Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelmal

Have you ever changed or have the people around you changed out of survival? People who survived the holocaust changed because of what they went through so they could survive. Just like Elie he survived Auschwitz and he will never be the same person he was before the concentration camps. In “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie developed into a new person through his experiences at Auschwitz Concentration Camp and survived.

Although Valdek thought he wouldn’t survive the Holocaust, he used both skill and luck to get him free and survive the Holocaust. Most people didn’t have as much luck as Valdek and were killed. Vladek used his skill against the Natzi’s and managed to survive. This shows that people struggled with the Holocaust, but some people would use their skills and survive to be able to tell their stories, such as Art Spiegelman in the book “Maus”, Vladek is a survivor from the Holocaust. Vladek needed both skill and luck to help him out in the Holocaust for good and bad.

After the Holocaust on May 8th, 1945, a book called Maus was released which is revolved around survival. The author, Art Spiegelman intended the story was to reflect upon his past and express his feelings world how he had to deal life was at the time.The book is a story of Art’s father named Vladek, he tells his point-of-view to the world to show multiple struggles he had to withstand. The theme of Art Spiegelman’s book Maus is survival; Art Spiegelman shows the theme of survival by using tone, mood, and point-of-view throughout the graphic novel. Vladek is the main character of Maus and shares his point of view. Vladek tells a true story about how he survived the Holocaust and the things he had to accomplish to make it through alive. This book is based on a true story of what had happened during the Holocaust.

There are many ways the Holocaust affected Vladek’s personality traits and behavior. A huge catastrophic event like the Holocaust can cause one to have emotional damage that could cause them to act a certain way after being mistreated for so long. Trauma is a result of going through a terrible experience at a certain point in your life. It is almost inevitable that there will be some type of mental issue after experiencing such a horrible event. There is no doubt that some of Vladek’s personality traits were gained from experiencing the horrible things that took place during the Holocaust and also being treated very unfairly. There is evidence that show that it can be very difficult in trying to keep a clear mind and trying to stay calm at times. Vladek seems to have some very negative personality traits.

Even though the Holocaust was a terrible thing that happened. Vladek still had the will to survive or live. Even though he didn’t want to kill a german in the “Prisoner of War’ he had to in order to survive. In the terrible situation, Vladek still had a will to live. Although Vladek was so hungry and was trying to survive he chewed on wood to keep his mind off it. Finally just when vladek thinks he gets to safety he gets caught by the Nazis. Even in an impossible situation vladek still had a very strong will to

Developing empathy takes a lot, the point “until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” (American Proverb) is compassion to the opinions of others. Looking through the eyes of another is emotional intelligence, tested in The Complete Maus 1 & 2 by Art Spiegelman, displaying a story of himself, through the mind of Art’s father. The book itself is the result of Art reaching out to Vladek, in hopes of resurrecting his father’s experiences to get a better understanding of who he is. The evasiveness of Vladek leads this book attempting to empathize, resulting in the reader's empathy. Human relationships shown in these types of novels leads to empathy and understanding of who people are.

Throughout the story elie changes camps. The paragraphs talk about how elie changed in camps many different ways and how he had to march in the death marches many people died but he was lucky to not die. Elie was scared after the holocaust he could never forget those days that he was there. . Elie changed camps which changed him in many ways such as physically, emotionally and spiritually.

In the book Maus by Art Spiegelman we see a father struggle with his relationships due to his past. The book Maus is based off the stories of Holocaust from Arts Dad, Vladek’s view. The Holocaust was an event that shapes Vladek’s future and causes light to be shed on his weakness, control. We can see in his that his relationships that he desires to have control. We see this with his first and second wife in different ways and we see it with his two sons. Vladek in his earlier life has control but when he loses it in the camps he becomes more aggressive and desperate to keep that control it affects his family and relationships.

Whether Mark likes it or not, The Holocaust becomes central to how he comes to term with how his own personal identity, and how it is to be shaped. It later becomes the enforcer of the

Both of us wanted to know more about the Holocaust. Artie in one hand, has his father, who was a holocaust survivor to addressed his personal emotion. Through the pages, his father, Vladek described many aspects of his miserable life during his younghood. I definitely found intriguing how Vladek managed to find clever opportunities in order to help him and his family together. There were also glimpses of Vladek persevered and exploring dangerous, but new obstacles. Some of his perseverance included his foiled escapes, clever hiding spots, and his self consciousness pushing Vladek till the end. However, I was extremely amuse how Vladek and the others had so much amount of gold that was also one of the key aspects of trading and surviving.

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor” (Thomas Jefferson). In the graphic novels Maus I: A Survivors Tale & Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman, he uses animal imagery to portray the predator-prey relationship that the Nazi regime shared with the Jewish population. Based on the alienation of the Jewish “race” albeit “not human” and the superiority that the rest of the populations begin to feel, these depictions of races, countries, and ethnicities as animals is both appropriate and effective to illustrate the various groups during the Holocaust. This resembles the Nazi belief that certain populations have a conventional character and will retain their inborn predator or prey status by characterizing the Jewish as Mice and the Nazis as Cats.

The holocaust was a terrible war that killed many Jewish people. Valdek was extremely lucky and he was one of the very few Jews who lived and made it through the war. Although he is still a live he will never be able to forget the terrible things the Nazis did to the Jews. The things he learnt in the concentration camps will always affect his life and after reading Maus the reader can see many different ways that the holocaust effected Valdek’s personality. It made Valdek to become extremely frugal, infuriatingly manipulative, and lastly he isn’t able to relax anymore. We see these three traits a lot throughout the book.

Art’s choice to include a 2-page prologue before the beginning of the book proper helps to very clearly illustrate the relationship that Art and Vladek have had up until the beginning of the book. Art is abandoned by his friends, and his father attempts to comfort him, however this appears to Art, and therefore the reader, as more of a comparison between Vladek’s experiences during the holocaust and Art’s childhood suffering, especially with the mention of “no food for a week”, which Art has utilised to create a sense of emotional distance, of an incompatibility between the two.

The role of epistemological uncertainty within the world of Maus comes through various sources, the first of which is Vladek himself. Throughout the narrative, as presented by Art Spiegelman, the inconsistencies in Vladek's memories, as well as the contradictions that exist between Art and Vladek's interpretation of events, create a reputation for Vladek as an unreliable narrator. Examples of these moments occur in both volumes of Maus, such as when he cannot remember how much time he spent in Auschwitz (see Fig. 1). As Vladek himself notes, keeping track of time during Auschwitz was a difficult task, coupled with a stressful environment and subsequent trauma that also could have impacted his ability to remember events correctly. Furthermore,

Vladek shows a capacity to care for his son though in his own different way as he attempts to advice Art and guide him to become more like him. This is in a way an attempt to get his son to avoid falling into what Vladek considers to be bad habits. He tries to make his son more concerned about money in an effort to get him to acquire similar traits to himself. This could be due to the great importance that he attaches to money after his experiences during the holocaust when he discovered that money could save his life. Vladek is frustrated that his son is not more like him and tries to change his point of view on many issues. Unfortunately, he goes about this in his particularly unappealing and callous manner that would not serve to convince