Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (1991)

Such a simple, yet effective way of explaining the holocaust, you could say this is a more digestible way of telling a brutal and horrific story, and not only does it tell you about the event itself, it tells you about the life of someone who survived it after it was over, his experiences and how hard life was even after it ended.
The art is great, easily understandable drawings, nothing too complex, but that just adds to the charm really.
Overall an interesting(and quick) read, definetly worth it. ( )

https://withfreedomandbooks.blogspot.com/2022/03/maus-i-ii-by-art-spiegelman.htm... ( )

In case anyone doesn’t know, this is (part II of) a graphic novel/memoir of the author’s Jewish father during WWII. The novel skips between the author interviewing his father in order to write the book and back to WWII. Jews are depicted as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs.

This is actually a reread (originally read 13 years ago), though it looks like the first time around, I read “The Complete Maus”. I read Part I last week; I do have them as separate parts this time, so I am recording them separately.

My review isn’t too much different from my review for Part I last week. I think I liked this better this second time around; I feel like I was paying better attention. Although the current day story in Part II didn’t focus as much on Art’s father and his 2nd wife, but there was still plenty happening in the “current” day with Art, his wife, and his father. We had a few more nationalities in part II, all drawn with/represented by different types of animals. This one also included Art drawing himself dealing with the success of part I’s publication and trying to write/draw part II. This one also had the end of WWII with Art’s father getting out of Auschwitz and meeting up later with Art’s mother. A very good book, and a different way to get the message out about what happened during the Holocaust. ( )

I gave the first in this series a low rating because it just simply ended with no closure on any part of the story and for its abrupt end. This one, explains why the author chose to depict this heady subject using a graphic novel platform and touches on how he was worried about using this method to communicate such a horrible nightmare that was World War II and the persecution and murder of millions of Jews. I feel like the two volumes should have remained as one; but having read both now, I have to say Spiegelman did a great job. From his story, we learn the war never ended for survivors of the Holocaust. Instead, it impacted their daily lives, not just in survivor guilt, but in physical health and psyches that were terribly damaged where one could find no happiness. Compared to the survivors, our people today are very soft. ( )

Together with the much-acclaimed first volume of Spiegelman's Maus (1987—not reviewed), this unusual Holocaust tale will forever alter the way serious readers think of graphic narratives (i.e., comic books). For his unforgettable combination of words and pictures, Spiegelman draws from high and low culture, and blends autobiography with the story of his father's survival of the concentration camps. In funny-book fashion, the all-too-real characters here have the heads of animals—the Jews are mice, the Nazis are rats, and the Poles are pigs—a stark Orwellian metaphor for dehumanized relations during WW II. Much of Spiegelman's narrative concerns his own struggle to coax his difficult father into remembering a past he'd rather forget. What emerges in father Vladek's tale is a study in survival; he makes it through by luck, randomness, and cleverness. Physically strong, he bluffs his way through the camps as a tinsmith and a shoemaker, and also exploits his ability with languages. Every day in Auschwitz, and later in Dachau, demands new bribes and masterly bartering. All of this helps explain Vladek's art of survival in the present: his cheap, miserly behavior; his disappointment over Spiegelman's marriage to a non-Jew; his constant criticism of his own second wife and his son; and even his inexcusable racism. Haunted by the brother who died in the camps, Spiegelman (born in postwar Sweden) also mourns his mother, who survived only to commit suicide in the late 60's. Within the time span of the writing of Maus (1978-91), Vladek died, and Spiegelman now must sort out his complex feelings as he reflects on the success of the first volume—a success built on the tragedy of the Holocaust. With all his doubts, Spiegelman pushes on, realizing that his book deserves a place in the ongoing struggle between memory and forgetting. Full of hard-earned humor and pathos, Maus (I and II) takes your breath away with its stunning visual style, reminding us that while we can never forget the Holocaust, we may need new ways to remember.