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Summary: Escaping the Holocaust
Review: This book is one of the greatest holocaust stories i've read because of its great details of being a survivor and escaping the holocaust and what the survivor feels after a terrifying expierence. It is all based on the author's father and the drawing show in detail what some of the parts in Aucshwitz would be like. Combining the terror of the story into an intelligent comic is a great way to show the feelings and moods present ed by the holocaust. I recommend everyone and anyone to read this story because it is an excellent survivor story...
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Summary: The Truth
Review: The horrific events of Vladek Speigelmans' life have been taken from his memory and turned into animal cartoons to soften the blow of the truth about Hitler's Europe at the beginning of World War II. Spiegelman was a person of the Jewish community in Sosnowiec, Poland where hatred of the Jewish culture ran very deep. Being Jewish in the Second World War was extremely dangerous, and in most cases it resulted in savage beatings, gruesome murders and unaccountable amounts of damage done to Jewish shops, business offices and Jewish homes. Moving back and forth from Poland to Rego Park, New York, Maus tells two powerful stories: The first story is about Spiegelman's fathers' account of how he and his wife Anja, survived the persecution of the Jewish people in Europe. The Spiegelmans have countless events that brush with death, from the mid 1930's to winter of 1944. Being Jewish in Europe during those times meant a life lived two possible ways. One life was a life of slave labor for the Gestapo (The German Secret Police) and the SS (Shultz Staffel) who will show no mercy to Jews, Communists, Gypsies or Homosexuals. The Nazis would allow one to live a little longer than others if one proved useful. The other life was a life of hide and seek. Jewish couples would run from the Nazis for months at a time, where they where turned in by Polish people and where even betrayed by other Jewish couples so they could stay alive. Either way both lives lead the Spiegelman's into danger and painful nights of remorse and regret. I am a High School Student and I read this book for an outside reading project and I picked this book because I am really interested in the World War II era and I have studied it for several years. Maus is an excellent book because it takes truth and turns it into a cartoon that is so well presented that children and adults can enjoy the book on different levels and even on the same level. Art Spiegelman went to his father, who now resides in Rego Park, New York. His father's stories are from first hand experience of what life was like in World War II. Overall Maus is an excellent book that everyone who would like to know more about what really happened to Jews in Europe. Even though the truth is harsh and disturbing it is the truth that needs to be acknowledged by everyone so that this terrible injustice is never repeated again.
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Summary: inherently flawed
Review: Is it not subtly nationalist, or perhaps even racist, to depict various ethnic groups as different types of animals? At the very least, it promotes the same sorts of divisions that caused World War II to begin with. What those who do not understand drawing fail to realize is that Speigleman's obvious limitations as an illustrator are the surely the source of his drawing people as animals; while he is a brilliant graphic designer, he can't draw a lick and therefore replaces humans (and their range of facial expressions that are beyond his capabilities) with masklike anthropomorphs. Worse than this are his limitations as a writer; he is so pitifully self-absorbed that at one point, he has a character refer to himself, Art (the NYC artist), as the real survivor of the Holocoaust, not his father(the man who was in the death camp). This is merely the most obscene example of the man's self-pity; the book's great flaw is that it is saturated with it.This is a shame for all of us, since Maus is still an important document despite all this and would have been a great book if Art had simply understood his own limitations and found someone else to help him write it, and preferably skipped the (in this case) silly cartoon format altogether.
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Summary: You Will Know Vladek As Well As Your Own Father
Review: Usually when I buy comic books (aka graphic novels) it is even more for the art work than for the story. However, the deceptively simple art work in "Maus" is perfect for the compelling, gripping story of author Spiegleman's father, Vladek, a Jew caught in Nazi Europe during World War II. The story concerns Vladek's survival of the Holocaust, even though being in a concentration camp, his love story with his wife, Anna, and his eventual life in America afterwards. More complex art work would have taken away from the story. This story has such epic, universal appeal that you want nothing to distract you from it. You hate to say that anyone has depicted stereotypes absolutely true to life but in World war II Europe, Spiegelman's depiction of the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Poles as pigs, the French as frogs, and the Americans as dogs, can only be called dead-on accurate. The author was very lucky in one respect though. If his father Vladek was even a tenth as great in real life as the Vladek shown here, I would expect the son of such a person to be able to create this book.
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Summary: Not your average comic book
Review: Art Spiegelman's Maus is unlike any literature on the Holocaust and World War II that I have ever encountered. It is in the form of a comic book, but it is not along the humorous lines like most other comic books. The powerful imagery that is included in the pictures helps to advance the story and to effectively push the readers imagination into a whole new level of thinking about the Holocaust. Art Spiegelman does an incredible job portraying his father and mother's struggles to survive being Jews in Nazi Germany. His mixing of situations from the present and the past combine to make a captivating combination that grabs hold of the reader's imagination and refuses to let go. This is one of those books that you don't want to put down, and when you do finally close the back cover on the story, it leaves you yearning for more, wondering what ever happened to Art, Vladek, and Mala, along with other characters that you are introduced to throughout the novel. I was highly impressed with Maus not only because it is a book about a subject that has always peaked my interest, but because it deals with the subject in a way that is unique and individual to Art Spiegelman and his father's story, which makes it stand out even more in the world of literature. I would highly recommend Maus for an intense and highly entertaining evening of reading.
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Summary: So surprisingly good you will not be able to put it down!!!
Review: When beginning to read Spiegleman's Maus I looked at the cover and discovered that it was in comic format. I had not ever read a book about the Holocaust in this way, so in the beginning I thought this man was not taking the Holocaust serious enough. As I read the book I discovered something completely different. He portrays the Holocaust through characters that you can understand and He hit an emotion that I never would of thought the book would of hit. This book portrays this horrible tragedy in a way for people to understand. He portrays this in a way that many people can relate to. He uses a father son scenario that easily grabs your attention. He is questioning his own father about this horrible thing and the emotions seem to just flow throughout the entire book. This truly portrays how something so tragic can affect his or her whole life. In this book, the father is still showing the baggage that he had got from this terrifying part of his life. As I read the book, I could not put it down. This was a wonderful way to relate such an incident in a way that people can truly understand what had happened. If anyone is thinking twice about this book like I did, I truly think that you should just pick it up and read the first couple pages. You will find yourself not wanting to put it down. It is a great book to truly learn what happened during this time in history.
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Summary: Good book about WWII
Review: Maus I is a book that will blow you away. At first you might think that it is not for you. A comic book? Get real. Who would read a comic book, especially to learn history? But I can guarantee that you will love this book. The story is being "written" by the son of the Holocaust survivor. He puts together all of the stories that his father has told him. And he does so in a masterful way that captivates the reader. Before you know it, you can't put the book down as you follow the life of the main character through hardships during the war. But the ideas behind the drawings are the brilliant part. Each race (Jew, German, English) has his own animal to represent him. Some would say that this fairy tale approach lessens the impact of the story. But I think that it only adds to it by helping you see the stereotypes that were played on people at the time. And maybe it does take some away. But is that all bad? If it did not, would everyone be able to read it without being offended? The whole idea of the comic turns people off to the book. But don't let it. This is a way to bring the war to your eyes. You can hear stories and read books but the pictures bring it all to you. As they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words." This is so true in the story of the Holocaust. Words cannot describe what went on and a picture can. This is a great book to bring the impact of the war home.
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Summary: Yeah! Not just a great comic book--a great book, period!
Review: The two Maus books take the comic-book form to what just might be its ultimate height. Highly recommended.
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Summary: More than a Comic Book...
Review: ....Art Spiegelman's masterpiece. It is deserving of its Pulitzer. And it should be required reading in if not college lit studies, high school lit. Horrific hangings, deaths and suicides in a retelling of the Holocaust. A real MUST READ..
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Summary: Maus: What I think
Review: I thought that Maus: A Survivor's Tale and Maus: A Surviver's Tale and Here My Troubles Began were both excellent books written about the Shoah. I think that Art Spiegelman does a wonderful job of capturing the true feeling of those who were painfully subjected to the Shoah. Please read these two books to have a deeper understanding of the Shoah
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