Maus I: My Father Bleeds History

One of the handful of comics that transcend the medium. The now trite 'graphic novel' used to be the dividing line between the ones that were really trying and the vast majority that weren't, now it doesn't seem to mean much at all.
Despite the cartoony style (or perhaps because of it, like other famous nightmare fuels for kids; Watership Down, Plague Dogs), the story packs a punch and manages to convey horror and desperation without ever getting that graphic or gruesome, all thanks to a good use of the visual medium and a great sense of storytelling.

Horrible as it is, I'm sick of reading about the Holocaust. While I recognize the importance of learning about this atrocity, most Holocaust literature focuses on man's inhumanity to man, and by shocking us with the gruesome details of the Holocaust, it smacks us over the head with the moral "never forget." Maus takes a different approach. Not content to be a simple comic book, it depicts Jews as mice, Poles as pigs, and Nazis as hungry cats. This gives readers an opportunity to puzzle out symbolism for themselves instead of aggressively battering them with obvious themes. More importantly, even though much of the action takes place in Nazi-occupied Poland, it is really the story of the tense relationship between a father and a son. show more Art, the narrator, desperately wants to draw his father's story, and getting the material for his new book propels him to visit his father for the first time in two years. While reading, I continually questioned whether Art valued his father or just his story, but at the same time, I understood why he and his father had become estranged. Vladek Spiegelman is judgmental, miserly, and cruel to his new wife. His behavior is no doubt the legacy of the terrors he survived, but that doesn't make it easy to sympathize with him. The final result is a story of an incredible atrocity against the backdrop of simple, every day human fallibility. This juxtaposition made the book far more digestible, more interesting, and more relatable than any Holocaust survivor's tale I have ever read. show less

I finally got around to reading this book. It left a very deep impression on me. I, as did Art Spiegelman, lost close family in Auschwitz, Poland.

This was an amazing read. I think it was positively brilliant of the author/illustrator to use the graphic novel as the genre in which to present his father's story.

Readers of comics are often those who choose to enter a world of fantasy. Bringing the story of the Holocaust to readers of comics greatly enlarges the number of those who are informed of this great tragedy of World War II.

The idea of each race or religion as a different animal was startling. I began to think of why the author may have chosen to do this. I think it was a way of showing how people tend to stereotype one another. show more I was mindful of the fact that the Nazis were the cats, while the Jews were the lowly mice. I'm curious as to why Spiegelman chose to depict the Poles as pigs. Disdain, perhaps?

In addition, portraying people as animals is another way of allowing those who otherwise would not read about the Holocaust to do so. Seeing people's faces and expressions makes it too painfully real. The animals allow a little distance between the reader and the reality that existed in that time and place.

I was intrigued by Artie's relationship with his father. I can see how the war years changed the father and what pain he carried in his old age. I can also see the impatience and lack of understanding by Artie. There is a world of difference between Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors. This is very well depicted in the book.

I thought it good of Artie's father to share his personal story with his son. Neither my father nor my mother ever would. What I learned of the war years, I learned from my aunt and uncle many years after both of my parents were dead.

Another aspect of this book that made it especially readable was the interjection of Artie's conversations with his father. It left a little breathing space - time for some relief from the oppressive tension of the story itself. That painful story is often too depressing for people to read in large amounts.

The drawing of the Auschwitz concentration camp gateway near the end of the book left me with a very heavy heart. :( show less

I'm glad to have discovered this story of the Jewish tragedy, based on the artist's recording of his own father's experience. From a distance I didn't know what to make of the swastika cover and cartoon mice; was someone trying to score a quick buck with a macabre comic? Quite the opposite, this is a heralded Pulitzer Prize winning classic among graphic novels. When I sought to borrow it from the library, I discovered it was filed in the non-fiction section. That is indicative of how seriously it takes its subject matter, never mind that it features anthropomorphized mice, cats and pigs.

Why animals? Transforming the human characters into animals tips the emphasis from "this happened to Jewish people" toward "this happened to Jewish show more people." It highlights the very quality the Nazis wished to deny them. Pigs for the Polish seems like an ill-selected choice, but they are unmistakably preferable to the Nazi cats. The distinguishing of one race versus another by animal type is of course meant to be silly, and a commentary itself on the ridiculousness of racism.

The number of times Vladek and his wife escaped death is truly incredible. It's transparent that only the lucky and quick-thinking survived the ordeal of the Holocaust, when so many arbitrary events arose to kill those around them. Painfully few people could be trusted, and virtually all assistance had to be purchased with quickly diminishing funds. This is only the first half of the story, and I'm glad to have the second half ready at hand. show less

Summary: Volume one of a graphic novel rendering the tightening control over Polish Jews, portrayed as mice, which ends at the gates of Auschwitz.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus is one of the pioneering works of graphic literature. It has been celebrated with a Pulitzer Prize (1992) and banned in at least one Tennessee school district as well as in Russia, and subject to a book burning in Poland. The Tennessee board banned its use in an eighth grade class for an image of Jews who were hung, an image of Vladek’s wife in a bathtub (no private parts are visible), and a few instances of profanity (probably far less than could be heard in an eighth grade locker room).

It is a story within a story. It is the true story of Anja and Vladek Spiegelman, show more Polish Jews subject to increasing anti-Semitism in a confined ghetto while friends and relatives are transported to Auschwitz. And it is the story of the author’s interviews with his father in the late 1970’s, re-telling the experience. In this graphic history, the Jews are portrayed as mice, and the Germans as cats and Gentile Poles as pigs.

Vladek Spiegelman was an enterprising young man who built a textile business with the help of his wife’s family. During an affair, he meets Anja, leaves the other woman and marries. They have a child. Then the Germans invade. Vladek loses his business. The noose begins to tighten. He has to register as a Jew. People are forced into a ghetto, into shared quarters with other families. Food becomes scarce, only available on the black market. The hanging portrays those buying food on the black market.

Then the transports begin. Germans separate the Jews into those who do essential work and others who are never heard from again. Jews make efforts to smuggle their children to safer places. Anja and Vladek do this with Richieu, their son. Later, an aunt poisons Richieu to prevent the Germans from taking him.

They realize that the Germans are trying to eliminate all Jews. Spiegelman describes the hiding places they use–rooms behind coal cellars, rooms behind false walls in attics. But one mistake can lead to arrest and capture. Anja, portrayed as nervous, wants to stay. But Vladek hears of smugglers who can get them out for a price. They leave but are betrayed and arrested. Volume I of Maus ends here.

During the interviews with his father, we learn Anja survived the camp, gave birth to Art, but was marked for life with what we would call PTSD. In a tense scene, Vladek comes across an earlier comic Art had drawn, Prisoner on the Hell Planet. In it, Art tells the story of Anja’s suicide in 1968. He spent three months in a mental hospital, which he portrays as a prison. His father destroyed diaries that would have helped Art in his research.

Part of the story is one of Art and his father groping toward reconciliation, understanding how the Holocaust had marked each of their lives. Spiegelman also vividly portrays his father’s memory. As the subtitle states, he bleeds history. It just comes out of him. And the story Spiegelman tells of one family’s struggle, tells the story of many others. He vividly shows the brutality of the Germans. He chronicles the increasingly desperate conditions, the ingenious ways Jews sought to elude capture, and the heart-breaking betrayals. And all the while, there is this spark, call it hope or delusion, that they will escape the worst.

The graphic history approach couples narrative and visual in a way that removes the Holocaust from the realm of the abstract. Holocaust survivors are dwindling in number. At one time, they visited school classrooms. Maus is another means by which a Holocaust survivor can visit a classroom. This is history we cannot forget. That does not stop people from trying, whether in Russia or Poland or Tennessee. Antisemitism is on the rise. We can repeat this terrible history. Spiegelman’s graphic history is one way to say “always remember” and ‘never again.” But will we? show less

Rating: Powerfully Moving

Maus is the story of the author / graphic artist and his fraught relationship with his elderly father. It is also the story of his father’s experience growing up in Poland and surviving the horrors of the holocaust.

The reader experiences the harrowing and miraculous life of Art’s father through powerful imagery and metaphor, with the Jews drawn as mice and the Nazis as cats.

It’s a story of history that cannot and should never be forgotten, ESPECIALLY in today’s global political landscape. Everyone should make time to pick up this extremely powerful and moving story so that we may learn from the past and remind ourselves to condemn the widespread hate, racism, and bigotry that led to the deaths of show more millions of innocent people. We cannot let that happen again, but we are seeing the horrors that letting those sentiments fester in modern society can produce.

It’s not an easy read, and there are parts I definitely recommend reading with an adult beverage in hand. But it is a story about the miracle of human ingenuity and the power of hope in the face of unthinkable evil.

Go pick up a copy and read it for yourself.

Part 1 of 2 show less

Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father’s time during WWII in the first of two volumes. Through startlingly raw story-telling, Art does not hesitate to bring to light the realities of one of the darkest times in human history. He does not shy away from the brutality of the war, the death, the despair, and the hopelessness. While it is difficult to read at times, particularly when discussing the brutality against children, it is a story that needs to be told if we as a society are to learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat them. Considering the current political climate, this book is incredibly important for young adults as it does not censor the truth while treating it with the respect and dignity it deserves. Readers show more should check content warnings before reading as there are descriptions of child abuse, murder, discrimination, religious persecution, and more. show less