The Complete Maus

I went into Art Spiegelman's celebrated Maus with my usual scepticism regarding comic books, and even the prestigious gongs thrown its way – such as the Pulitzer Prize – hadn't softened it. But reading the book did. If there's plenty more Holocaust literature that actually delves deeper and darker into that incomprehensible nightmare, the main power of Maus is that it gets you to drop your guard. The recasting of Jews as mice and Germans as cats is more than mere allegory, and certainly more than a reader-friendly gimmick; what it does is open up something more intuitive in our brains. It prompts that trusting, effortless comprehension that we feel as children when reading stories such as Aesop's fables.

Our armour and artifice show more removed, the raw, banal horror of the Holocaust strikes us all the more violently when reading Maus. Whether it's small moments of wretched humanity like a grateful prisoner bursting into tears when Vladek gifts him a pair of wooden clogs that actually fit him, only for the reader to be told matter-of-factly in the following few panes that he was gassed soon after, or the broader tragic notes such as the funnelling of exhausted, meek victims towards the ovens, the highly visual and uncompromising, matter-of-fact telling of it hits us in a way that genuine novels and even film cannot.

Maus has other merits, not least its distinctive art style, its innovative meta-fictional approach and its highlighting of the ways in which survivors (and their children) carried the guilt and weight and trauma for decades after the camps, but it's this quality – the mere existence of Maus in the medium of a comic book – that gives it its force. Film presents a story starkly and with 'realism'; novels require our attentive engagement. Both approaches we can rationalise and protect ourselves against to some extent, and are adept at doing so throughout our lives, often unconsciously. But for a reader there's no road map for navigating your way through this disturbing topic in the comic book medium, and so when you read it, it's as though you're learning it for the first time, unvarnished and unsanitised. Your brain actually has to process it, rather than routinely file it away with assumptions and its safeguards. It's a deeply unusual feeling, and one of the more singular reading experiences I've had in quite some time. show less

This graphic novel is the story of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who lived through World War II. The Jews are drawn as mice, the Germans as cats, and the Poles as pigs. Vladek was able to keep himself and his family out of the concentration camps for a long time, but eventually he was sent to Auschwitz, and later into Germany. After the war, he was able to find his wife and move to Sweden, then the US. Interspersed with Vladek's stories about the war are panels showing Artie's relationship with his father and how he learned his father's history.

This is a really powerful book, and the animals are a great metaphor. Vladek's story of how he survived through his intelligence is really fascinating and admirable. What I really show more didn't like was how the author portrayed himself, however. In the book it seems like Artie is only using his father to create a masterpiece and doesn't really care about him. He only visits to get more of the story and then can't wait to get away from his father. I realize that Vladek was a difficult person to be around, but that doesn't excuse Artie's behavior. show less

Vladek is the protagonist of this story just as much as his cartoonist son, Art. A conversation must be had about the simplicity of Art's portrayal, neatly making each demographic within the story a different sort of animal to represent their struggle or inherent political friction with another. In this story, Jews are mice while Germans are cats, yet Art is admittedly using this as a story-telling element rather than a hard rule. His fiance, after all, converts to his father's beliefs and thus is drawn as a mouse—a conversation had within the comic itself—yet Vladek the father frequently "impersonates" a Polish man for his own survival by meta-visually donning a pig face despite being born and bred a Pole.

A conversation about show more identity exists here, about the transient nature of grimly gripping your ethnicity alongside your community, and about the awkward place that Jews inhabit within the World Wars / post-WW2 America. While not a topic brushed over in MAUS, the concept of the Jewish immigrant being considered "white" for a time quickly shifted as new waves of immigrants arrived in the US and posed a [nonexistent, but feared] threat to "good ol' economics" as they stood. It is in this odd place the Jew which is Vladek, and his son, and those of their community now exist. A race? A belief? A religion? A cadre of victims? MAUS does not need to tackle this complicated history, because it has bigger fish to fry, namely the matter of being a Holocaust survivor.

In MAUS, we are treated to a stylized account of Vladek Spiegelman, a young man in the 1940s who was a conscripted Polish soldier as tensions with Germany and Europe became heated and later a Jewish prisoner of war passed from death camp to death camp. He survives, in his account, through bartering. Modern day Jewish caricatures outline the idea of the thieving fiend who seeks to make a deal for money, for riches, and Art the cartoonist grapples with this antisemitic idea that his father exemplifies. It is a frequent point of contention between the two, the fact that Vladek refuses even now to relax or part with the thousands of dollars he has to his name after years working post-war, that everything comes down to money and bartering. But through his personal account, we can understand his reasoning.

For Vladek, survival was predicated on being useful. "It is good to know how to do everything," he remarks, as he details a series of duties that he was able to perform in exchange for his relative safety. He knew multiple languages, such as Polish / German / English in addition to Yiddish, and he worked in proximity to many useful jobs when cousins would issue him false tinman work permits to prevent his capture by German occupation or when he would watch shoemakers repair the boots of Nazi soldiers after trading rationed bread for their expertise. He uses these skills in the modern day, bartering with and cheating people he does not know for the benefit of himself and his family. But these are habits he learned in hard times, and MAUS makes no excuse for that behavior. Rather, we see how it came to pass, how it kept Vladek and his first wife alive, and understand that it was necessary.

Racism is a central point of MAUS. It stands to reason that some readers may be disgusted by Vladek for expressing anti-Black opinions about a hitchhiker his son's fiance stops to help, confused by his opinions when his own life was predicated on this very concept of othering. This is how the story outlines that there is no perfection in the Jewish survivor, that they are not exempt from criticism in larger society or by their children, and it conveys the staunch refusal to "move on" that permeates everything about Vladek's current life—even down to the effects it has on his second marriage. The Nazis did not care who bore the blame for their country's economic failure; it just mattered that someone paid the price of fascism.

[A key point here, referring to Art's usage of animal characters, is a scene in which a prisoner at Auschwitz is depicted as a mouse but claims to be a German with a Nazi soldier son and medals from the Fuhrer. Art interrogates his father: asking was this man really German? And his father replies that it did not matter, for he was a Jew to the Nazis and that is why they kept him in Auschwitz. This too is part of the story, the point that fascism is a cannibalistic belief that eats itself in order to exist.]

This is a heavy-hitter of a story. The only comic to win a Pulitzer and while I've read some profound comics, I can certainly see why this is one so highly acclaimed. A hard read, full of unlucky moments and unlikely hope and heartbreak. I felt for the people whom Vladek was forced to leave behind, and I felt for the people who put their lives on the line to save the few people they could. The depictions are graphic at times, but I would argue that any story about genocide must include the parts that make your stomach turn. show less

I'm not generally a reader of graphic novels, although I loved 'In the Shadow of No Towers'. Like that, 'Maus' is beautifully drawn, humorous and moving in turns. Graphic novels can avoid some of the criticisms thrown at filmmakers for choosing to depict the holocaust at all or for doing it with too much or too little taste. Having all the main characters with animals heads, for example, removes the sense of reality from the potentially undepictable. How far you can accept a protagonist with the body of a man and the head of a mouse has its own problems of course (and that the Poles and Germans are all depicted with pigs' heads).

However, 'Maus' isn't really a holocaust story - it's really about a parent-child relationship. 'Art' the show more protagonist listens to his father's amazing story of courage, resilience and resourcefulness and admires him - at the same time as finding him as irritating and frustrating as he always did. You don't have to have a parent who has lived through important events in history to feel a gulf between their life achievements and the person you've always known: that's something most of us can identify with. And something I found funny and painful as the best stories of this kind are. show less

A grim and powerful memoir told through the voice of the comic artist's father who survived the holocaust. Charmingly illustrated as animals, the tale of Vladak and Anja is played out as best as it can be recalled. Interspersed throughout are episodes from the author's life as he struggles to deal with his aging father's increasing eccentricities. Although Vladak has been through tremendous tragedy and suffering in his life, the author (and the reader) have difficulty having patience with the man's bundle of neurosis. Art is overwhelmed by his father's life story and equally overwhelmed by frustration by Vladak's many character flaws. Of course he is flawed after what he has endured, but that doesn't necessarily make him easier to deal show more with.

This type of thing reminded me very much of how I relate to my own father. Although the situations are vastly different, that same tension exists in many households. A book of horrors and beauty that will doubtless haunt me for the rest of my life. show less

This is my first graphic novel (asides from Tin Tin that I read when I was 11 and the Beano when I was 9!) and I loved it. I don't think it matters whether you like graphic novels or not for this book - so if you're like me and thought you wouldn't get along with it, give it a try.This is an incredibly human account of an individual's experience of being a Polish Jew. Despite the fact the 'characters' are portrayed as animals - it is one of the most human and most real-feeling accounts I've seen or read. This is more then a graphic representation of some random story - it's a personal story between a father and his son as well as the father's journey and experience during this time - running away, living in hiding, in the ghetto and show more finally in Auschwitz. Art Spiegelman also draws himself in - and the process of writing this graphic novel.I think nowadays it is easy to become desensitised to images of the war - bombs, broken bits of body etc from movies and the such like. Somehow, the cartoon portrayal of these real-people's lives seems to make it more real then ever. Parts made me laugh, parts made me cry particularly in Maus II. By the end I felt a real closeness towards both father and son. I think back over the story and remind myself it is real, that what I read on the pages happened to THIS person not just a fictional representation that happened to a fictional person.It is no 'big hero' blockbuster, but a moving story of a very strong minded man who fought to survive. show less

No quisiera sonar controvertido, pero el nazismo fue una cosa horripilante. Espero que hasta ahí todos de acuerdo. Maus lleva la crónica de un superviviente del Holocausto a un medio considerado a veces inmaduro e infantil como es el cómic/novela gráfica. El arte es crudo y rápido, en muchas ocasiones, lo que nos ayuda a no desenfocarnos de la historia que se nos cuenta. Que por otro lado, por muchas veces que se hayan contado historias similares, nunca esta de más repetirla.

En el argumento hay poca tensión: sabes que Vladek sobrevive porque está contando la historia, y sabes también que lo hace Anja. Pero eso no significa que no sea una lectura absorbente: dividida en dos partes, la vida en los guetos y la vida en los campos show more de concentración, la trama es una sucesión de eventos terribles, crueldad y sinsentidos, pero siempre con la esperanza de ver a Vladek y Anja reencontrarse (el conocido y desdichado final de Anja solo lo hace todo más amargo cuando finalmente ocurre). Tan importante como todo esto es la suerte y la perspicacia que acompaña a Vladek, siempre buscando la manera de sobrevivir guiado por la luz que es Anja para él.

En cualquier caso, en mi opinión, y aunque el flashback de Vladek está fabulosamente contado, el verdadero significado de la trama está en el Vladek que cuenta la historia. Un Vladek considerablemente afectado por los sucesos de la guerra y por el suicidio de su mujer, que detesta a su segunda esposa y que demuestra unos prejuicios raciales que sorprenden a Art viniendo de una persona que ha sufrido lo que ha sufrido. Y supongo que es ahí donde radica el sentido de Maus. O no, no sé. Ratones, gatos, cerdos o perros, somos todos iguales, en lo bueno y por desgracia en lo malo.

Qué depresión de repente. Pondría una foto de un gatito pero igual no es apropiado. show less