Customer Reviews

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History

5 star:		(128)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is a powerful work. The tale of a young man's painful relationship with his father is elegantly interwoven with the father's recollection of life as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland. Spiegelman's skill and honesty make this a raw, gut-wrenching read, though the tale is somehow ultimately uplifting.

I first read this book as a teenager, and would highly recommend it to people of any age. Over the years, I have re-read it frequently and shared it with friends of all ages. All have taken much from Spiegelman's tale.

A few notes must be made in response to the 10/26/97 comment posted below by a reviewer from Ontario, Canada. It is quite clear that this reviewer did not, in fact, read the book. (S)he mistakenly attacks Spiegelman for portraying the Poles as rats, and wonders if he would be offended if a book were written portraying Jews as rats. Anyone who took the time to read Maus (or merely to examine it's cover!) would know that it is, in fact, the Jewish people who are portrayed as mice/rats, whereas the Poles are portrayed not as vermin, but rather as pigs.

In fact, far from a "vicious" attack against Poles, there are many acts of kindness by Polish people portrayed in the book. Certainly there is unkindness as well, but how can the reviewer forget that this is a factual account of Vladek Spiegelman's life, told from his perspective. If unkind acts by Polish people are a part of that life, then they should be in the book.

Finally, the reviewer in question inelegantly raises a point of some merit, though it is one that is only tangentially related to Spiegelman's work. The Polish people did, in fact, suffer horribly at the hands of both Nazis and Soviets alike. Their death toll in the concentration camps numbered in the millions, and should never be forgotten or omitted when discussing the Holocaust. This book, however, is about Vladek Spiegelman, and so surely it cannot be assailed for its focus on events from his perspective.

Spiegelman's fidelity to his father's! story is to be admired, not attacked. And certainly not by a reviewer who could not be bothered to read the book.

As a history and literature major, I wrote my senior thesis on Maus and Maus II because, after reading them for a class, I couldn't stop thinking about them. The imagery, both drawn and implied, was masterful. Each panel tells the story of the Holocaust as SOMEONE REMEMBERS IT. Spiegelman took his father's story and graphically interpreted it in an incredibly moving way. He did not write a work of historical fact (for whatever those books are worth anyway - even history is a work of memory and interpretation). I love these graphic novels for what they are - brilliant literature and testimony.

I was looking over some of these reviews of Maus because I am going to see Spiegelman speak this weekend and just wanted to know what others had said in the past. I was disheartened to read some of the negative responses to the use of animal caricatures, especially since I have always felt this was the most ingenius part of the works. Looking at these reviews, though, I remembered an interview with Spiegelman I read a while back. He explains the animal caricatures a bit, and I thought it might be beneficial to place a quote here, in this forum.

Published in The Comics Journal, October 1991:

Spiegelman says of the animal portrayals,

"These images are not my images. I borrowed them from the Germans. At a certain point I wanted to go to Poland, and I had to get a visa. I put in my application, and then I got a call from the consul. He said 'the Polish attache wants to speak with you.' And I knew what he wanted to talk to me about. On the way over there, I tried to figure out what I was going to say to him. 'I wanted to draw noble stallions, but I don't do horses very well?' When I got there, he gave me the perfect opening. He said, 'You know, the Nazis called us schwein' (German for pig). And I said, 'Yes, and they called us vermin (German for mouse or rat).'

Ultimately, what the book is about is the commonality of human beings. It's crazy to divide things down the nationalistic or racial or religious lines. And that's the whole point, isn't it? These metaphors, which are meant to self-destruct in my book - and I think they do self-destruct - still have a residual force that allows them to work as metaphors, and still get people worked up over them."

I guess he's right. People do get worked up over the metaphors. Too bad some of those people can't understand them. If you haven't read Maus, you are missing a true piece of art.

First of all, if you've read or are reading the other reviews, ignore the blather about how the whole "Animal Farm" metaphor--Jews as mice, Germans as cats, etc..--being racist and demeaning.

Art Spiegelman attempts to tell the story of his father Vladek's life in Hitler's Europe. By and large, the book is a detailed, objective retelling of his Vladek's story. However, as Art himself will realize, "I can't even make sense out of my relationship with my father--how am I supposed to make sense out of the Holocaust?" and "Reality is much too complex for comics--so much has to be left out or distorted." Thus liberated from the impossible standard of complete objectivity, Art is free to insert two important subjective elements into the story--the depiction of different races as different species, and the insertion of himself as a character in MAUS.

Obviously, Art is not a overt racist--in fact, in the second part of MAUS, Art will scold his father for distrusting a black person, and a German-Jewish couple will help Vladek return home after being freed from the death camps. The point of portraying Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, etc. is to show what race relations during Hitler's Europe might have been like.

The characterization of race doesn't end there, though--as the scene shifts from Nazi Germany to the present, and as Art must suffer the daily trials and tribulations of life with a father permanently scarred by his experiences, Art depicts himself as a mouse as well, a confession that he himself is unable to completely escape the aftermath of the poisoned race relations of the Holocaust. Maybe this makes him a covert racist. But if he is, then who isn't?

Art's involvement in MAUS goes beyond interviewing his father, though. Later in the story we will see that Art was treated in a mental hospital and sees a psychiatrist regularly. As the book cover declares, "MAUS is a story about the survivors of the Holocaust--and of the children who somehow survive the survivors."

The storytelling in MAUS is stellar, and the craftsmanship is as well. The comics medium allows Spiegelman to employ some interesting tricks. For example, whenever Vladek is trying to sneak around, he is portrayed with a pig mask. When Vladek and Anja are trying to escape from the ghetto, Anja, who in real life was easily identifiable as a Jew by her appearance, is drawn with a long tail, while Vladek is not.

In sum, MAUS is a gripping story of his parents' experience during the Holocaust, filled with countless brushes with death, tales of betrayal, and plenty of terrible, graphic illustrations of victims being executed. It is not a history text in the most austere and empirical sense. Rather, it is a confession that the Holocaust defies dispassionate and detached analysis.

Don't let the comic-book type format fool you: Maus is the horrifying biography of a man who survived(?) the greatest atrocities the 20th Century had to offer. Mr. Spiegelman makes great use of the illustrated book format to allow the reader to meet the Jewish experience under WWII Naziism without rejecting it. Words of caution to any reader: leave yourself enough time to finish the entire volume at once, because you won't want to put it down, and leave yourself time afterward to come to terms with what you have read. I also recommend waiting at least a day or two between this volume and its sequel (Maus II) to avoid overload; Maus is the most powerful, most haunting, and most accessible statement I have encountered on the horrors of the holocaust.

Maus is one of the most amazing comic stories I have ever read. It is so horrifying and so human, yet it never becomes overly depressing and is lightened somewhat by the fact that all the characters are animals. The story is a brilliant mix of Art Spiegelman writing the story itself and trying to come to terms with his father, and his father's harrowing experiences at the height of Nazi power in Europe and in the concentration camp at Auschwitz (although the concentration camp part takes place in the second volume).

This volume of Maus is mostly about Vladek trying to avoid the Nazis, as all the Jews in Europe were trying to do at this time. There are many colorful characters and stories packed into Maus, and it is a grim reminder of a dark period of world history. Beware though . . . the second edition (And Here My Troubles Began) is even more horrifying.

Maus is brilliant. Buy this and the second part too - there is no way you'll regret it.

This book is a comic book, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. "Why? How?" It won for a reason: it is a fresh account of the much discussed World War II Holocaust, told from a single (real) person's point of view. The main character (Art Spiegelman's father) is Jewish, and so is represented by a mouse. Nazis are cats. The mouse (barely) survives a sentence in a concentration camp. The fact that the book is in comic format with personified animals allows you to absorb the story and it's gruesome details quickly and painlessly until you understand the magnitude and reality of it. Then you are overwhelmed, and the book explodes into powerful work of human experience.

"Maus I" is a powerful and awe-inspiring experience. I have never read anything quite like it, I have to admit. It's really hard to comprehend the term "page-turner" until you read this very unique and intense tale of surviving one of the most terrible times in history.

Written in comic book form, Art Spiegelman tells the tale of his father's hardships and survival in the Holocaust. Vladek Spiegelman (his father) was a POW, but managed to sneak out of one of the camps that held him, only to later have him and his whole family thrown into terrible death camps. Uncertain of what tragedies they would endure or when they may be the next to be sent to Auschwitz, Vladek was always certain that they would make it out alive, no matter what obstacles were thrown in their way. This is a survivor's tale, as well as a tale of how a son tries to patch up a damaged relationship with his father. The account we are given is absolutely horrifying, but at the same time triumphant.

I literally could not put this book down once I started it. It's a very fast and easy read. This is a great advantage because this makes it easier for those who do not read a lot to be able to read it without any problems. It's an important tale that needs to be told and it is one that needs to be read by as many people as possible. The Holocaust is something we should never forget and it's something that needs to be taught to everyone. This book is a great way to get people aware of the situation who may not know a lot about that terrible time.

The comic book structure and style really makes the story work. While this is something I could've read in plain text or in a regular novel, the drawings help you experience just exactly what is taking place. It makes it easier for you to want to continue reading without forcing you to strain yourself. The style and structure also insures that more people will give it a chance and read it.

"Maus I" is an important tale of survival, hope, hardships and family. It's a tale worth being told, that much I can assure you. If you have never read this before, I strongly recommend that you pick it up sometime and give it a chance. It is an easy and fast read that will give you an experience like none you have ever encountered. It may be a sad and terrible tale to hear, but to know that somebody can survive such a horrendous scenario like the Holocaust and come out of it alive just goes to show you how strong a person can be, both inside and out. It is an important tale that deserves to be heard by as many people as possible.

In the two volumes of "Maus," Art Spiegelman has captured the essence of the Holocaust. He focuses his tale on his own family's tragic history, using the strangely-appropriate medium of comic book drawing. Maus I tells the Spiegelman family story from prewar prosperity through the ghetto experience and an attempt to escape the Nazis.

Art is a tortured son of a tortured family. Mother and father lived through the Holocaust on their wits and good luck. Now that the war is over, they continue to live haunted lives, never free of the fear and mass murder that enveloped their youth. Art, their American artist child, just barely tolerates his father's obsessiveness and extreme miserliness. The father, while starving in Auschwitz, saved half of his morning rations for trading for shoes or clothes. Now that he is old, he continues to play every nook and cranny of the system in order to save a wooden match or to cadge a free bingo game. The sense of the man's weirdness (and his son's resulting lack of patience) is palpably sad and funny at the same time.

Spiegelman's art is deceptively innocuous, using a black and white comic book style. His tale alternates between the present story of his elderly, pill-counting father in the present and the past story of ghettos, cruelty and death camps. Spiegelman draws his humans with animals heads -- an ingenious way to portray ethnic and cultural differences that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. Jews are rendered as mouse-headed humans, Poles with pig heads and Nazis topped with heads of predacious cats.

Spiegelman's tale is part history, part expiation of guilt for resenting a brother killed during the war and part rage at a family member's suicide. The war never ended for those who endured it, and ripples through time to damage the next generations. That's pretty heavy for a comic book, but Art Spiegelman pulls it off brilliantly.

What got Art Spiegelman's "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" noticed was the simple and rather obvious conceit of telling a story about the Holocaust in which the Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis as cats. But the reason Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize is because ultimately the story being told is more important than the metaphor employed by the cartoonist. Vladek Spiegelman was a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Holocaust and "Maus" is about the attempt of his son, a cartoonist, to come to terms with not only his father in Rego Park, New York, but the terrible things that happened to his father in Poland in this first half of the tale, "My Father Bleeds History." This proves not to be rhetorical hyperbole, because Vladek's past becomes almost omnipresent as he tells his story to his son. Almost as important, the suicide of Artie's mother comes into play as well, for ultimately in this story, as in life, everything is related.

Tragically, as Vladek reveals more of the events that irrevocably altered not only his own life but that of his son, Artie is repelled rather than drawn closer to his father and the gulf between then becomes clearer. Knowledge, which should bring insight and understanding, fails and creates only bitterness. However, you must remember this is but the first half of the story, which concludes in "And Here My Troubles Began." What makes "Maus" remarkable is not that it is a "comic book," what the "New York Times" called "an epic story told in tiny pictures," but that it is a very intimate story about someone who survived the Holocaust. The body might survive the concentration camp, but "Maus" is about what happens to the mind, the heart and the soul.

I have been reading the concerns of those who are bothered by the portrayal of each ethnic group as a different animal, particular the decision to represent the Poles as pigs. The main oppositional pair here of the Jews and Nazis as mice and cats certainly can be seen as arguing that the Holocaust is another example of "cat and mouse" that has been played out between the strong and the weak throughout human history. No matter when the Holocaust stands on your own personal list of historical atrocities, clearly it is not as much of an aberration as we would like to think. With regards to the Poles being pigs in Spiegelman's schema, my understanding is that "swine" was an epithet used by Germans to all races, since all non-Aryans were, by definition, sub-human. But Spiegelman also shows the French as frogs and a gypsy is a moth (in "Maus II"), which seems to indicate he is taking advantage of existing conventions. Obviously the selection of some animals has inherent symbolism: the dogs/Americans are the ones who beat the cats/Nazis. Then again, in practical terms, what other animal, easily recognizable, could the Poles be in this iconography? Still, an interesting question to debate with valid points on both sides of the issue.

Art is struggling to come to terms with his mother's suicide, and so he sets out to extract from his father (Vladek), the account of his life with his first wife Anja (Arts mother). Vladek and Anja were survivors of the Holocaust, and through the oral retelling of their story, Art is able to piece together the facts that led to this tragic event in his life. The comic book form offers a unique literary approach and appeals to a large age group from middle school to adults.

The author is the narrator as he interviews his father, Vladek, day after day, and uses juxtapose as he tells the story of past events alongside current events, involving relationships with Vladek and his second wife, Mala. Art and Mala are disturbed by Vladeks behavior, which epitomizes the racist caricature of the "miserly old Jew." Maus: A Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History is a fascinating account of historical events that happened in the lives of one family and the people they came in contact with, before, during, and after the Holocaust, and culminates with a sequel, Maus II: A Survivor's Tale, And Here My Troubles Began. The book has won several literary awards including the 1986 National Book Critics Circle prize in biography, and a Pulitzer Prize for Special Awards and Citations. Although Maus has been classified as fiction because of the lack of footnotes and bibliographic references, there is no doubt that Art Speigelman has an ingenius approach to the recording of historical, and factual events of the past.