Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began [Paperback]

Art Spiegelman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 1, 1992 | Series: Maus (Book 2)

***WINNER OF THE 1992 PULIZTER PRIZE***

Acclaimed as a quiet triumph and a brutally moving work of art, the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Mausintroduced readers to Vladek Spieglman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive.

This second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Mausties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing take of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of family life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. At every level this is the ultimate survivor's tale—and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Spiegelman's startling comic about the Holocaust, which revolves around his survivor father's experiences, won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Spiegelman's Maus, A Survivor's Tale (Pantheon, 1987) was a breakthrough, a comic book that gained widespread mainstream attention. The primary story of that book and of this sequel is the experience of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived the concentration camps of Nazi Germany during World War II. This story is framed by Spiegelman's getting the story from Vladek, which is in turn framed by Spiegelman's working on the book after his father's death and suffering the attendant anxiety and guilt, the ambivalence over the success of the first volume, and the difficulties of his "funny-animal" metaphor. (In both books, he draws the char acters as anthropomorphic animals-- Jews are mice, Poles pigs, Germans cats, Americans dogs, and French frogs.) The interconnections and complex characterizations are engrossing, as are the vivid personal accounts of living in the camps. Maus and Maus . . . II are two of the most important works of comic art ever published. Highly recommended, espe cially for libraries with Holocaust collec tions. See also Harry Gordon's The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania , reviewed in this issue, p. 164; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/91.
- Keith R.A. DeCandido, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; Reprint edition (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679729771
• ISBN-13: 978-0679729778
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 0.5 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Jewish
  • #27 in Books > History > World > Jewish > Holocaust
  • #74 in Books > History > Military > World War II

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The story continues... as does the legacy of the Holocaust March 28, 2003

By Daniel J. Hamlow HALL OF FAME

Format:Paperback

The second part of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus picks up where the first part left off. His father Vladek and mother Anja are captured and sent to Auschwitz. However, things aren't well at home. Mala, Vladek's second wife, exasparated at Vladek's tight-fisted controlling ways, leaves him. Artie and his wife Francoise rush over to help him out and during this time, Artie continues the interviews with his father and thence into Maus II.

The path of Artie understanding his father is smoother but at a cost. Following the success of Maus I, Spiegelman depicts a pile of dead Jewish bodies lying under the Artie's writing desk symbolizing how much the history his father has bled from that first volume has seeped into him. He is beginning to understand, but at the cost of emotionally and vicariously going through his father's experiences, for which he has sessions with Pavel, a Czech Jew psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.

Artie gets more perspective during these sessions with Pavel. He tells Pavel that as a child, he constantly argued with his father, who said that anything he did was nothing compared to surviving Auschwitz. Pavel refers to the psychological concept of transference: "Maybe your father needed to show that he was always right--that he could always SURVIVE-because he felt GUILTY about surviving. ... and he took his guilt on YOU, where it was safe... on the REAL survivor." The argument stands to reason. Vladek survived the death of so much family and friends, as well as the millions he never knew.

We learn more of how Vladek survived Auschwitz. He teaches English to the Polish kapo, who expecting the Germans to lose the war, wants to get in good graces with the Americans. Vladek is thus given better food, a better fitting uniform, and the tip to stand at the far left of the line of prisoners during the labour call. Improved health increased chances of survival and a better mental state.

Vladek has enough chutzpah in his tight-fisted but survivalist ways to exchange used groceries for new ones(!) While in the car waiting for him, Artie and Francoise discuss Vladek. Francoise says: "I'd rather kill myself than live through ... everything Vladek went through. It's a miracle he survived." Artie responds with "In some ways he didn't survive," which is key to the book's theme. Yet drastic saving is one way Vladek survived the war and camps. On the way back from the grocery store, we discover Vladek's racism towards blacks, an example of the victim becoming a victimizer.

Maus is a must-read for a personal instead of abstract, statistical look at the Holocaust. It also brings up post-war genocide. Pavel's contention that people haven't changed rings poignantly. Despite the vow of "never again," genocide has repeatedly happened "yet again": e.g. the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields in Cambodia, the massacre in Rwanda, and the ethnic bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps for racial harmony to become a human instinct, all people need to feel the same way, but the relativistic world of the twentieth and twenty-first century to makes that dream virtually impossible. Pavel's statement that a newer and bigger Holocaust is needed to change people grimly prophesizes World War III, meaning that unless we change, we will all die.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing -- a must read October 22, 2006

By Gregory Baird VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I was compelled to read this after finishing Art Spiegelman's astonishingly brilliant "Maus," a graphic novel retelling his father, Vladek's, experiences as a Jew in Poland during WWII. This sequel picks up right where the first left off, with Vladek's separation from wife, Anja, after arriving at Auschwitz. There Vladek must struggle to survive starvation and disease as well as the guards and the ovens, all while trying to get news of his wife from over in Auschwitz's second camp, Birkenau. His horrific time there is expertly rendered as Spiegelman manages to get across a complex range of emotions through his illustrations and words. Even after Auschwitz is abandoned and the Nazi soldiers go on the run, Vladek must still struggle to survive and make his way to safety. His journey home to his wife (from Auschwitz to an abandoned German landscape, through ruined cities and, finally, back to the now unrecognizable city he once called home) is utterly compelling, unforgettable stuff.

Equally compelling is the story of Vladek in later years that is mixed in with his history in both volumes of "Maus", after he has come to America with Anja, had another son (the first, Richieu, did not survive the war), lost Anja to suicide in 1968, remarried, developed a heart condition and a strained relationship with his surviving son, and begins telling his story to 'Artie', who is interested in adapting his father's tale into a comic book). In the WWII segments Spiegelman captures the horrors that took place during that tragic time, and in these father-son moments he explores how surviving an event like that leaves a mark on you forever, and can even pass on the burden of survivor's guilt to a new generation that wasn't even alive when the atrocities took place. Surprisingly, it is during these deeply personal moments that the "Maus" books really hit home the hardest. Spiegelman does a masterful job getting across the complex personalities of his characters and how the past has left a wide, seemingly impassable gulf between him and his father. Really, it is just a beautiful portrait of their relationship and I cannot recommend it enough. Spiegelman's delicate, earnest elegy to his father -- and to all survivors and victims of the Holocaust alike -- is a true triumph of literature and a heartbreaking look at one of history's greatest tragedies.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Story - Read it March 23, 2000

By Dave

Format:Hardcover

Like Maus I this book can be read in an hour or so. Vladek's story of survival at Auschwitz is incredible. As a baby boomer I didn't live during this era. Having descended from Germans I have studied this period and have wondered how this could have happened. I'm not going to pretend to really understand what happened and what it was like. I have read other personal accounts of the holocaust but due, I guess, to the comic book format I found this much more accessible. We all should understand as much as we can about this horrific period of history. With just a small investment of time Maus I and II will provide to you a dramatic survivor's experience. We should never forget that this actually happened.