Maus Literary Heritage

It is a very powerful tool even to this day in combating the sentiments that led to the Holocaust. Maus also serves as an active warning to all of its readers about how groups of people are treated as scapegoats. This scapegoating can lead to the horrific atrocities the Nazis committed. Maus portrays both of these things happening and effectively discourages them through its imagery and

In the film that we watched in class, many of the characters portray or represent something in real life. Starting off with the mice in the beginning of the movie or Fible's family. They represent a major group of people who immigrated to this country during the time of immigration, the Jews. The reason that they immigrate to America is because they are fleeing the cats, and supposedly there are "no cats in America." The reason that they are fleeing from the cats is because the cats represent oppression and the Russians. The pigeons represent the French and they are building the Statue of Liberty, in the beginning of the movie. Fible's mouse friend, Tony, is Italian, and the other mouse friend, she is Irish.

During World War 2 the Führer advocated the killings of Jews. As a result, they were excluded from society particularly in Molching and Munich where the story is set. This is clarified in the novel through the character of Max, who must hide in the Hubermann’s house to avoid being sent to Dachau as he is Jewish. Max sleeps in Liesel’s bedroom at night before returning to the basement in the morning. Using the technique of metaphor in the line “The Jewish rat, back to his hole.” Zusak further validates this notion. The metaphor suggests that the Nazis viewed Jews as filthy disease-carrying rats who should be cleared from Germany. This is further evident as Zusak writes “He lived in the best part of Molching, high up in a villa which had been fumigated when the Jews were driven out.” Additionally, the metaphor shows the intensity of anti-Semitism at the time as Max being Jewish had to hide in a dirty basement to avoid death even though his father gave his life for Germany in WW1. This is an obvious example of the great extent to which racism is portrayed throughout the

Cats are the one chasing after mice and tries to kill it, Nazis kill a lot of Jews. One of the example in the story, when people are lining up on the way to ghetto while Jewish children are crying, the Nazis will hold the child’s ankles and hit their head against the wall so the child will be silence, which means they are die. Nazis doesn’t treat Jews as human, but as pests, they want to get rid of them as soon as they could. Nazis are so mean that they chase the Jews to death, they are so strong, powerful, and cruel that they only care about getting Jews

The most important distinction between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom is man's ability to understand, reason, and think. The power hungry Nazis are symbolized as cats because of a cat’s constant starvation and tend to be stronger compared to mice and pigs. The Jews are symbolized as mice to show how weak they were and how they were treated during World War II. Spiegelman puts a focus on the mice and the struggle that Valdek went through.

The animals in the story were used as imagery for the situation. Each race is depicted as a certain animal, which displays their role in the story: the Nazis are represented as cats, the Jewish people are mice, and the Polish are pigs. “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…” (preface). Artie shares the imagery before the story to help the reader understand. “You're a Pole like me..” (64); when Vladek says this, he is wearing a pig mask, talking to a pig, so Poles can be identified as pigs. Each race at this time had identifiable characteristics that relate to animal characteristics. The Jewish people were hunted by the Germans like cats hunt mice (when there are cats, there are no mice). The Polish played a role that could easily be missed. Artie depicts them as pigs to show they were selfish. The Polish wanted to avoid fighting the Germans because they valued their own

The most compelling page in Maus is the one when Anja and Vladek are going towards Sosnowiec although they do not have the goal destination. They are heading somewhere and hoping for the best. This story is narrated with the help of design and illustration and it is very interesting because it is based on the life story of the creator. Spiegelman designed the novel by keeping the illustrations simple and it is done in black and white instead of coloring. The story follows the lives of Jews who are being exterminated by Hitler and the Nazis and the design is simple because it emphasizes the story that is supposed to elicit strong emotions which makes the balance between the illustration and the content. This page is full of emotions especially

Maus has an interesting way in approaching a historical account such as the relationship with his father and the Holocaust. One of the most interesting aspects of Maus is the way in which Spiegelman uses animals to distinguish the various races within the comic

This one review made me question myself about my own opinion because i couldn't have disagreed more with the reviewer. He said “it was difficult to relate to the book and the holocaust because the author made the characters as pigs, cats, mice.”(mouse#1). So basically the reviewer is saying that he couldn’t see the connections that were trying to be made with the use of the animals as the characters throughout the text. I would have to say that i disagree with the point that the reviewer is trying to say, because the author used these animals as characters to show symbolism between the characters and humans. The cover of the book is a great expamle from the book to show how these characters symbolize humans.(spieglemen Cover.) The picture shows a nazi symbol with a cat (germans) in the middle and two mice scared down below, it symbolizes that during the holocaust the jews (mice) were scared and defenseless throughout the book and the germans (cats) were the bigger and more leatheal to bully the

I learned that there is multiple layers of meaning in Spiegelman’s Maus, and how people nowadays do not take the time to find the mean to comics. Another thing is that Maus covers multiple different topics like: gender roles, the relationship between Art and artie, and the use of Animals instead of people. Some of the obstacles were analyzing the articles and the text itself. I had to look over the text over and over again to find Examples that would work for my paper. When I listen to the Articles and marked parts of the paper that applied to the topic I was writing about. The part that I am most pleased about is the analyzing the different means of the size of the frame. Something I would do different is spreading out my work more so I do

“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.

Maus enters the realm of animals which is adamantly stressed in the graphic novel; therefore, it creates a sense of symbolism and figurative aspects from the compelling outlook of the Holocaust. During the time when Vladek was in a military tent to provide support for the Nazis, he had to go urinate which ultimately almost cost him his life. “That night I went out for the tent…I had to urinate and a guard began shooting to me” (Spiegelman 62). The author, Artie, depicts this panel in his novel seriously when Vladek was the victim of getting shot. The Jewish are displayed as mice and specifically the shadows and dark

    I believe The book uses animals instead of human characters for a personification feel. They use these types of animals to make up the different cultures during the Holocaust. The Poles as pigs the Jews are the mice, and the cats are Nazi Germans. I feel that Spiegelman uses animals instead of humans  because it gives us a better understanding of what type of animals make up the different types of activity that are being talked about.

In “The Shawl”, Cynthia Ozick uses vivid details throughout the story to engage the reader. The story portrays the hard times Jews had during the Holocaust in a concentration camp consisting of three main characters: Rosa, Stella, and Magda who are trying to survive the horror of Nazism through a magical shawl. Rosa is the mother of Magda, a fifteen month baby and the aunt of Stella, a fourteen year old girl. The shawl is the only thing keeping them alive throughout the story and at the end it leads them to their death. The author’s use of symbolism is very significant to the story. Cynthia Ozick use of symbolism helps the reader visualize the setting by using symbols to convey different meanings and understand how these symbols characterize the experience of the holocaust survivors.

The Jewish people’s lives are determined by society. According to the text, “It was still dark outside, we didn’t know where to hide ourselves. Richieu’s governess always offered she would help us. ‘My God! It’s the Spiegelmans!’ ’You’ll bring trouble go away’! QUICKLY’” (Spiegelman 1052). This example explains one of the element of Naturalism present in “Maus,” which is that characters’ lives are determined by outside forces. The Spiegelmans’ were forced to move from place to place and hide because of what society thought about them. The Jewish people were viewed as “vermins” and harmful to the nations health. With society constructing hateful stereotypes about the Jews, it generated a negative reaction. That reaction led to neighbors, that the Jewish people had known for a long time,