrayal of cats and mice in cartoons is very similar to Maus. In the cartoons, the cat is always trying to annoy the mouse, and sometimes it even tries to capture the mouse. In Maus, the Nazis are portrayed by cats, and the Jews are portrayed by mice. In the Holocaust, the main goal of the Nazis was to kill the Jews, and make them suffer. For example, in Tom and Jerry, Tom is always trying to capture Jerry. They constantly fight, wanting to kill each other. Only a few times they display friendship and concern for each other, but that did not happen in the Holocaust. The Nazis never cared for the Jews, even if the Jews did nothing wrong. In Maus, the Nazis tricked the Jews into working for them, by giving them warm beds and food, but later they ended up having to work for a very long time. Also, in Mickey Mouse, Mickey and Minnie are very sweet, good characters, and the “mice” in this book are also very sweet characters, who get blamed by the Nazis for being terrible