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The Sheik

In chapter one, Artie arrives at his fathers house to pursue his work on a book about his father, Vladek’s, time spent in Poland during World War two. In flash back, we learn that in the years preceding the war Vladek, residing in Czestochowa Poland, does well for himself in the fashion industry, and is quite the ladies man. Eventually growing tired of the single mans life, in an effort to settle down he meets Anja Zylberberg, the daughter of a rich factory owning family based in Sosnowiec, just south of Czsetochowa. By the end of 1936 Anja and Vladek are engaged to be married, and Vladek has moved to Sosnowiec. 

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The Honeymoon

In chapter two, we learn of the atmosphere starting to form in Poland, when a neighbour of Anja’s is imprisoned for fraternizing with a communist. Soon after Anja gives birth to their first son Richieu, she slips into what appears to be a postpartum depression. In an effort to help her recover, Vladek takes Anja to a sanitarium inside Czechoslovakia. Along their journey to encounter Nazism and the anti-semitism it promotes. They arrive safely at the sanatorium and enjoy a relatively peaceful time, in which Anja seems to make a full recovery. With their return to Poland, Vladek discovers the factory he owns has been burglarized and that large antisemitic riots had begun to grip the town.  Soon after, World War two officially began, Vladek was drafted to the front to fight the Germans, while Anja and Richieu fled to her parents home. 

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Prisoners of War

We learn that the Polish army is ill prepared to fight the Germans, and while Vladek does manage to kill one, he is soon taken prisoner. It is here that Vladek experiences the antisemitic practices of the Nazis, being segregated from other non jewish solider and sentenced to hard labour and poor living conditions. Eventually Vladek is released and heads home to Poland, where the Nazi occupation has begun to institute their antisemitic rules and laws.  The Poland Vladek knew is gone, his factory has been seized, and his people have been restricted to a point that it is impossibly difficult to maintain a living.

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The Noose Tightens

As times wears on, we find Vladek delving into the black market in an attempt to make ends meet and feed his family. Violence against the Jewish population spills into the streets, and eventually Jewish people start disappearing, being taken to ghettos or camps. Eventually Vladek, Anja and their family are moved to Dienst Stadium, a staging ground from which Jews are sent to camps or to ghettos.

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Mouse Holes

Vladek, Anja and some of their family were eventually sent to the ghettoized town of Srodula where they would be locked in at night. During the days, they were marched to shops to work. They came to find out that Anja’s sister, who had taken Richieu to what they thought was a safer town, in order to save the children from the camps poisoned them then took her own life. Soon after the realization that all Jews were eventually going to be sent to the camps spurred Anja and Vladek to hide themselves away from the Germans in elaborate custom build hideaways. 

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Mouse Trap

After some time spent hiding out on a farm house of a sympathetic Polish woman Vladek and Anja decided to risk getting smuggled out of Poland into Hungry in order to escape the Nazis. After they had paid the smugglers, and some way into their journey, the smugglers betrayed them and turned them over to the Germans, who promptly delivered them to Auschwitz. 

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MAUS II

Anja and Vladek get separated a Auschwitz, with Vladek being sent to Auschwitz two to work, and Anja sent to the women's camp at Birkenau. Vladek is made to shower,  change into his prison clothing and is branded with a number, that is then revealed to comprised of fortunate numerology. Eventually Vladek discovers how he and Anja were caught, the smugglers, who now themselves are in the camps, betrayed Vladek and Anja to the Germans. Vladek’s will to survive leads him to exchange English lessons for relative protection by the Polish captain of Vladek’s barracks. Vladek eventually gets assigned to a work detail in Birkenau and successfully reconnects with Anja, who is not doing as well. Vladek’s relative means allows him to bribe Anja’s Barracks captain to show her a little leniency.

In the last days of Aushwitz, Vladek and some friends plan to evade the Germans by hiding an attic, only to find that the building is meant to be demolished, so they join the other Jews being marched back into Germany. Eventually the Jews are packed into freight cars where they are left, and many die, however Vladek survives once again by his ingenuity, hanging a blanket between two hooks, elevating himself above the mass of people. Soon Vladek and the remaining prisoners arrive at Dachau, where in an attempt to stay in the better conditions of the hospital, Vladek maintains a self inflicts injury on his hand. 

Vladek is soon being sent to Switzerland to be freed. Finding his first taste of freedom at the German-Swiss border, Vladek and the other prisoners are soon rounded up by a group of German soldiers who bring them to a lake with the intent of mass execution, however, come morning the German officers are go and the prisoners are once again left to their freedom. Vladek and a friend are eventually found by the liberating Americans, and soon begin working for them. After some time, Vladek is sent to a displaced persons camp to acquire travel papers. Vladek makes his way back to Sosnowiec and finally reunites with Anja.

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PURPOSE

It’s clear that there are many layers to the purpose for which Art Spiegelman wrote Maus. He discusses some of his point in the film interview above.

(2:24) Art talks about his desire to further the Comic book genre.

(5:09) He continues in his drive to innovate, stating that he wanted a comic book of such length that a a bookmark would be required.

(6:25) Finally, he said that his purpose was to tell a story, that at the time, wasn’t very well told to the public, and in doing incidentally made a case for the state of Israel and help educate humanity on how to avoid such tragedies in the future.

THEME

Also talked about in the above video are Art’s ideas surrounding theme. Throughout the story different ilks of people are depicted by different animals. The French as frogs, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, Germans as cats, and the Jews as mice. Part of the reason for the animalistic theme was likely to better facilitate a connection between reader and the challenging subject matter. Art also spoke about this animal themes usage as a way to reclaim the comparison of Jews to rodents in Nazi propaganda (3:08). Another reason for the usage of mice was to help the reader understand the weight of the holocaust, in that it wasn’t so much murder as it was an extermination, as that’s what humans do to rodents (3:43).

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VOICE & TONE

The author took live recordings he took from interviewing his father and transcribed those recording, using them as lines of text in the comic. This verbatim transcription instantly gives the reader a sense of who Vladek and Art both are. Their real life words are being spoken across the page into the mind of the reader, this instantly humanizes the characters and helps to foster the emotional journey the reader goes on.

Art is struggling to understand his father, as well as his fathers experience. There are moments of frustration felt throughout the story. In contract Vladek seems to talk rather matter of factly about his experience during the war, shifting sometimes in and out of the story distracted by the current time.

In the video above Art talks about his experience in recording his interviews with his father. There are examples of the actual recordings with his father.

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Outstanding Scenes

Even in a memoir as grabbing and memorable as Maus, there are scenes that stand out and hit the reader more then anything else. This can be because of the emotional impact of the scene, the historical impact or just the personal connection a reader makes with what they’re reading. Maus is interesting in the way that it tells two stories, the story of Vladek’s time during the war and then the more modern story of the relationship between Spiegelman and his father. This cause there to be different types of outstanding scenes for each storyline. 

In Spiegelman’s storyline the scenes that stand out more are the ones that have you gaining a better of understanding of his relationships with his parents. For his father you have scenes like the one between page 68 and 69 in which Vladek throws away Spiegelman’s jacket because it looked too old and gave him a different coat that he thought was better or even the way Spiegelman talks to Mala from page 130 to 133. These scenes showcase just how frustrated Spiegelman can get with his father, mainly from the way their personalities clash but at the same time showcase that he still cares for his father all the same which is empathized on the very last page where he showcases his fathers reunion with his mother after the war and again in death, once again reunited with the woman he loved. For his mother the scene that really stands out is the inclusion of his short story Prisoner on the Hell Planet, pages 100-103, that showcase how Spiegelman responded and felt about his mothers death and also how he dealt with it and turned it into a story as a way to deal with that pain and that grief. 

In the WWll, Vladek’s storyline, the scenes that pop out more are the more horrific ones, that ones that make you amazed that he made it through the war as well as he did. Like the scene in Maus 2 in which Vladek first arrives in Auschwitz ,pages 25-26, and has to run around naked, getting hosed down and putting on clothing that didn’t fit properly.  The inhumane conditions in which the people in the concentration camps were put in are so horrifying that we can’t even image what it would be like to go through that ourselves. The scene in Maus 2 on page 72 of the people screaming as they burn to death along with the scenes in Maus 1 on page 80 of the Jews that were rounded up and beat in the middle of town are two other scenes that stand out for how horrifying they are the the terror the people who went through them must have felt in their very last moments. 

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Characterization

Art Spiegelman took an interesting direction when he was designing the characters for Maus. Instead of drawing the different people in the story as they appear in real life, human, he instead drew them as anthropomorphic versions of themselves. This was smart decision on his part because it acted as an effective system for readers to be able to identify who was Jewish or German or Polish, etc. This allowed the readers to know if a person who appeared could end up being trouble or if Vladek was moving around pretending to not be Jewish. 

Jewish people were depicted as mice, playing on the stereotype that Jewish people are pests or vermin, who have to scurry away to hiding spots, surviving off of scraps and leftovers as the war goes on. Germans are depicted as cats, hunting down the Jewish mice. The Americans are the dogs who chase off the German cats, saving the Jewish mice from being eaten. Then you have the Polish who are depicted as pigs, which is seen as many to be an insult on Spiegelman’s behalf since referring to someone as a pig is generally seen as insulting since pigs are often viewed as being disgusting, filthy and greedy. One of the reasons why Spiegelman chose to portray Polish people as pigs could be because, even though there were Polish people who were prosecuted or who died trying to help jews, there were Polish people that would turn Jews in. On page 140 of Maus l in the bottom three panels Vladek even mentions this stating, ‘I travelled often with the streetcar to town. It was two cars. One was only Germans and officials. The second, it was only the Poles. Always I went straight in the official cars… the Germans paid no attention of me… in the polish car they could smell if a Polish Jew came in.’ This suggests that should Vladek of gone into the Polish only car and someone suspected he was Jewish they would have turned him in. The Germans were bad because they hunted and killed the jews but the Polish were worse because they would turn people in to be killed, thus making them pigs, even the Germans referred to them as swine.

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Image

Imagery used throughout the story to help communicate with the reader. Choosing to use animals to represent different groups to communicate with the audience who’s a potential ally or enemy or who’s going through the same danger or who’s safe and privileged. Through the use of hatching and cross hatching Spiegelman creates images that really resonated with the reader and creates an emotion impact. Bold lines, the use of shadows, and even the simple use of extra lines around the eyes all build on an image create an bigger impact and improving the story.

Action

Art Spiegelman shows throughout Maus that he had a good understanding of action and movement. He’s able to switch between scenes and locations, or even just walking across a distance, without making it feel choppy or rushed or forced. He shows action and motion through the body language of the person who’s moving and he knows what to cut from between panels to not make the story drag but still keep if form being choppy.

Colour

Maus is black and white in everything except the cover of the book. The lack of colour throughout the story doesn’t take away from the story but adds to it. Black and white is generally considered to be nostalgic or old fashion. At least half of this story takes place the past as Vladek Spiegelman recounts his time during WWll, which fits in with the use of black and white. The images are also coloured/shaded with different hatching and cross hatching techniques which is used to empathize some of the more horrific effects Vladek witnessed. The hatching marks can be used to show emotion when used across the face or to emphasize a horrific event by making the lines harsher and more pronounced.

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Significance of Title

The title Maus: A Survivor’s Tale has significance in a lot of ways depending on what part of the title you look at. The first part, Maus, which is german for mouse, references the Jewish characters in the story, which are depicted as mice, and how they were seen as pests by Nazi Germany. When Jewish people started being rounded up and sent off to camps those who were able to hide away had to survive on scraps and scurry from one place to another; having been forced into mice like behaviour as to avoid imprisonment and death, while the germans, whom are depicted as cats, hunt them down one by one.

The second part of the title A Survivor’s Tale is in reference to several people. The first and most obvious person would be Art Spiegelmans’ father, Vladek. A major chuck of the story follows what Vladek journey through the holocaust and how he survived but the story also depicts other holocaust survivors or references them, such as Anja (Vladek’s first wife and Art Spiegelman’s mother) who survived the camps but later committed suicide or Mala (Vladek’s second wife), as well as several other people who Vladek mentions as he tells his story. The book as a whole is a way for Art Spiegelman to immortalize his parents, mainly his father, which can be seen as a way for him to survive the death of his parents, his mother having died years before (that story having been told in Spiegelman’s comic Prisoner on the Hell Planet, which appears in the first half of Maus), and his father who died before Spiegelman could finish the book.

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Historical, Social and Cultural Context Part 1

Maus is a memoir that takes place over two timelines. The first timeline is that of Art Spiegelman’s live and interactions with his father. The other timeline is that of Vladek’s experience through the war and what he had to go through. It is through this timeline that we really get to see historical events and places. Art Spiegelman illustrates the abuse jews suffered from the beginning with the targeting of lower-class jews to those who were sick or elderly and later to everyone. In Maus ll you get to see what Vladek experienced in Auschwitz from his first view of the gate, to the outfits they were given, to the way they were marched around and treated, all expertly illustrated depictions of what Auschwitz was like. You also see how Vladek got to experience the end of the war, how it didn’t suddenly stop; it took time for everyone to be told the war was over and even then some people still continued to fight.

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Historical, Social and Cultural Context Part 2

In Maus 1, before Vladek ends up in Auschwitz, you see the way Vladek’s and his families wealth and connections protect him from the camps and harm for a lot longer then others. Vladek and his family had built a good reputation for themselves among the community resulting in people being willing to help them or warn them even if it meant putting their own lives in risk. Even when Germans took over his company he was able to use his connection to get work and keep his family safe. This good reputation that the Spiegelman’s had that even saved Vladek’s life.

The Holocaust was driven by the ideology that Jews were parasitic vermin worthy only of destruction and hate. The Nazi Germans took over Jewish jobs, took their money and forced them out of their homes. They also turned people against Jewish people by making them believe they were vermin just trying to steal jobs and wealth from the people who ‘actually’ deserved it. It didn’t help that non Jewish people were rewarded as Jewish people were prosecute, getting jobs previously held by Jews and even being relocated into better houses as Jews were relocated into slums or shipped off to camps.