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Analysis of Father-son Relationship in Maus

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The Use of Visual Narrative and Formal Structure in Maus: a Survivors Tale by Art Spiegelman

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The Means of Stylistics Used and Their Influence on The Text in Maus

The representative means of comics in maus, analyzing allegories in "maus" and "terrible things", graphic novel series "maus": world war ii and the holocaust, family dynamics in life is beautiful, maus, and barefoot gen, comparative analysis of maus by art spiegelman and night by elie wiesel, the theme of religion in graphic novels by spiegelman and sturm, the themes of family and guilt in maus by art spiegelman, a powerful idea and a prominent action in the novels unbroken and maus.

1991, Art Spiegelman

Comics, Novel, Graphic novel, Comic book, Biography

Vladek Spiegelman, Art Spiegelman, Anja Spiegelman, Mandelbaum, Mala Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly

"Maus" is a graphic novel written by Art Spiegelman and is based on the experiences of his father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Holocaust survivor. The novel is a unique and poignant exploration of the Holocaust, using the medium of comic art to depict the harrowing events. Inspired by his father's firsthand accounts, Art Spiegelman tells the story of Vladek's life during World War II, including his time in Auschwitz concentration camp and his struggles to survive and protect his family. "Maus" stands out for its innovative portrayal of the characters as anthropomorphic animals, with Jews depicted as mice and Nazis as cats. This metaphorical representation adds depth to the narrative, allowing readers to engage with the story on multiple levels.

The story begins with Art's attempts to understand his father's past and the impact it has had on their relationship. Vladek shares his harrowing journey, from the rise of anti-Semitism in Poland to the Nazi occupation, the horrors of Auschwitz, and his eventual liberation. Throughout the novel, Art grapples with the weight of his father's story and the responsibility of representing it truthfully. The narrative not only explores the brutality and dehumanization of the Holocaust but also delves into the complex dynamics between father and son, the trauma of survivors, and the challenges of memory and storytelling.

"Maus" is primarily set in two distinct time periods: the present-day 1970s in New York City and the past during World War II in Poland and various concentration camps. In the present, the story takes place in the urban landscape of New York City, depicting the everyday lives of Art Spiegelman and his father, Vladek. The city serves as a backdrop for Art's interviews with his father, as well as their interactions and struggles in dealing with the lingering effects of the Holocaust. The past setting of the narrative is situated in Poland during the rise of Nazi Germany and the subsequent occupation. It portrays the stark realities of life under Nazi rule, the ghettos, and the horrors of concentration camps such as Auschwitz. The grim and oppressive atmosphere of these settings highlights the extreme circumstances faced by Vladek and countless others during the Holocaust.

One of the primary themes is the trauma and its intergenerational effects. The graphic novel delves into the psychological impact of the Holocaust on both survivors and their children. It portrays the burden of memory, guilt, and the struggle to reconcile personal experiences with the larger historical context. Another significant theme is the power of storytelling and the role of art in representing history. Art Spiegelman employs the medium of comics to convey the complex and emotional story of his father's survival. Through visual imagery and the use of anthropomorphic animals as characters, the narrative challenges traditional depictions of the Holocaust and highlights the capacity of art to engage with difficult subject matter. Additionally, "Maus" explores themes of prejudice, dehumanization, and the consequences of unchecked bigotry. It delves into the ways in which individuals grapple with their identities, navigate social hierarchies, and confront prejudice in a world scarred by the Holocaust.

One prominent literary device is symbolism. Art Spiegelman utilizes anthropomorphic animals to represent different groups of people, with Jews portrayed as mice and Nazis as cats. This metaphorical approach adds depth and complexity to the storytelling, allowing readers to grasp the power dynamics and dehumanization inherent in the Holocaust. For example, the use of mice to represent Jews underscores their vulnerability and prey status in the face of Nazi persecution. Another literary device employed in "Maus" is foreshadowing. Through subtle hints and clues, Spiegelman foreshadows future events, creating suspense and anticipation. An example of this is when Art's father, Vladek, mentions his first wife and children who died during the war, foreshadowing the tragic fate that awaits them. Additionally, the use of flashbacks is a significant literary device in "Maus." The narrative frequently shifts between the present and past, offering glimpses into Vladek's experiences during the Holocaust. These flashbacks provide crucial context, deepen character development, and offer a layered understanding of the historical events. Moreover, the graphic novel format itself is a distinct literary device in "Maus." The combination of visuals and text allows for a unique storytelling experience, providing visual cues and imagery that enhance the emotional impact of the narrative. The illustrations contribute to the overall narrative structure and create a powerful synergy between the words and images.

First and foremost, Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking work revolutionized the graphic novel medium. "Maus" demonstrated the artistic and narrative potential of the graphic format, elevating it from mere entertainment to a serious and respected literary form. Its success opened doors for other graphic novels to explore complex themes and historical events. In terms of Holocaust representation, "Maus" introduced a new perspective by using anthropomorphic animals to depict the characters, reflecting the dehumanization and brutality of the Holocaust itself. This innovative approach challenged traditional portrayals and expanded the possibilities of Holocaust storytelling. Moreover, "Maus" sparked critical discussions about trauma, memory, and the transmission of history. Spiegelman's exploration of his father's experiences as a Holocaust survivor highlighted the intergenerational impact of trauma and the complexities of memory. This prompted a reevaluation of how personal narratives and collective memory shape our understanding of historical events.

1. "Maus" was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. In 1992, Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking work received the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, marking a significant moment in the recognition of graphic novels as a legitimate form of literature. 2. "Maus" has been translated into over 30 languages, reaching a global audience and resonating with readers worldwide. Its powerful storytelling and unique visual style have transcended cultural boundaries, making it a universally acclaimed and widely read work.

Maus is an important subject for an essay due to its exceptional contribution to literature and its innovative narrative style. The graphic novel by Art Spiegelman delves into the Holocaust and its aftermath, presenting a poignant and deeply personal account of the author's father's experiences as a survivor. By using anthropomorphic animal characters to represent different groups, Spiegelman creates a powerful metaphorical framework that explores complex themes of identity, trauma, memory, and the impact of historical events on individuals and generations. Writing an essay about Maus provides an opportunity to delve into the unique literary and artistic techniques employed by Spiegelman, such as the use of panels, visual symbolism, and interweaving narratives. It allows for an examination of the graphic novel's impact on the acceptance and recognition of the genre as a form of serious literature. Additionally, an essay on Maus can shed light on the Holocaust's ongoing relevance, the responsibility of memory, and the power of storytelling in confronting historical atrocities. Overall, Maus prompts critical analysis and deep reflection, making it a compelling and important subject for an essay.

"I cannot forget it...tonight, you have made me hate you, and the whole ghetto, because of this ridiculous uniform you're wearing!" "Friends? Your friends...if you lock them together in a room with no food for a week...then you could see what it is, friends!" "I'm tired of hearing about the Holocaust!" "Richieu, my brother, where are you now?" "To die, it's easy...but you have to struggle for life!"

1. Rothberg, M., & Spiegelman, A. (1994). " We Were Talking Jewish": Art Spiegelman's" Maus" as" Holocaust" Production. Contemporary Literature, 35(4), 661-687. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208703) 2. Young, J. E. (1998). The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman's" Maus" and the Afterimages of History. Critical Inquiry, 24(3), 666-699. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/448890?journalCode=ci) 3. Orbán, K. (2007). Trauma and Visuality: Art Spiegelman's Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers. Representations, 97(1), 57-89. (https://online.ucpress.edu/representations/article-abstract/97/1/57/95740/Trauma-and-Visuality-Art-Spiegelman-s-Maus-and-In) 4. Tabachnick, S. E. (1993). Of Maus and memory: the structure of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel of the Holocaust. Word & Image, 9(2), 154-162. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02666286.1993.10435484) 5. Tabachnick, S. E. (2004). The religious meaning of Art Spiegelman's Maus. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 22(4), 1-13. (https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/article/170723/summary) 6. Spiegelman, A. (2008). Maus I & II. Historia de un sobreviviente: Y aquí comenzaron mis problemas. (https://www.tpet.com/content/PHSamples/MausRJs.pdf) 7. Knowles, S. (2015). The postcolonial graphic novel and trauma: From Maus to Malta. Postcolonial traumas: memory, narrative, resistance, 83-96. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137526434_6)

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Why Maus Was Banned

What makes the book controversial is exactly what makes it valuable.

The word Maus in red is half-erased on a black background

In the 1970s, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman jotted down a thought in a notebook. “Maybe Western civilization has forfeited any right to literature with a big ‘L,’” he wrote. “Maybe vulgar, semiliterate, unsubtle comic books are an appropriate form for speaking of the unspeakable.” It came to him around the time he started making comics about the Holocaust, which would eventually lead to his two-volume, Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale .

Forty years later, at an event where I was interviewing him, I asked about that quote. “For one thing, the unspeakable gets spoken within 10 minutes, by me if nobody else,” Spiegelman quipped. (He got up in the middle of the same event and went outside to smoke a cigarette, leaving me facing an empty chair, and a packed house.) It’s true that Spiegelman “speaks”—and draws—the unspeakable in Maus . In black line art, it presents two narratives: the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States in 1951 with his wife, Anja, also a survivor, and their toddler, Art—and the story of the cartoonist son, as an adult, soliciting his father’s testimony. It is taught routinely in high school, college, and graduate school. It is, in addition, taught to many middle-school students. This came to wide attention this past January, when Maus was banned from an eighth-grade English-language-arts curriculum by the McMinn County, Tennessee, school board. The ban became a global news story; Maus sold out on Amazon.

Read: Book bans are targeting the history of oppression

But the ban didn’t surprise me. A new wave of politically driven censorship, particularly one motivated by a discomfort with discussions of America’s history of slavery, has grown in the Trump and post-Trump years. And Maus ’s frank visual depiction of horrors, the way it acts as a form of witness to dehumanization and genocide, is controversial. Of course, that confrontation with horror is exactly what makes it valuable. In fact, a work like Maus could not be any more urgent during an era of rampant division, one in which racism and anti-Semitism are rising both nationally and globally. One of Spiegelman’s longtime catchphrases—“Never again and again and again”—feels eerily prescient; he gave what he calls “ Maus Now” talks after the fatal racist, white-nationalist Charlottesville, Virginia, rally in 2017 (which included the chant “Jews will not replace us!”), and the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018.

The cover of Maus Now

Maus ’s importance cannot be overstated: It shifted how people talk about history, trauma, and ethnic and racial persecution. The critic and journalist Alisa Solomon, for instance, notes in her 2014 essay “The Haus of Maus ” that the book “became the proof text for academic study of the transgenerational transmission of trauma and its representation.”  It also is a high-water mark for comics—exemplifying the medium’s productive tensions between word and image, presence and absence, that are so key to expressing memory. The series famously articulates its characters as animals; they understand themselves as human, but readers see Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, Polish gentiles as pigs, and Americans as dogs. This level of abstraction, which repurposes a metaphor from Nazi propaganda, is hard to imagine being effective in any other medium. The drawing allows Spiegelman to do more than say what happened. In a rich, layered way, he can show it.

Maus is also a tricky text, prone to misinterpretation—and, as in Tennessee, censorship. It was notably banned in Russia in 2015 because the modified swastika on its cover was categorized as violating anti-Nazi-propaganda laws. Maus was also subject to book burnings in Poland in 2001 , the year it was published there (long after other foreign editions), by people who objected to its depiction of Polish gentiles.

When the book emerged as a fresh target in the culture wars this year, the school board’s official, and flimsy, reasons for removing it from the curriculum amplified the outrage. The board cited bad language (such as “bitch” and “goddamn”) and nudity (specifically, one small image of Spiegelman’s mother, drawn in human form, in the bathtub after taking her own life, a profoundly troubling visual on which to pin the charge of obscenity). These aspects, while perhaps not ideal for an eighth-grade audience, feel beside the point in a narrative that bears witness to genocide.

Read: The banned books you haven’t heard about

The meeting minutes from the McMinn County school board are especially telling. At one point, a board member seemingly singles out a striking scene in Maus I , where Vladek sees four Jews, executed for trading on the black market, hanging on a central street in the Polish city of Sosnowiec in 1942. “Being in the schools, educators and stuff, we don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff,” the member said. “It shows people hanging; it shows them killing kids; why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy.” As with other enacted and proposed bans—on works about slavery, for instance—this rationale whitewashes racist and anti-Semitic violence. The visceral reaction to these books’ imagery ignores the message behind the pictures. Graphic histories and testimonies like Maus intentionally ask readers to encounter, in small part, what their subjects also encountered, including the malevolent power of Nazi symbols.

Maus is not “promoting” murder by bearing witness to it. As some in the meeting pointed out, hangings and other forms of fatal violence happened. Spiegelman observed in a post-ban event at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville that the censors “want a kinder, gentler Holocaust they can stand.” That version, needless to say, doesn’t exist. What Maus does offer are pages, like the one depicting hanging Jews in Sosnowiec, that engage spectacle—that ask readers to confront a shred of the horror that Vladek Spiegelman experienced. It invites us to witness—in the anthropologist Michael Taussig’s sense of witnessing as pausing that moment when shocking things pass “from horror to banality.” Even as it resists the politics that drive them, Maus asks readers to encounter violent realities and their role in our present. In 2022, facing those realities—and in some cases, teaching them—is a condition for recognizing their ever-present possibility.

This article is adapted from Maus Now: Selected Writing , edited by Hillary Chute.

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Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

Art spiegelman.

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

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Maus: A student’s essay, written with my assistance

maus 2 essay

The Complete Maus shows that the  Holocaust experience affects the next generation as much as it affects the people who lived through it. Do you agree?

In his comic story, Maus, Pulitzer prize winner Art Spiegelman writes about his parents’ experiences in Nazi Germany. Spiegelman uses various interview and graphic-style techniques to capture the horror of the Nazi “experiment” whereby up to 6 million Jews were killed in gas chambers in concentration camps. Whilst Vladek and Anja both survived, they were psychologically scarred. Throughout the interviews with his father, Vladek, and his father’s narrative recounts, Spiegelman reveals the extent of  their trauma which inhibits family life and relationships. The emotional and psychological divide between Art and Vladek is further tarnished by the deaths of Richieu and Anja.  The father’s development of a variety of obsessive neuroses also become another burden in the father-son relationship.

Throughout the graphic novel, Spiegelman  depicts a variety of emotional and communication barriers, which he suggests may have originated from Vladek’s Holocaust experiences.  Vladek constantly offers parental advice to Art that is often based on his experiences as a symbolic mouse in pinstriped pyjamas and yet this advice leads to, rather than, solves many of their interpersonal problems. Such emotional barriers, which appear to affect each of the men differently, are foregrounded in the ‘Prologue’. After Art was deserted and humiliated by his friends whilst rollerskating on the street, his father tells him unsympathetically and dismissively,  “Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week … then you could see what it is, friends!” Vladek continues to saw the piece of  wood, suggesting that he is always fixing something, as he did during his war-time experiences. He doesn’t appear to be paying much attention to Art which reinforces his emotional indifference. This is a typical moment when Vladek views friendship through the lens of  life-and-death actions,  and he dismisses Art’s eight-year-old problems. In turn, he makes Art’s problems seem insignificant compared to his own. From Vladek’s perspective, his emotional detachment from his son, which could be a coping mechanism developed from his war experiences, alienates him from his son. From Spiegelman’s perspective, he does not find the psychological solace that he is searching.

Whilst Vladek appears indifferent and detached, Art appears to suffer from Vladek’s constant comparison between his father’s monumental, and his own insignificant, life experiences.  This comparison reinforces the barriers between each and exacerbates the emotional distance.  It is evident that Art agonises over these moments during his childhood, because later in Spiegelman’s typical question and answer style interview, he admits to his psychologist, Pavel, who is also a Czech Jew and a survivor of Auschwitz, that “mainly I remember arguing with him and being told that I couldn’t do anything as well as he could… No matter what I accomplished it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.”  Owing to Vladek’s tendency to belittle Art’s experiences, Art constantly feels as though he will never impress his father and develops feelings of inferiority. IN his own way, Vladek appears to inflate the significance of his own experiences in a bid to overcompensate for the fact that for most of his life he was degraded by the Nazis.  As Pavel says, “Maybe your father needed to show that he was always right — that he could always survive — because he felt guilty about surviving”.  The symbolic depiction of the demoralised Jews as vulnerable and powerless mice that are tortured by the vicious cat captures Vladek’s sense of  impotence and despair.  From Vladek’s perspective, this sense of impotence is, inadvertently, displaced onto his son. From Art’s perspective, he ironically, feels belittled, much as the father was and neither can overcome their distance.

It is evident in Maus that Vladek is constantly haunted by a sense of survivor guilt.  It is also apparent that the father transfers this guilt onto Art, which surfaces in both direct and indirect ways. As a consequence, this guilt exacerbates the psychological barriers between then and leads to displaced and thwarted emotions. As Pavel tells his patient,  if Vladek survives, 6 million Jews were killed, and this has resulted in constant anxiety. In  one comic caption, Pavel states, “Because he felt guilty about surviving … he took his guilt out on you, where it was safe…on the real survivor.” (p 204). Graphically, Art depicts Vladek’s guilt by using a palimpsest technique, which is a literal graphical bleeding from past to present, This technique  reveals Vladek’s displaced anxiety. For example, in a panel, where the family is driving back from the supermarket after attempting to return the unfinished box of special K, Vladek recalls the deaths of the four girls who were scapegoated for their subversion. This frame shows the literal blend of time zones. In the frame, Art and Francoise are in the car listening to Vladek’s recount. In the same frame, there is an image of four sets of legs hanging from a tree which presumably belong to Anja’s four friends who “blew up a crematorium”. Spiegelman graphically suggests that Vladek is scarred by the horror of his past and it is this horror that leads to numerous psychological problems.

(In another depiction, four pairs of legs are also dangling from a rope.  In this case, Nahum Cohn and his son, who traded goods without a coupon, hang from the scaffold.  Vladek suggests that such assistance was critical to his survival and yet it led to the deaths of others. Spiegelman uses an eight-frame page consisting of a five-frame present-time overlay. In the above frame, the four mice, dressed in suits,   “hanged there for one full week”. Vladek’s  prominent caption refers to the tactics of intimidation used by the “cats”  to scare the “mice” into submission.  In the bottom frame, Spiegelman uses the image of legs hanging in mid air to give an impression that anyone who subverted the system would suffer a similar fate. In doing so, Spiegelman enhances the image of the dead Jews and the brutality of the cats that continues to haunt both father and son.)

Furthermore, Vladek’s guilt often surfaces in a variety of neurotic compulsive behaviours and these interfere with his ability to be a good father.  Because of these behaviours, he cannot connect on an emotional level with his son.  Vladek is neurotic about food, disease, death and profligacy. He compulsively organises his pills, seeks to save every penny, and fixes everything through his own abilities. Vladek refuses to hire anyone to fix household problems. Spiegelman suggests that his entrepreneurial skills were the reason he stayed alive in the labour camps. Vladek also believes that he survived because ‘I saved   “Ever since Hitler I don’t like to throw out even a crumb”. In a humorous way, this reinforces the stereotype of the stingy Jew. Mala says,” it causes his physical pain  to part with money”. In a revealing retort, Vladek adamantly states: “I cannot forget it” which sums up his attitude to most daily life occurrences. He simply cannot forget the stress of experiences such as staying in  Mrs Motonowa’s cellar, sleeping with rats and living off candy for three days. They learned to be “happy even to have these conditions.” Whilst Spiegelman sets up the stereotypical miserly Jew for ridicule, there is a sense that readers can truly understand the basis of Vladek’s neuroses which are constantly displaced. Art believes that he must bear the brunt of these disorders which make it almost impossible for Art to have a normal and calm relationship with his father.

Spiegelman depicts many second generation holocaust survivors struggling with the agony of loss experienced by their traumatised parents. Many parents are paralysed by grief,  and their suffering and agony interfere with their parenting abilities.  In Art’s case, he is swamped by Anja’s and Vladek’s grief for their lost son, Richieu. Spiegelman depicts Art’s jealousy and insecurity that are a consequence of  a perverse type of sibling rivalry with his deceased “ghost” brother. Richieu died at age “five or six” during the holocaust by swallowing a poisonous pill given to him by a desperate carer, Tosha,  who feared death in the gas chambers. Spiegelman refers to a large, “blurry” photograph that hangs above Art’s parents’ bed.  The caption states, “It’s spooky having sibling rivalry with a snapshot!” During a rare conversation with Francoise in the car,  Art divulges his vulnerability and his position of disadvantage: “The photo never threw tantrums or got into any kind of trouble…it was an ideal kid and I was a pain in the ass. I couldn’t compete.”

Not only does Art feel inferior to his sibling; Spiegelman also suggests that Art, much like Vladek, is suffering from his own perverse form of survivor guilt.   In a forlorn and an indignant tone he also anticipates his parents’ disappointment, “He’d have become a doctor, and married a wealthy Jewish girl..the creep”. Vladek inadvertently refers to Art as Richieu in the final frame of the graphic novel. “I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough stories for now.”  This reveals the extent of Vladek’s continued sadness. The unbordered gravestone of Anja and Vladek at the end also serves as a memorial to the Jewish victims,  Art suggests that Richieu’s death also contributes to Anja’s suicide and the complicated and suffocating emotions between mother and son.

The experiences of the holocaust also traumatised Art’s mother Anja which creates emotional problems between mother and son.  These emotions surface in different ways for each of them. Feeble and distraught at the loss of Richieu, Anja emotionally strangles Art as she fears losing another son.  As a consequence, Art stifles his own emotional response towards his mother, which leads to guilt. The darkness and horror of “Prisoner on the hell planet” reveals that Art feels as though he should have done more to keep his mother alive.. The word ‘Hell’ in the title instils a feeling of dread. The ghost-like thriller of the large black monster and the abstract drawings of the skull and the bony hands depict Art as the hideous victim of a grisly perfect crime story.  In a  clever role reversal, Spiegelman depicts Vladek as a heartbroken victim, weeping on the floor, which shows his ghostly horror at the fact that he has failed to fulfil his promise to Anja that “you’ll see that  together we’ll survive”.  This is also despite the parallel narrative of the love story. Vladek’s eyes are black and large and there are no pupils. Art wears the pin-striped Jewish prisoner uniform which features prominently in the graphics related to the concentration camp.  It also shows the beginning of Art’s and Vladek’s psychological distance towards each other, compounded by the guilt of the mother’s suicide.  As an incensed Art says, “I was expected to comfort HIM”  Art becomes paranoid that every guest and friend thought it was his fault. Art was always resentful of how Anja ‘tightens the umbilical cord’. It is apparent that Anja does this because she does not wish to lose another son. However, Art constantly resists her love. He says, ” Well mom, if you’re listening … congratulations! … you’ve committed the perfect crime.” Graphically, Art’s hand grasps the door of an enormous cage as he accuses the mother of placing him in an impossible emotional situation: “You put me here…shorted all my circuits…cut my nerve endings…and crossed my wires!…you murdered me mommy and you left me here to take the rap!!!” Anja’s death, then, also exacerbates the emotional distance between Vladek and Art which is based on guilt.

In Maus, Spiegelman leaves readers in no doubt that the children of the holocaust survivors continue to suffer from the displaced trauma of their parents. Many children  experience and encounter similar struggles. Throughout his discussions with his father, Art seeks to uncover the burden and the pain that Art continues to carry, and which is passed onto his son.  This trauma affects Vladek’s ability to be a loving and supportive father and he fails to provide the emotional support for which Art yearns. Finally, The Complete Maus highlights the way second generation holocaust survivors struggle with trauma, the agony of loss and the depression and displaced anxiety which haunts their parents.

Return to Maus: Notes by Dr Jennifer Minter, English Works

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Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “Mauschwitz”

During a vacation in Vermont, Art debates with Françoise about how to depict her, a Frenchwoman who converts to Judaism to please Vladek. Art is against depicting the French as a cute animal and suggests transforming her from a frog to a mouse. After hearing of Vladek having a heart attack, Art finds out that his father is lying about the condition and the real reason for the call is that Mala is leaving him. While driving to Vladek’s bungalow in New York’s Catskill Mountains, Art worries about whether comics are an appropriate medium for depicting the Holocaust, how the event haunted his childhood, and his resentment of Richieu.

Vladek asks Art and Françoise to be with him through the summer, but Art only wants to stay until Labor Day. Vladek’s domineering and frugal behavior gets on Art’s nerves, and he meets a couple who want him to move in with his father. Art records Vladek’s story while walking to the Pines Hotel, which Vladek regularly sneaks into to enjoy the facilities.

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“Maus” and “Maus II” Stories by Art Spiegelman Essay

The Holocaust of the Jewish nation during World War II is one of the most tragic episodes in the history of mankind. Literature, as a form of art created to reflect the reality as such addresses the topic of the Holocaust rather often, but the means of its depicting typically remain the same, as scholars resort to documentation overview and historical analysis. The short stories Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman are the examples of the innovative, not traditional approach to the topic of the Holocaust. In his Maus II , Art Spiegelman depicts the legacy of Holocaust using the animal images and comic book techniques.

The interesting point about the short story by Art Spiegelman is the fact that this work of art uses the comic book technique to represent the events of the past and their effects upon the present. Depicting the controversial feelings of Art, one of the main heroes of Maus II , Art Spiegelman tries not only to reflect his personal memories about his family’s being among the prisoners of Auschwitz, but also reflects on the complexity of guilt experienced by his generation: “I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did…” (Speigelman (1993) as cited in Lauter, 2009, p. 780). Thus, apart from the historical perspective, Art Speigelman considers the moral and emotional perspectives of Holocaust.

The memory of the next generation, in relation to the generation that lived through World War II and the Holocaust, is a crucial concept in the present. Therefore, Art Spiegelman shows how much the people that did not see the horrors of Auschwitz want to save the memories of their parents, and how difficult, at the same time, it is for them to reproduce the memories of actual Auschwitz prisoners: “Reality is too complex for comics…so much has to be left out or distorted” (Speigelman (1993) as cited in Lauter, 2009, p. 781). The example of this controversy of wishes and actual opportunities is Art with whose considerations and moral dilemmas Maus II begins.

Analysis of the issue of the legacy of the Holocaust is a complex task. It involves understanding the nature of the people’s experiences about the Holocaust as well as the mentality of next generations that display certain guilt for being placed into easier living conditions than their parents and grandparents. The example of Art from Maus II can serve as a bright illustration to this point. Being a son of the former Auschwitz prisoner Vladek, Art tries to reflect his father’s experiences in a comic book but soon realizes that alone he is unable to render the actual emotions and pain of the Holocaust as he did not experience it. So, he is partly afraid of distorting the truth or being forced to drop certain details. Here, the legacy of the Holocaust is observed again; this time in the mentality of people.

Thus, the short story Maus II by Art Spiegelman is not only a comic book considering the Holocaust experiences of the author’s father Vladek, but also an insight into the mind of the next generations of people some of who often have respect for Holocaust victims, while others feel free to interpret the events of the World War II without confirmation from those who actually know the truth.

Works Cited

Lauter, Paul (Gen. Ed.) The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Contemporary Period (1945 to the Present). Cengage Heinle, 2009. Print.

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‘Contrarian and zippy’: Art Spiegelman at his studio in New York, May 2022

Maus Now: Selected Writing, edited by Hillary Chute review – the Maus that made history

While Philip Pullman and Adam Gopnik illuminate Art Spiegelman’s towering graphic novel, few others in this collection succeed in capturing its spark and sophistication

T his job has taught me to be wary of meeting my heroes, but when I interviewed Art Spiegelman in New York in 2011, it really was one of the great days. In his SoHo studio, the air thick with cigarette smoke and whatever strange substance old paper quietly emits (the place groaned with books), he and I talked long and hard about Maus , then shortly to celebrate its 25th birthday, and every moment was – for me, at least – completely thrilling. I’d long wondered about Spiegelman’s daring in the matter of his famous comic. How on earth had he done it, committing to paper what felt at the time like a kind of blasphemy? But sitting opposite him, I think I understood. In conversation, certainty had only to appear on the horizon for ambivalence to wrestle it to the ground – and vice versa. He simply had to work stuff out. I doubt he could have resisted making Maus even if he’d tried.

I guess there must still be some people out there who don’t know about Spiegelman’s masterwork. So perhaps I’d better explain. The only comic ever to win a Pulitzer prize, Maus is a two-volume graphic novel about the Holocaust. Based on interviews with his father, Vladek, a survivor of Auschwitz, it depicts Jews as mice, Nazis as cats and Poles as pigs, though the source of the shock it caused when it came out ( Maus I in 1986, and Maus II in 1991) lay more in its refusal to sanctify the survivor than in its anthropomorphism. The Vladek we see living in Queens with his second wife, Mala – the book has two time frames, past and present – is a parsimonious bully and a racist, a man his adult son can tolerate only when they’re discussing the camps. As Spiegelman put it when he spoke to me: “This is the oddness of it. Auschwitz became for us a safe place: a place where he would talk and I would listen.” (Vladek died in 1982; Spiegelman’s mother, Anja, another survivor, had killed herself in 1968.)

Naturally, Maus has been much written about down the decades, not least in recent months (in 2021, a school board in Tennessee decided to ban it from an English curriculum; the outcry that followed led to it selling out on Amazon ). Spiegelman’s paradigm-shifting book appeals to so-called serious types in a way most other graphic novels simply do not. But, alas, it has to be said that this isn’t always a good thing. Wading through Maus Now , a new collection of Maus -inspired pieces edited by Hillary Chute, an academic who writes about comics for the New York Times , is a pretty dispiriting experience. So many words expended to so little effect. So much earnestness and showing off! What on earth, I wonder, does Spiegelman make of it? Again, I picture a struggle: a battle between easy flattery and frankly appalled disdain.

Spiegelman, as it happens, appears in the most interesting piece in the book: a Q&A with the writer David Samuels from 2013. If Samuels, who prefers to make mini-speeches than to ask to-the-point questions, comes off like a bit of jerk, Spiegelman is ever zippy and contrarian, carefully explaining that, for him, being Jewish means carrying on the traditions of the Marx Brothers and the cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman (in a poll, most Jewish Americans had said it meant remembering the Holocaust). He’s fascinating about the creation of the state of Israel – and seemingly uninterruptible on the subject, even by Samuels. But elsewhere, our celebrated author hardly exists; his narrative has taken on a life of its own. Turning the collection’s pages, I was brought back to my student days, when the dead hand of critical theory threw a black polo neck over even the most enjoyable of texts, shrouding them in darkness. Maus tells the worst story of all; at moments, it’s almost unbearable. Yet its very existence is a kind of light, extraordinary and transfiguring. This may be something the contributors to Maus Now are apt to forget.

Maus: ‘the only comic ever to win a Pulitzer prize’

On the plus side, the book includes decent essays by Philip Pullman, the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, and the critic Ruth Franklin (best known as the biographer of Shirley Jackson), and I like its roughly chronological order, a strategy that reveals the way attitudes towards Maus have shifted and settled across the years: Gopnik’s piece dates from 1987, and in it, he’s still agog, wrestling to say intellectually what he knows in his heart to be true. There are also some interesting illustrations, not only by Spiegelman, but by those who worked in the tradition of “physiognomic comparison” (making men look like animals, and animals like men) before him, among them the 17th-century Frenchman Charles le Brun and the artists who made The Birds’ Head Haggadah , a 13th century Ashkenazi illuminated manuscript that is a masterpiece of Jewish religious art. But one must cherrypick; American criticism, which comprises the majority of this book, can be so desperately toneless.

It may be the case that Maus Now , medicinal as it often tastes, will send some readers back to the book that inspired it with new and livelier thoughts in their minds – in which case, hooray. But I also think that one aspect of the genius of Spiegelman’s cartoon is that it speaks so loudly for itself. If it is intricate and masterful, it is also severely and audaciously unpatterned. However many times I read Maus , I always close it with the feeling that no more needs to be said.

Maus Now , edited by Hillary Chute, is published by Viking (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

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Maus 2 by Art Spiegelman

Maus II is Art Spiegelman’s biographical story about his father, Vladek Spiegelman. The book describes the life of a family in Poland during the Second World War. Maus II begins with the events, when Vladek and Art’s mother trying to escape from Poland in 1944, were fallen to Auschwitz, one of the largest and most famous Nazi concentration camps. Throughout the story the reader witnesses every difficult moment which Vladek Spiegelman was facing.

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Showed by Vladek ingenuity in job for food, while he and his wife were in the ghetto, and later creativity in hiding helped him to stay alive in a concentration camp. Vladek’s story is absolutely amazing and heartbreaking. Being in the camp, he could communicate with his wife and even helped her to save her life. This fact shows the greatness of their love. Therefore, it becomes clear why Vladek seriously worried and completely fell down after her suicide. People removal from Auschwitz and the death march to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, as well as the spread of typhus is shown in few but very powerful words.

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Similarly to Maus , images in Maus II are appalling and needed. Each illustration tells its own story. The story is rich in symbolisms, taking into account the fact that the characters act like animals. Jews appeared in the form of mice, the Germans were cats, Poles were depicted as pigs and lonely Frenchman was in the image of a frog. Maus II ends with Vladek and Anja reunion. Art Spiegelman’s comic story book with numerous illustrations of animals is quite strong and soulful.

Maus II describes one of the most fascinating stories of survival. Author has written an excellent work, which has immortalized his parents, and also showed the burden that fell on all those, who survived and continued to carry it, even passing it to children. Maus II is not only the story about the Holocaust. Depicted by Spiegelman tale tells his own history of the Holocaust.

by Art Spiegelman

Maus themes, familial guilt.

While on its surface Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman 's experiences in the Holocaust, it is also much more. In many ways, the relationship between Vladek and his son is the central narrative in the book, and this narrative deals extensively with feelings of guilt. Of particular relevance in Maus is the guilt that is associated with the members of one's family. The primary types of familial guilt can be divided into three separate categories: 1) Art's feelings of guilt over not being a good son; 2) Art's feelings of guilt over the death of his mother; and 3) Art's feelings of guilt regarding the publication of Maus .

The simplest form of guilt in Maus is Art's guilt over the fact that he thinks he has not been a good son to his father. Right from the first panel of Book I, we are told that the two of them do not get along particularly well, and that they do not see each other often, though they live fairly close by. Art is always on edge around his father, and when they speak it feels as if an argument could break out at any moment. Indeed, arguments often do break out over, for example, Art's dropping cigarette ash on the carpet, or Vladek's revelation that he has burned Anja's diaries from the war. Vladek often asks his son for help with errands around the house, and Art is always loath to comply. One of the most prominent examples of this situation occurs at the beginning of Chapter 5 of Book I, in which Vladek awakens his son early in the morning to ask for help fixing a drain on his roof. Art refuses, later telling his wife that he would rather feel guilty than travel to Queens to help his father. A few weeks later, during Art's next visit to his father, this guilt is painfully obvious, as he immediately asks his father if he needs help with any chores.

Art's feelings of guilt over the death of his mother are also relatively straightforward. As told in the brief "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" interlude in Chapter 5 of Book I, Art feels responsible for his mother's suicide, believing it to be a product of his own neglect. His last memory of his mother - in which she asks him if he still loves her, and he responds with a cold and dismissive "sure" - is a painful reminder of this disregard. Though this particular form of guilt does not play a major role in the story, it is noteworthy in that Art feels somewhat similar feelings of guilt towards his father, who is still alive.

After the first volume of Maus is published in 1986, four years after his father's death in 1982, Art is still consumed with guilt. The publication of Maus has not alleviated these feelings, and in some ways it has made them worse. "My father's ghost still hangs over me," Art says before walking to his appointment with Pavel . Pavel suggests that Art may be feeling remorse for portraying Vladek unfavorably. Pavel also suggests, in an interesting reversal, that perhaps Vladek himself felt guilty for having survived the Holocaust. This form of guilt, "survivor's guilt," is detailed in the next section.

Survivor's Guilt

The second form of guilt found in the pages of Maus is more thematically complex. This guilt, called "survivor's guilt," is the product of both Vladek and Art's relationships with the Holocaust. Much of Maus revolves around this relationship between past and present, and the effects of past events on the lives of those who did not experience them (see below). In the cases of both men, this relationship often manifests itself as guilt.

Though Art was born in Sweden after the end of World War II, both of his parents were survivors of the Holocaust, and the event has affected him deeply. In Chapter One of Book II, as Art and Francoise are driving to the Catskills, Art reflects on this in detail, and Art's relationship with the past is revealed to predominantly take the form of guilt: "Somehow, I wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! I guess it's some form of guilt about having had an easier life than they did."

Vladek, too, appears to feel a deep sense of guilt about having survived the Holocaust. As Art's guilt persists through the late 1980s, five years after the death of his father, he visits his psychiatrist, Pavel, and the two discuss the nature of guilt and what it means to be a Holocaust "survivor." Vladek's survival in the Holocaust was not the consequence of any particular skill, but the result of luck, both good and bad. Pavel turns the idea of guilt on its head by suggesting that Vladek himself actually felt a strong sense of guilt for having survived the Holocaust while so many of his friends and family did not. And perhaps in response, Vladek took this guilt out on Art, the "real survivor," as Pavel calls him. In essence, Vladek's guilt may have been passed down to his son, establishing the foundation for the volumes of guilt that Art now feels towards his family and its history.

Past and Present

Maus consists of two primary narratives: one that takes place in World War II Poland, and the other that takes place in late 1970s/early 1980s New York. The relationship between these two narratives - and more generally between the past and present - is a central theme of the story. The events of the Holocaust continue to influence the life of Vladek, a Holocaust survivor, and reverberate through future generations, ultimately affecting his son, Art.

Many of Vladek's peculiar personality traits can be linked to his experiences in the Holocaust. In 1978, Vladek is stubborn, irritable, and almost comically stingy with his money. His relationship with his second wife, Mala, is strained and seemingly devoid of love. Prior to World War II, however, he exhibits none of these characteristics. He is kind, wealthy, and uncommonly resourceful, and his marriage to Anja is filled with compassion and intimacy. His experiences in the Holocaust undoubtedly played a role in these dramatic personality changes.

Once relatively wealthy, Vladek's survival in German-occupied Poland depended on his ability to hoard and save even the smallest of items, such as the paper wrapper from a piece of cheese, or the cigarettes from his weekly rations. These small items took on enormous importance to Vladek, and even many years later, he feels unable to throw anything away. His stubbornness in 1978 can be explained by the fact that he survived the Holocaust largely because he possessed a remarkable intelligence and resourcefulness that enabled him to acquire the necessary food, supplies, shelter, and protection. Now he is much older, but he still thinks of himself as the same young man who could do everything on his own. He still wants to act accordingly, going to such extremes as climbing onto the roof to fix a leaky drain. Still, as Art notes on a few separate occasions, the Holocaust cannot explain everything about his father: "I used to think the war made him this way," Art reflects to Mala, in Chapter Six of Book I, to which she responds that "all our friends went through the camps; nobody is like him!" Vladek has clearly never fully recovered from the horrors of the Holocaust. This fact is poignantly illustrated by his final words of the story, when he mistakenly calls Art by the name of his first child, who died during the war.

Though Art was born in Sweden after the war and did not experience the Holocaust firsthand, his life has also been deeply affected by these unspeakable events. To begin with, Art is directly affected by secondary "aftershocks" of the Holocaust, in that Vladek's personality and parenting style were clearly influenced by these events, and Art's personality and lifestyle choices were in turn clearly guided by his father's personality and parenting style. Art describes a specific instance of this transmission to his wife:

[Vladek] loved showing off how handy he was... and proving that anything I did was all wrong. He made me completely neurotic about fixing stuff...One reason I became an artist was...it was an area where I wouldn't have to compete with him.

Art is also affected by the past in less direct ways. To begin with, he feels almost completely consumed by the horrible specter of the Holocaust. As a child, he sometimes fantasized that the showers in his house would spew gas instead of water, and he would often ask himself which parent he would save if he could have only saved one from Auschwitz (he usually picked his mother). In many ways, he feels guilty about the fact that his parents were forced to live through Auschwitz, whereas he was born after it ended, into a far more comfortable and easy life.

The relationships between past and present are often illustrated graphically within the context of the story. The most vivid representation of this concept occurs at the beginning of Chapter Two of Book II, in which Art is sitting at his drawing board above a sprawling pile of dead and emaciated Jewish mice.

The primary motivation amongst Jews in the Holocaust is survival. Vladek sums up the process succinctly while consoling his wife after the death of his first son, Richieu: "to die, it's easy...but you have to struggle for life." Vladek's experiences in the Holocaust represent a constant struggle to survive, first as his factory and income are taken away, then as the Jews are sent into the ghettos, and ultimately in the nightmare of Auschwitz. And as the struggle intensifies, the will to survive begins to break the strong bonds of family, friendship, and a common Jewish identity.

In the initial stages of German occupation, these measures are relatively small - buying food on the black market, for example - and strengthened by strong family ties, a unified Jewish identity, and even altruism. When Vladek arrives home from the prisoner of war camp, for example, an old business acquaintance, Mr. Ilzecki , helps him earn money and acquire the proper work papers that will allow him to walk the streets in relative safety. As the situation continues to deteriorate, however, Vladek, his family, and his friends are forced to resort to increasingly extreme measures in order to survive. Here, the bonds of Jewish identity begin to break under the pressing instinct to survive. The first sign of this comes in the form of Jews serving on a Jewish Police force, like the ones who came to Vladek's apartment to escort his wife's grandparents to the concentration camps. According to Vladek, these Jews thought that by helping the Nazis in taking some of the Jews, perhaps they could help save others - and of course they could also save themselves. Soon after, the bonds of family also begin to break, as illustrated by Vladek's cousin Haskel's refusal to save them from transport to Auschwitz without some form of payment. Though Haskel eventually does help Vladek and Anja escape, he ultimately decides not to help Anja's parents, and they are sent off to their deaths.

The bond between Vladek and Anja remains solid throughout most of the story, as they first hide together in the barns and back rooms of Sosnowiec and are ultimately sent to neighboring concentration camps. In the camps, Vladek and Anja are both preoccupied with their own survival, but Vladek is also able to help his wife by giving her extra food and emotional support. Soon, though, the Russians advance upon Auschwitz and Birkenau, and the couple is unavoidably separated. Vladek is hurried on a long, forced march through snow-covered woods to packed railway cars where there is no food or water for days. In telling this story to his son, Vladek does not mention Anja again until right before their eventual reunification in Sosnowiec. Unable to help those around him, and unable to help his wife, he is left only with his own stubborn will to survive.

The importance of luck is closely related to discussions of survival and guilt (see above). Vladek is blessed with many skills and qualities - including the ability to speak multiple languages - that provide him with opportunities to survive within the confines of Auschwitz. Ultimately, however, Vladek's survival and the survival of all other Holocaust survivors hinges upon luck. On countless occasions throughout Vladek's Holocaust ordeals, his life is spared only by the narrowest of margins: the near-miss bullet at the prisoner-of-war camp in Lublin; the run-in with the Gestapo while carrying ten kilograms of illegal sugar; the night Mrs. Motonowa forces him and Anja out of her house; the case of typhus at Dachau; and many, many other incidents. No matter how resourceful Vladek is, no matter how many languages he knows or jobs he can perform, he cannot ultimately save himself from the horrors of the Holocaust. Rather, the matter of his life and death ultimately depends upon a long line of chance outcomes, most of which happen to fall his way. The rest of his family, including his parents and five siblings, are not so lucky. Pavel, Art's psychiatrist, suggests that this idea may have contributed to a strong sense of guilt in Vladek for having survived the Holocaust while so many of his friends and family did not.

Race and Class

Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, issues of race and class figure heavily in the plot, themes, and structure of Maus . At the most basic level, issues of race play themselves out on the grand scale of the Holocaust, a terrible culmination of senseless racism that is drawn and described in all its brutality and efficiency. But Maus also deals with these issues in other, more subtle ways, through the use of different animal faces to portray different races.

In Maus , Jews are portrayed as mice, while Germans are portrayed as cats. The metaphor of Jews as mice is taken directly from Nazi propaganda, which portrayed the Jews as a kind of vermin to be exterminated. The cat/mouse relationship is also an apt metaphor for the relationship between the Nazis and Jews: the Nazis toyed with the Jews before ultimately killing them.

The decision to portray different races as different kinds of animals has been criticized as over-simplistic and for promoting ethnic stereotypes. Beneath the simple metaphor, however, is an earnest attempt to illustrate the unyielding stratification by class and race that was very much a part of life in World War II-era Poland. Within the pages of Vladek's story, the Jews are rarely seen socializing with the non-Jewish Poles, except in cases where the Poles serve as janitors, governesses, or other household assistants. The idea of stratification and classification is best illustrated by the man in the concentration camp who claims that he is German, not Jewish, and who is ultimately taken aside and killed. When Art asks his father whether the man was really a German, Vladek replies, "who knows...it was German prisoners in there also...But for the Germans this guy was Jewish." There were no shades of gray within the German system of racial classification. Indeed, this middle ground is so rare within the pages of Maus that the only instance of mixed marriage ( Shivek 's brother, who married a German woman) comes as quite a shock, especially when we see their children, who are drawn as cat/mouse hybrids.

This, however, is not the only form of racism that exists within the pages of Maus . One of the most interesting aspects of the story is the fact that Vladek, who survived the horrors of the Holocaust, is himself a racist. When Francoise picks up an African-American hitchhiker on their way back from the grocery store, Vladek can hardly contain his anger that she has let a "shvartser" into the car and spends the whole ride home watching his groceries to make sure they aren't stolen. This episode serves as a reminder that the racism of the Holocaust survives in other forms to this day.

Just as the animal metaphor is an attempt to explain an existing social stratification, other aspects of the story seem to suggest that this stratification is a manufactured illusion. This is most clearly illustrated in opening pages of Chapter Two of Book II, which take place after the publication of the first book of Maus . In this narrative, Art Spiegelman is clearly having doubts about the animal metaphors that form the backbone of the story. Here, people are still characterized by animals based on race, but these characterizations are now clearly only masks that have been tied to their heads with a bit of string. Thus the idea of race is only an artifice, Spiegelman suggests, and underneath the masks we are all essentially the same.

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MAUS Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for MAUS is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Page 32, “Right away, we went.” Where are Vladek and Anja going and why?

Right away, we went. The sanitarium was inside Czechoslovakia, one of the most expensive and beautiful in the world.

Anja, Vladek's wife and Spiegelman's mother, went to a sanatorium in Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Vladek wants to go to Hungary in order to escape the danger and uncertainty of his life, as well as Anja's. Hungary represents hope and safety.

The visual device used to show the difference betweem Vladek and Anja is that Anja has a tail protruding from under her coat, a detail that emphasizes her Jewish identity.

Study Guide for MAUS

MAUS study guide contains a biography of Art Spiegelman, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

  • MAUS Summary
  • Character List

Essays for MAUS

MAUS essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of MAUS by Art Spiegelman.

  • Stylistic Detail of MAUS and Its Effect on Reader Attachment
  • Using Animals to Divide: Illustrated Allegory in Maus and Terrible Things
  • Father-Son Conflict in MAUS
  • Anthropomorphism and Race in Maus
  • A Postmodernist Reading of Spiegelman's Maus

Lesson Plan for MAUS

  • About the Author
  • Study Objectives
  • Common Core Standards
  • Introduction to MAUS
  • Relationship to Other Books
  • Bringing in Technology
  • Notes to the Teacher
  • Related Links
  • MAUS Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for MAUS

  • Introduction
  • Primary characters
  • Publication history

maus 2 essay

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Court announces 6th annual civics essay contest.

  • Friday, February 23, 2024

High school and middle school students in 17 area counties are invited to participate in the annual civics essay contest sponsored by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Chattanooga Division, and the Chattanooga Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.

The prompt for this year’s contest is a question that may soon be addressed by the Supreme Court: Should social media platforms have the right to restrict political speech? Students are invited to share their views on whether social media platforms have right to engage in content moderation under the First Amendment, or if this content moderation is actually censorship.

The contest is open to public, private, and home school students in 6th to 12th grade in the following counties: Bedford, Bledsoe, Bradley, Coffee, Franklin, Grundy, Hamilton, Lincoln, McMinn, Marion, Meigs, Moore, Polk, Rhea, Sequatchie, Warren, and Van Buren. 

Entries for the contest must be postmarked or emailed by March 29. Email submissions should be sent to [email protected]. Entries can also be mailed to Civics Essay Contest, Attn: Kelly L. Walsh, U.S. Courthouse, 900 Georgia Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37402. All entries must include a physically or electronically signed submission form.

Three high school winners and three middle school winners will be selected. Prizes are $500 for 1st place, $250 for 2nd Place, and $100 for 3rd place. Winners will be announced mid-April. Along with their parents and teachers, winning students will be invited to a reception at the Courthouse with members of the selection committee.

Full essay prompt, requirements, and additional materials are available on the Court’s website, as well as information on the national contest: https://connections.tned.uscourts.gov/participate.html . 

For questions, please contact Kelly L. Walsh at 386-3523 or via email to [email protected].

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maus 2 essay

Art Spiegelman

Everything you need for every book you read..

The Holocaust and the Responsibility of its Survivors Theme Icon

The Holocaust and the Responsibility of its Survivors

Art Spiegelman , the author and narrator of Maus , is the child of two Polish Holocaust survivors: Vladek , his father, and Anja , his mother. Following a long estrangement from Vladek following Anja’s unexpected death in 1968, Arthur — called Artie by many close to him — has decided to collect his father’s memories of the Holocaust and narrate them in a series of cartoons. The Holocaust, which occurred between 1941 and 1945…

The Holocaust and the Responsibility of its Survivors Theme Icon

Family, Identity, and Jewishness

While his interviews with Vladek keep a tight focus on the war, Artie ’s parallel narrative of recording those interviews and writing Maus considers the multitude of ways in which the war continues to influence Vladek in his old age, and shapes Artie’s relationship both with his father and with his own Jewish identity.

Reverberations of the Holocaust are visible in almost every aspect of Vladek’s life and character, and so have a profound impact…

Family, Identity, and Jewishness Theme Icon

Grief, Memory, and Love

Vladek tells Artie that he has spent years trying to rid himself of memories of the war and the Holocaust, but he recounts his story in remarkable detail, recalling the names and eventual fates of almost every person who crossed his path during those years. Though his descriptions are straightforward and unflinching, he has clear emotional reactions to many of the events about which he speaks — he cries when he remembers four of his…

Grief, Memory, and Love Theme Icon

Guilt, Anger, and Redemption

In addition to being a narrative of war and survival, Maus is, in large part, a chronicle of Artie ’s efforts to understand his father despite the fractured bonds between them. Their difficult relationship bears marks of tragedies that have shaped them — the devastation wrought by the Holocaust, and the trauma of Anja ’s suicide — but their troubles are also a product of their basic human shortcomings, their native selfishness and neuroticism. Artie…

Guilt, Anger, and Redemption Theme Icon

Death, Chance, and Human Interdependence

The ghettos, cattle cars, and concentration camps through which Vladek and Anja move during the war are filled with death, most of which is a result of random and senseless violence. Though the Nazi regime is sometimes calculating about which people it will murder — as when Vladek’s sister Fela , whose four children are considered an unnecessary drain on the state’s resources, is sent to her death during a mass registration of Jewish families…

Death, Chance, and Human Interdependence Theme Icon

What is Presidents Day and how is it celebrated? What to know about the federal holiday

Many will have a day off on monday in honor of presidents day. consumers may take advantage of retail sales that proliferate on the federal holiday, but here's what to know about the history of it..

maus 2 essay

Presidents Day is fast approaching, which may signal to many a relaxing three-day weekend and plenty of holiday sales and bargains .

But next to Independence Day, there may not exist another American holiday that is quite so patriotic.

While Presidents Day has come to be a commemoration of all the nation's 46 chief executives, both past and present, it wasn't always so broad . When it first came into existence – long before it was even federally recognized – the holiday was meant to celebrate just one man: George Washington.

How has the day grown from a simple celebration of the birthday of the first president of the United States? And why are we seeing all these ads for car and furniture sales on TV?

Here's what to know about Presidents Day and how it came to be:

When is Presidents Day 2024?

This year, Presidents Day is on Monday, Feb. 19.

The holiday is celebrated on the third Monday of every February because of a bill signed into law in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Taking effect three years later, the Uniform Holiday Bill mandated that three holidays – Memorial Day, Presidents Day and Veterans Day – occur on Mondays to prevent midweek shutdowns and add long weekends to the federal calendar, according to Britannica .

Other holidays, including Labor Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day , were also established to be celebrated on Mondays when they were first observed.

However, Veterans Day was returned to Nov. 11 in 1978 and continues to be commemorated on that day.

What does Presidents Day commemorate?

Presidents Day was initially established in 1879 to celebrate the birthday of the nation's first president, George Washington. In fact, the holiday was simply called Washington's Birthday, which is still how the federal government refers to it, the Department of State explains .

Following the death of the venerated American Revolution leader in 1799, Feb. 22, widely believed to be Washington's date of birth , became a perennial day of remembrance, according to History.com .

The day remained an unofficial observance for much of the 1800s until Sen. Stephen Wallace Dorsey of Arkansas proposed that it become a federal holiday. In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law, according to History.com.

While initially being recognized only in Washington D.C., Washington's Birthday became a nationwide holiday in 1885. The first to celebrate the life of an individual American, Washington's Birthday was at the time one of only five federally-recognized holidays – the others being Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.

However, most Americans today likely don't view the federal holiday as a commemoration of just one specific president. Presidents Day has since come to represent a day to recognize and celebrate all of the United States' commanders-in-chief, according to the U.S. Department of State .

When the Uniform Holiday Bill took effect in 1971, a provision was included to combine the celebration of Washington’s birthday with Abraham Lincoln's on Feb. 12, according to History.com. Because the new annual date always fell between Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, Americans believed the day was intended to honor both presidents.

Interestingly, advertisers may have played a part in the shift to "Presidents Day."

Many businesses jumped at the opportunity to use the three-day weekend as a means to draw customers with Presidents Day sales and bargain at stores across the country, according to History.com.

How is the holiday celebrated?

Because Presidents Day is a federal holiday , most federal workers will have the day off .

Part of the reason Johnson made the day a uniform holiday was so Americans had a long weekend "to travel farther and see more of this beautiful land of ours," he wrote. As such, places like the Washington Monument in D.C. and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota – which bears the likenesses of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt – are bound to attract plenty of tourists.

Similar to Independence Day, the holiday is also viewed as a patriotic celebration . As opposed to July, February might not be the best time for backyard barbecues and fireworks, but reenactments, parades and other ceremonies are sure to take place in cities across the U.S.

Presidential places abound across the U.S.

Opinions on current and recent presidents may leave Americans divided, but we apparently love our leaders of old enough to name a lot of places after them.

In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau pulled information from its databases showcasing presidential geographic facts about the nation's cities and states.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the census data shows that as of 2020 , the U.S. is home to plenty of cities, counties and towns bearing presidential names. Specifically:

  • 94 places are named "Washington."
  • 72 places are named "Lincoln."
  • 67 places are named for Andrew Jackson, a controversial figure who owned slaves and forced thousands of Native Americans to march along the infamous Trail of Tears.

Contributing: Clare Mulroy

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

IMAGES

  1. Maus 2 by Art Spiegelman Essay Sample

    maus 2 essay

  2. Analysis of Maus: the Animal Behavioral Stance Free Essay Example

    maus 2 essay

  3. "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" by Art Spiegelman: Characters Analysis

    maus 2 essay

  4. "Maus" and "Maus II" Stories by Art Spiegelman .docx

    maus 2 essay

  5. Maus I-II Pack

    maus 2 essay

  6. Maus Essay

    maus 2 essay

VIDEO

  1. Ramming the Maus into things at full speed for fun Part 1

  2. How to kills maus

  3. Maus Chapter 1

  4. Maus's performance

  5. Was ist deine Maus Sensitivität? 👀

  6. Facts About The Maus

COMMENTS

  1. MAUS Book II, Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

    by Art Spiegelman Buy Study Guide MAUS Summary and Analysis of Book II, Chapter 2 Note: Maus jumps back and forth often between the past and the present. To facilitate these transitions in this summary, the Holocaust narrative is written in normal font, while all other narratives are written in italics. Auschwitz: Time Flies

  2. Maus Essay Examples Topics, Prompts Ideas by GradesFixer

    Maus Topics: Family, Father-son Relationship 4 The Importance of Anthropomorphic Characters in Maus 2 pages / 1083 words In Maus, Art Spiegelman produces what can be seen as a reaction to the Holocaust and its complicated aftermath.

  3. MAUS Book II, Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis

    MAUS Summary and Analysis of Book II, Chapter 5. Note: Maus jumps back and forth often between the past and the present. To facilitate these transitions in this summary, the Holocaust narrative is written in normal font, while all other narratives are written in italics.

  4. Maus Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

    Vladek remembers the evacuation of Auschwitz, a few weeks after the bombing of the crematorium. A young man reports rumors that the Germans plan to abandon the camp before the Russian army arrives. He makes plans to wait out the evacuation in the attic of a bunker, then escape to freedom with forged papers.

  5. Maus Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

    Analysis It is summer. Artie and Françoise are vacationing with friends in Vermont. Artie is doodling outside, trying to decide how to draw Françoise in his book. On his sketchpad, he tries out different animal heads: a moose, a poodle, a frog, a rabbit.

  6. Maus: A Survivor's Tale: Full Book Summary

    Maus: A Survivor's Tale is the illustrated true story of Vladek Spiegelman's experiences during World War II, as told by his son, Artie. It consists of Book One: My Father Bleeds History, and Book Two: And Here My Troubles Began / From Mauschwitz to the Catskills and Beyond.

  7. Representing History in Art Spiegelman's Maus II

    This is a postmodern concept greatly understood by Art Spiegelman, author of Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began. One can understand the necessity in portraying the fallacies of representation through the comments Jean Francois-Lyotard makes in Postmodernism for Beginners. Through the concepts discussed in this text one can see how easy and yet ...

  8. Why Maus Was Banned, and Why It Matters Today

    The critic and journalist Alisa Solomon, for instance, notes in her 2014 essay "The Haus of Maus" that the book "became the proof text for academic study of the transgenerational ...

  9. Maus Study Guide

    Summary Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Art Spiegelman's Maus. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides. Maus: Introduction A concise biography of Art Spiegelman plus historical and literary context for Maus. Maus: Plot Summary A quick-reference summary: Maus on a single page.

  10. Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

    The mouse-and-cat metaphor for the Holocaust that Art Spiegelman established in his first volume of Maus: A Survivor's Tale, is continued in Volume II of Maus, with its grimly sardonic subtitle of And Then My Troubles Began.Volume I of Maus ended with the artist's father and mother, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, at the gates of the Auschwitz death camp in 1944.

  11. Maus 2 Essay

    Maus 2 Essay Decent Essays 483 Words 2 Pages Open Document In the graphic novel Maus II by Art Spiegelman the story follows the author and protagonist, Art, as his father retells his experience throughout the Holocaust.

  12. Maus: A student's essay, written with my assistance

    As Pavel says, "Maybe your father needed to show that he was always right — that he could always survive — because he felt guilty about surviving". The symbolic depiction of the demoralised Jews as vulnerable and powerless mice that are tortured by the vicious cat captures Vladek's sense of impotence and despair.

  13. Maus: A Survivor's Tale: Study Guide

    Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, was originally published in serial form in the comics magazine RAW.It was then published in two volumes, with Book I: My Father Bleeds History appearing in 1986 and Book II: And Here My Troubles Began (From Mauschwitz to the Catskills and Beyond) appearing in 1992. The book is often credited as one of the very first graphic novels, proving comics ...

  14. Maus Part 2, Chapters 1-2 Summary & Analysis

    Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: "Mauschwitz". During a vacation in Vermont, Art debates with Françoise about how to depict her, a Frenchwoman who converts to Judaism to please Vladek. Art is against depicting the French as a cute animal and suggests transforming her from a frog to a mouse. After hearing of Vladek having a heart attack, Art ...

  15. "Maus" and "Maus II" Stories by Art Spiegelman Essay

    "Maus" and "Maus II" Stories by Art Spiegelman Essay Exclusively available on IvyPanda The Holocaust of the Jewish nation during World War II is one of the most tragic episodes in the history of mankind.

  16. MAUS Summary

    In the comic, Vladek arrives home in 1968 to see his wife dead in the bathtub. Art has just arrived home from a stretch in a state mental institution, and he feels responsible for his mother's suicide due to neglect and a lack of affection. In 1943, all Jews are forced into a ghetto in the nearby town of Srodula.

  17. Maus: A Survivor's Tale Chapter 2: Auschwitz (Time Flies) Summary

    May 16 - 24th 1944, over 100,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in Auschwitz. September 1986, the first part of Maus was published and was extremely successful. May 1968, Artie's mother killed herself.

  18. Maus Now: Selected Writing, edited by Hillary Chute review

    Maus: 'the only comic ever to win a Pulitzer prize'. Photograph: sjbooks/Alamy. On the plus side, the book includes decent essays by Philip Pullman, the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, and the ...

  19. Maus Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

    Part 1, Chapter 3 Themes and Colors Key Summary Analysis For several months, Artie visits his father regularly to hear more of his stories. He arrives one day to find Vladek counting pills; Vladek reveals that he takes 25 or 30 vitamins every day, as well as six pills for his heart and one for diabetes.

  20. Maus 2 by Art Spiegelman Essay Sample

    Maus 2 by Art Spiegelman Maus II is Art Spiegelman's biographical story about his father, Vladek Spiegelman. The book describes the life of a family in Poland during the Second World War.

  21. MAUS Themes

    Maus consists of two primary narratives: one that takes place in World War II Poland, and the other that takes place in late 1970s/early 1980s New York. The relationship between these two narratives - and more generally between the past and present - is a central theme of the story. The events of the Holocaust continue to influence the life of ...

  22. Court Announces 6th Annual Civics Essay Contest

    Entries for the contest must be postmarked or emailed by March 29. Email submissions should be sent to [email protected]. Entries can also be mailed to Civics Essay Contest, Attn: Kelly L ...

  23. Maus Themes

    The Holocaust and the Responsibility of its Survivors. Art Spiegelman, the author and narrator of Maus, is the child of two Polish Holocaust survivors: Vladek, his father, and Anja, his mother. Following a long estrangement from Vladek following Anja's unexpected death in 1968, Arthur — called Artie by many close to him — has decided to ...

  24. What is Presidents Day? Is it a federal holiday? Everything to know

    This year, Presidents Day is on Monday, Feb. 19. The holiday is celebrated on the third Monday of every February because of a bill signed into law in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Taking ...