Symbolism In Art Spielgman's Maus

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.

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

Second, the choice of a comic format serves as a vital aspect in the reader’s understanding of the visual society and making awareness through generations as more attuned to the image than to the word. In Vladek's world, being and living as a human meant living in fear. Vladek escapes the fear of death for a time through the intercession of an S.S. officer who wanted to learn English from him and in return provided him with some protection (78). This

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

Jew’s that lived in Germany or Poland in the late 1930’s and 1940’s lived under constant fear for being found. A Jew’s life during this time consisted of hiding from the ruthless Nazi campaign. These grim times pressured many Jews to change their appearance and lifestyle in order to blend in with the non-Jewish crowd. This act of concealment was displayed particularly effectively in the Art Spiegleman’s Maus: A Survivors Tale. In this graphic novel Spiegleman portrayed his father’s survival stories of the holocaust with mice as Jews, cats as Germans, pigs as Poles, and more animals for different racial backgrounds. As depicted on page 136, the mice would sometimes wear pig mask in order to disguise themselves as Poles, and in this case they

Pages 158 and 159 from Mouse Trap, the sixth chapter of the first Maus book provide a detailed insight as to how Art Spiegelman uses layout, figures and text to tell a story of survival with “absolute sincerity in an unexpected form”. These two pages involve both the framing story of Vladek telling Art his story, and Vladek’s story itself. In these pages, Vladek specifically describes the moment of his capture and his first thoughts upon arriving at Auschwitz. These pages provide detail as to how Vladek is a survivor of the Holocaust, and more specifically, Auschwitz (against the odds), and the pages show Art’s survival of Vladek’s stern personality. Spiegelman uses the graphic novel form (which is the unexpected form) to accurately and honestly

“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.

Upon Vladek answering that, “For the Germans this guy was Jewish,” Spiegelman returns to draw the prisoner as a mouse. These panels are contradictory to the basis of the metaphor having a single universalized meaning. First, if the metaphor was strict to aligning a specific animal species to races and nationalities, it seems odd for Spiegelman to simply draw the man as a mouse, when it is completely possible, as Vladek says, for the man to be German (210). Second, the metaphor is clearly not singularly a comparison between hunter and prey, as there are many instances, including one in the same panel as when the prisoner claims to be German, where there is an imprisoned Pole. From this

The graphic novel Maus I: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: And Here my Troubles Began, by Art Spiegelman was a story of the life depicting Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, during his plight through the holocaust. His son Art visits his father to get information to write his illustrative graphic novel showcasing the dynamic between different ethnicities during World War II. We are given a visual reenactment of Vladek’s life from meeting his first wife, to losing a son, and to surviving the beast that is the holocaust. Spiegelman uses allegories throughout Maus for human ethnicities by replacing facial features with that of an animal. The primary focuses upon the differentiation in ethnic stereotypes in this graphic novel were: Germans as the big bad tough cats that toy with the mice, Jews as quiet vermin that must be squashed, and great and loyal dogs from America who are portrayed as the saviors too the mice from the cats. Art Spiegelman uses metaphor to describe race and adds in hierarchy/superiority from the Germans, Americans, and Jews. All the stereotyping Spiegelman does, correlates with his recurring theme of racism, which was the primary catalyst to spur the holocaust.

In response to Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus, I have created a sequential art series, which would be considered a comic (Eisner, 2008). This comic titled, Holocaust, explores the complexities of survival despite extreme persecution a prevalent theme in Maus. I have also used anthropomorphism in these illustrations, which also has a strong presence in Maus. In this comic a forest is persecuted as it is set on fire, all the trees of this forest face danger and a high likelihood of death; comparable to the extreme persecution of Jewish people at the hands of the Third Reich’s final solution (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.), which is investigated by Art in Maus. In order to make a response that is effective in its communication and has aesthetic value I have used various literary, artistic and

The most important two, Germans and Jews, are represented by cats and mice, respectively. Natural sworn enemies, both cat and mice lack reason and conscience. As a result, the Nazi cats find no fault in the systematic killing of Jewish mice. The imagery presented is also based on historical quotes, since Jews were called the "vermin of society" by the Nazis. This is further reason to speculate why Maus ought to be considered as a genre of literary merit, simply because, as previously stated, this novel goes above and beyond the surface appeal of a childish comic book. the graphic fiction deals with analogical metaphors and similes, as well as imagery that keeps the reader on his toes, seemingly, at all

The award-winning graphic novel Maus is a first-person story of Art Spiegelman’s father, a Holocaust survivor. However, through the narrative, the author conveys not only the dynamic character of his father, Vladek, but also subtly discloses his own complexity through his commentary on his father’s experiences. In his interesting elucidation, he reveals that he may be just as fascinating of a character, if not more so, than the dynamic persona of his father. In Maus, close reading proves that Art characterizes himself through his portrayal of his relationship with his father, and his feelings for his mother. One of the largest factors that defines Art’s character is his complex relationship with his father.

The book Maus, a graphic novel by Vladek Spiegelman’s son, Art Spiegelman is written in the form of a graphic novel. It elaborates on Vladek’s adolescent experiences as a young jew during the Holocaust. On a surface level, the photographs in Maus contributed to my understanding of the story by giving Vladek's words a visual. The images tell the story in a direct way by expressing the emotions of his father as the comic strips transition from the past to present. The format of this story certainly takes some risks. To some audiences, this format could come off as a joke, as though Spiegelman wasn’t taking his father’s story seriously. With a graphic novel usually used to depict fictionally, sci-fi like stories, the audience might think that Art is treating his father’s experiences as if they were part of a fictional

Speigelman portrays the Jews as mice, Nazi’s as cats, and Polish as pigs along with some side groups such as the American dogs and French frogs. Just like Kafka, Speiglman portrays real people as animals to dehumanize them for the audience’s comprehension and understanding. The Jews are portrayed as vermin, like Gregor in The Metamorphosis, who the Nazi’s believe need to be exterminated. Which is why the Nazi’s are portrayed as cats. Stanislav Kolář makes the same conclusion in their essay Animal Imagery in Kosinski’s The Painted Bird and Spiegelman’s Maus.

In Art Spiegelman’s biographical graphic novel Maus 1: My Father Bleeds History, ethnic groups are portrayed as animals to allow the audience to understand the history behind the discrimination of Jewish people during World War Two, and the reasons behind the holocaust; Spiegelman utilizes this comparison to provide a better understand the mindset of the Germans, Jews, and Poles as the genocide began to unfold. Overall, Maus 1 focuses on the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, who lived through the horror that was the holocaust, and his experiences as he tried to survive in Nazi occupied Poland. Therefore, the reason why Spiegelman portrays Germans as cats, Jews as mice, and Poles as pigs is to express how these groups viewed each other and to provide an understanding into the hostility behind anti-Semitism. As well, by using animals as an analogy, Spiegelman ensures that by creating an inhuman feel, the events could be looked at through a critical lens. Due to the relevance behind Maus, many articles were written, analysing the work. The article “Rhetoric Functions of the Infestation Metaphor in Hitler’s Rhetoric” by Steven Perry, provides insight into the origins of the depiction of Jews as rats or mice, and how it led to anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Likewise, Sheng-Mei Ma’s article “Mourning with the (as a) Jew: Metaphor, Ethnicity, and the Holocaust in Art Spiegelman’s Maus,” and “Well Intended Liberals Slop: Allegories of Race in Spiegelman’s Maus” by Andrew Loman