Art Spiegelman's Maus Essay

Author of Pulitzer Prize winning novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father, Vladek Spiegelman’s, experiences in the Holocaust and includes their troubled relationship within the writing of his comic book styled novel. These experiences include life, love, and hardships. Maus tells more than just Vladek’s story, the novel shares ideals from the Holocaust and World War II such as; Anti-Semitism, control of power, social issues, and how we were able to overcome this issues. Maus starts with Art going to his father’s home to ask about his experiences during the Holocaust. A reader will learn about Vladek’s life of young love and meeting his wife Anja. A reader learns of their struggles in concentration camps, …show more content…
The usage of the animals help the reader put in perspective the position countries and people were in during the Holocaust. Jewish people were characterized as mice to be shown as weak and small. Germans were drawn as cats to show that they were after the mice. Pigs represented Polish people because they were still a less desired group and also very aggressive. Finally, American’s were illustrated as dogs to show protection. I think Spiegelman does this to show characteristics of how the countries acted towards the Jewish people during World War II. Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale tells more than just the story of Vladek Spiegelman’s experiences surviving the Holocaust. This graphic novel shares themes of Anti-Semitism, power, and social issues. Throughout the course of history since this tragedy of the Holocaust has happened. Through even today people are still judgmental over little things, there are still power seeking people, and social issues have changed to a multitude of different things. Though together as a world we are able to put aside differences, control the power seeking, and have tried to alleviate critical social

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