Notes on the book maus

Its sequel adds significantly to that initial achievement. The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents jews as mice, germans as cats, and poles as pigs. The holocaust hardly seems to fit comicstrip narration. Because the comic appeared in chapters over a span of eleven years, the story of its own creation in part of the narrativefor example, the response to the publication of the first collected volume is described in the second volume. In the book, jews are represented as mice, and germans take the form of cats. At the start of book i, art arrives at his father vladeks home in order to record his fathers holocaust memories for a.

Maus is a complex, layered story dealing with racism, identity, and memory. The graphic novel maus by art spiegelman is a rich and engaging story. To facilitate these transitions in this summary, the holocaust narrative. Maus, a graphic novel by art spiegelman, is a twobook tale of survival during world war ii and the holocaust. This onepage guide includes a plot summary and brief analysis of maus by art spiegelman. Vladek has already stated that he was very religious as a young man, so arties lack of knowledge is particularly surprising. Yet when the first volume of maus was published in 1987, it met with enormous critical and commercial success, and to this day it is widely considered to be among the best and most powerful of a long list of holocaustinspired works. Why did spiegelman choose to make his story maus a comic book. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

It follows his own parents story in poland during the. Art spiegelmans maus is the most unlikely of creations. But art spiegelman, the son of holocaust survivors and a gifted artistwriter, proved otherwise in 1986 when he created a new and distinctive form of holocaust literature by publishing maus i. Maus summary artie spiegelman, a young jewishamerican cartoonist, arrives for a visit at the home of his father, vladek, after a long estrangement. It follows his own parents story in poland during the 1930s, and describes their experiences as the nazis invaded and persecuted the jewish population.

It follows his own parents story in poland during the 1930s, and describes their. Maus questions and answers discover the community of teachers, mentors and students just like you that can answer any question you might have on maus. Get all the key plot points of art spiegelmans maus on one page. Maus is a graphic novel by american cartoonist art spiegelman, serialized from 1980 to 1991. Studying the torah is a foundational part of judaism, and arties ignorance about parshas truma highlights his distance from the religion and culture of his family. While this discourse will deal mostly within the confines of book ii, it is important to note the catalyst in book i that not only magnifies the guilt felt by spiegelman.

Vladek begins his story with his life as a young man in sosnowiec, poland, in the years leading up to world war ii. It depicts spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a polish jew and holocaust survivor. Maus summary from litcharts the creators of sparknotes. Maus jumps back and forth often between the past and the present. Art spiegelman, the authorartist of the maus books, is an artist in real life. Book 1, prologue, its summer 1958, in rego park, a neighborhood in queens, new york. Vladek is sick and unhappy, stuck in a bad marriage to a resentful woman named mala, and still mourning the loss of his first wife, anja, to suicide ten years earlier. At the start of book i, art arrives at his father vladeks home in order to record his fathers holocaust memories for. At the start of book i, art arrives at his father vladeks home in order to record his fathers holocaust memories for a book he plans to write about his fathers life. Art spiegelmans maus, the most unconventional great book yet written about the holocaust, the one that turned nazis into cats and jews into.