Maus Essay

In Art Spiegelman’s Maus, he uses metafiction to establish things he would not have been able to communicate otherwise. Spiegelman created a character to represent himself in the outer story of the novel. This made the book more credible and created trust between Art and the audience. Using himself as a character helped him portray his emotions toward his father’s story. The utilization of metafiction let us closely see Art and Vladek’s relationship, like Art’s rebellious nature. It also exposed…

Most readers and analysists of Art Spiegelman’s Maus tend to become so focused on the grim nature of the comic’s subject matter that they overlook the possibility that there exists aspects beyond guilt and trauma that influence its narrative. Likewise, the most commonly overlooked of these aspects, and also possibly one of the most controversial, is humor. Throughout the centuries, individuals have employed humour, whether it be in the form of satire, irony, or understatement, to help them cope…

Traumatic Experiences Change Lifestyles In the graphic novel, Maus by Art Spiegelman, his father Vladek is jew and is one of the few who survived from the Holocaust. Vladek’s experiences of being a jew and facing oppression throughout the Holocaust greatly affected him, he lost his first son and almost his entire family was killed or had gone missing. Now most of his friends, or people he associates with are also Holocaust survivors, including his second wife, Mala. Vladek also was married…

responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and other undesirables in Poland and the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, I: My Father Bleeds History and Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, II: And Here My Troubles Began, are graphic novels written my Art Spiegelman. Chronicling the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of his father, Vladek, Maus I and II depicts humans drawn in animal form to tell the story of the struggles and horrors suffered by the Polish Jews at the…

within the narrative who may physically interact with the story, albeit both roles are explicitly constrained by the limits of their memory. The graphic memoirs Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Maus by Art Spiegelman are both autobiographies that work in very similar ways to deal with the lasting impact…

“Maus” by Art Spiegelman is a compelling and masterful story of survival told by Art’s father, Vladek Spiegelman. A Jew that lived in Poland during World War II. Vladek’s accounts are recorded and published in an odd manner. Instead of the traditional biography of a Holocaust survivor, like the Elle Wiesel’s “Night,” “Maus” was made into a comic book. Not only was “Maus” a comic book, but the characters are rendered very uniquely. The Jews are drawn as mice; the Poles were drawn as pigs,…

reader and asks questions that the reader would ask and creates a dialogue in the story that would be absent if the story lacked the cartoonist self-insertion. Also, the cartoonist self-insertion adds a sense of realism to the story. In the case of Maus, Spiegelman adds realism to this multivalent…

In Maus II, Artie struggles with feelings of vulnerability and isolation. This is particularly notable in the scene above where he visits his psychiatrist. Drawn as a small mouse sitting in a chair that is far too big for him, Artie is barely able to make his outstretched legs reach the edge of the seat.1 This inability to rest his feet on the floor could suggest that he does not feel grounded in himself. Artie’s parents are now both dead, and grief may have caused him to feel severed from the…

In troubling times, many people look to their faith as a source of guidance and inspiration. This certainly rings true in two graphic novels: Maus: A Survivor’s Story, written by Art Spiegelman, and Persepolis, written by Marjane Satrapi. Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman’s experience as a Polish Jew in the Holocaust. Persepolis, an autobiographical novel, follows Marjane, a religious young girl who has a passion for activism growing up during the Islamic Revolution. These two authors…

Maus is a series of books telling the story of a man’s life during the Holocaust. Which has been written in the form of a graphic novel. But the most unique and controversial aspect of this series is the use of anthropomorphised animals. Art Spiegelman decided on an interesting selection of animals, which to some could come off as offensive. The first animal that is introduced is the mouse. Mice are used to depict the Jewish people. The Polish were involved in the first major arrest of Jewish…