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Analysis Of The Book ' Maus '

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Spiegelman is an American born cartoonist and editor born in 1948. He has been extremely successful throughout his career, working for numerous comic lines. There’s no doubt that Maus certainly was his greatest work. You could consider Spiegalman’s experience to be his best credential. Maus is a graphic novel that depicts basically a cat and mouse representation of the Holocaust. A graphic novel as defined by Webster’s dictionary is a “fictional story that is presented in comic strip format and published as a book.”(1) Maus tells the story of Spiegelmans father, and his experience as a Jew during the Holocaust. A subtopic within the novel includes Spiegelman interviewing his father, Vladek, and getting him to tell his story. All of the characters and countries are represented by animals that depict the characters role within the story. Guilt and race are two of the major themes present throughout the novel. There are several types of guilt that have effected the family through events that happened during the Holocaust. The relationship between Vladek and his son expresses this very clearly. Art has guilt over not being a good son and unable to connect with his father, while also feeling guilty over his mother’s death. (2)Vladek feels a certain guilt about surviving the Holocaust while so many of his family members died. This guilt seems to spill over to Art making him feel guilty for surviving and not knowing what his father went through. Another huge theme is race, which

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