Maus Essay
Andrew Hart
Intro to Lit
Prof. Rajaram
Oct. 22 2013
Vladek's Confusion
To be in the Holocaust as a jewish citizen is a frightening stretch. Overcoming through all the odds that the concentration camps, Gestapo, and the war provided is a rewarding achievement for a lucky Jewish subject. Not for Vladek Spiegelman. In Artie Spiegelman's Graphic Novel Maus, he uses pictures to describe his father's journey through the Holocaust. Vladek loses almost everything he loves his business, home, and most of his family. This tests his character throughout the story and ultimately results him being bitter towards life after. However the Holocaust forces Vladek to rely on inanimate objects to get him through this time. He confuses people and...show more content...
He almost loses his prize wife, but he proves that he actually cares about her. After the consoling the panel below show a huge family dinner celebrating triumph of Vladek's hard work getting his trophy wife. Vladek loves Anja and proved so by dealing with an ex girlfriends crazy antics. However his love for Anja is a mild distraction that he has a special relationship with currency and his love life is a form of it. World War 11 makes Vladek's unique bond with currency a valuable resource for him as a tool for survival. With the war hitting the jewish community the hardest, because of Vladek and Anja's family wealth they are able to enjoy the luxurious life–style longer. Vladek even says "When first I came home it looked exactly so as before I went away. (Spiegelman 76)" The panel prievews outside window looking in on the family gathering together for dinner. In a huge estate as if the war did not affect them. Even though all is calm then the family knows this will not be safe for them forever. With their money running low they rely on Vladek's love for currency to help them keep the family going. It is the shift of currencies that Vladek is able to keep things running smoothly for he and his family. After discussing with his family that the money is running low he goes back to his business roots and hits the streets in pursuit to make
Maus Essay On Human Nature
As time goes by one would think the world is evolving in a positive manner. With all the new technology and new resources, we would assume to be better people than the generation before us. Many would argue that we are better because we are always well informed by the tabloids and social media of what is happening in the world. Unfortunately, we as humans are evolving in a negative manner. Our human nature since generations before us show how cruel we are. In the book, Maus written by Art Spiegelman shows us how malicious and inhuman people can treat each other. The novel illuminates our understanding of human nature as being evil as well as deceiving individuals, who do not act to better the world as time goes on. In the comic, Jews were sent to concentration camps but before they left a riot downtown was described. Vladek said "...Everyone Yelling, "Jews Out! Jews out!"...even two people killed. The police just watched!"(Spiegelman 37). The quote shows how people are constantly being influenced when a higher authority figure has more power than them. In this instance, Hitler had the authority and did not want the best for Jews. Police are to keep everyone safe and control chaos. As we can see in the quote above, the...show more content...
Anja knew she involved herself in illegal action by translating communist messages. Instead of hiding the messages in her house, which she knew by doing so she would get arrested. She gave them to her seamstress. Anja said "Miss Stefanska–Please! Hide this package for me–don't tell ANYONE about it!" (Spiegelman 28). She deceived her seamstress because she tricked her into hiding the messages and later on the seamstress paid the price of Anja. Anja gave the envelope full of translated words to her to protect herself, but this does not justify what she did. Spiegelman shows us that instead of accepting our faults we try to blame others for
Review of Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
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.
Vladek tries not to show that he is traumatized but you...show more content...
Unfortunately he kept this trait throughout the rest of his life and it is what caused him to lose his second wife, Mala. This quotation shows that Mala was very unhappy living with Valdek. "Your father he treats me as if I were just a maid or his nurse...worse! He only gives me $50.00 a month ..." (Spiegelman 130, Maus I). In this quote you see how Mala can't stand living with Valdek and you also see that Valdek is so frugal that he will not even give Mala, his own wife money.
Infuriatingly manipulative was another characteristic Valdek received as a result of the war. Valdek always needed everything in the right order and he always had to have everything done in the right way/ the way he likes it. This was due to the fact that when Valdek was in the war, everything he was told to do, wither he was told to fix a shoe or put pieces in the right order it had to be done perfectly. Valdek said this when he was sorting out his old nails in his garage. "I'm putting now away my old nails– the long ones separate from the short ones." (Spiegelman 98, Maus I) This quotation shows the reader that Valdek always needed everything in order. He also had the skill of a swift learner. Therefore he leant how to fix many different things. This helped him survive the war, but now he knows how to do many things which causes him to show off. Artie said this to his wife one morning when Valdek asked him to help him fix the roof. "He loved showing off how handy he
Maus by Art Spiegelman Essay
Why are comics not appreciated as much as the dry narratives of novels in the literary world? A comic is composed of symbols to express concepts shared by all people in their own social environment, and provide more tools than conventional art to truly show artistic intention.
Comics exist to expose the ethnic representations that seek to control the development of collective perceptions, memories and emotions and especially fear by investigating the techniques through which this control is maintained. Maus I is a true account of a Holocaust survivor, Vladek Spiegelman, and his experiences as a young Jew during the horrors leading up to the confinement in Auschwitz. Maus II is about Vladek recounting his own history to his son Art...show more content...
Spiegelman uses mice, cats, pigs and other animals to portray the victims and events in the Holocaust. He uses real features of human beings such as hands, feet and emotions to give the animals the full potential to relate to. Maus reveals that the characters portrayed as mice are being seen in sharper relief as human concerns in the world of mice. Spiegelman decided on interesting but possibly offensive use of different animals to use. The first type of animal which appears in this comic is the mouse (MausI:5). The form of mice is used to represent the Jewish people during the Holocaust and as of now too. The Polish police were involved in the arrest of innocent Jewish mice (27). The Polish people were pigs and Germans were represented as cats. The Germans' appearance as cats began to make sense in the way how cats chase, hunt and kill mice (33). This comic book was translated into an easily readable format to educate the history of the Holocaust to the younger generations.
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
Art Spiegelman Maus Essay
Art Spiegelman writes Maus to depict the events of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Spiegelman uses a comic book medium to portray his father's experiences in Auschwitz which is a very unusual way to write about a serious topic. Art Spiegelman reveals the true terror and horror of the Holocaust in Maus through firsthand accounts and experiences to enhance and convey a deeper meaning along with visual representations to intensify the story in a whole new way where the reader can have a more understandable approach to the events of the comic book. Spiegelman's way of depicting the Holocaust through a comic book is completely acceptable because of the comic book's visual experiences, and firsthand account evidence that allows the reader to interpret the book in their creative way to have a more sophisticated interpretation and understanding than with a traditional book. Spiegelman also writes using visuals to show the meaning and terror behind his words that...show more content...
The others had to jump in the graves while still they were alive... prisoners what worked there poured gasoline over the live ones and the dead ones" (Spiegelman Maus II). This adds to the conclusion that it is acceptable to write in a comic book medium because, in this situation, the reader interprets this specific artwork in their own way where they can feel the emotion and terror as if they could hear the prisoner's screams. Also, the reader does not have to visualize the image in their thoughts, instead Spiegelman presents the reader with an image to think about. An additional example would be when Vladek tells Artie how the Germans would take kids, and how sometimes the Germans did awful things to these kids. Spiegelman writes, "most they took were kids–some only 2 or 3 years. Some kids were screaming and screaming. They couldn't stop. So the Germans swinged them by the legs against a wall,
Maus Themes
3. Choose one or two themes from the following list and show how Spiegelman conveyed this in Maus: Loneliness; Discrimination; Abuse of Power; Loss of Innocence, Guilt, Survival.
The graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman conveys many varied and powerful themes to the reader. Spiegelman has conveyed the themes Guilt and Survival by using various methods including narration, dialogue and several comic book techniques to show the expressions and feelings of the central characters. Guilt is an especially strong theme in Maus, appearing many times with Art and Vladek. Survival is another primary theme in Maus. Images are used by Spiegelman to display the ways that Vladek survived during the Holocaust.
Art's guilt is shown to his father...show more content...
Vladek too appears to feel guilty about having survived the Holocaust. As Spiegelman's guilt continues he visits a man named Pavel and the two discuss the guilt and what it means to be a Holocaust "survivor." Pavel suggests that Vladek himself actually felt a sense of guilt for having survived the Holocaust whilst so many of his friends and family did not. And maybe Vladek took this guilt out on Art the "real survivor" as Pavel calls him.
Essay about Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, tells the story of his father's survival in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, as well as about Art's relationship with his father, brought out through the interview process and writing the two books. The subject matter of the two books is starkly juxtaposed with the style in which it was written, that is, it is a graphic novel. In most simple terms, the story is told in a sort of comic, with characters represented as animals based on their race or nationality (Jews are presented as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, and Americans as dogs). While the cartoon had once been reserved for rather childish and light subject matter, Spiegelman has brought it to a whole new level as a medium capable...show more content...
The two pages begin with a frame where Art Spiegelman as the cartoonist (we know it is the Art as the cartoonist, partly due to the scene, but also in great part due to the use of masks rather than the complete animal metaphor used throughout the rest of the novel) is being interviewed by a pair of dogs, as specified earlier, signifying Americans. The characters are standing upon this pile of mice corpses with flies buzzing around them. As the frames continue, Art Spiegelman is further accosted by different groups of people. Following the dogs, a man wearing a cat mask begins to interview Art about the criticism he has been receiving in Germany. After the man in the cat mask, a person in a mouse mask asks him about Israel. Following the person in the mouse mask, another person appears in a mask that is trying to make a business offer, but the type of animal that is represented is indistinguishable. Also in this frame, the image of Art begins to shrink as he sits in the chair. In the following two final frames on the first page continue, Art's image shrinks even further until he is the size of a small child. It is even seen that he is acting like a small child as he begins to cry. On the next page the frames begin again, but all the people that were previously interviewing him have disappeared. However, in the corner of the first frame, there is a fly still buzzing around. Then in the next frame, Art makes further commentary about
Maus Book Review
All i gotta say is, this book is awesome!! I would rate maus a 4.5 out of 5. The book i'm reading is maus by Art, Spiegelman. This book is revolving around the author's father and his family's experiences in the days of the holocaust. The way the author drags you in by introducing you with a little family comedy is amazing i didn't really expect much out this book because for many years i've learned a lot about the holocaust and thought that i knew it all. The author goes his way explaining a different view that i never thought of. The spigelman family are jewish and the way the author goes about telling their story is by through their memories. I would always try to think what it would've been like as a jew during that time but the author opened my eyes as i was reading this book it was like learning every tragedy all over again. I reason i rated this book so high...show more content...
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
Art Spiegelman's Maus Essay
Art Spiegelman's Maus, has the depth and subtlety that we expect from traditional novels and extended non fictional text. When you think of a comic you think superheroes and funny comics in the back of the newspaper. Maus is the chilling reality of surviving as a Jew during the Holocaust. The comic type writing and illustration help us understand what the Jews had to go through to survive during the Holocaust. For many people today it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to live as a Jew in those days. The illustrations show how they had to disguise themselves so they wouldn't be attacked for just being themselves. Jews didn't really have anyone to turn to. Even the police would not help. Spiegelman used animals to show different
The Theme Of Survival In Maus By Art Spiegelman
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.
The tone in Maus is depression; this is shown when Vladek tells the story in his perspective and reveals what kind of events occurred during the Holocaust. This relates to survival because even though Vladek had a feeling of discouragement through his experiences, he still managed to survive. Vladek explains when he was captured as a war prisoner and what they gave them to eat. "The other prisoners get two meals a day. We Jews get only a crust of bread and a little soup."(Spiegelman, 55) This shows how hard it was for the Jews and how hopeless Vladek's story was. Another heartbreaking part of the story was when Vladek had to work hard and act as slaves to the
Analysis of The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman
When reading a traditional book, it is up to the reader to imagine the faces and landscapes that are described within. A well written story will describe the images clearly so that you can easily picture the details. In Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus, the use of the animals in place of the humans offers a rather comical view in its simplistic relation to the subject and at the same time develops a cryptic mood within the story. His drawings of living conditions in Auschwitz; expressions on the faces of people enduring torture, starvation, and despair; his experience with the mental institution and his mother's suicide; and occasional snapshots of certain individuals, create a new dynamic between book and reader. By using the form of...show more content...
Art shows the obsessive compulsive aspects of Vladek with intensity.
As you listen to Vladek's story, you begin to understand his driving need to keep everything. Living in an infested prison with little food and drink, he had to learn to survive. With small tokens from his life before Auschwitz, Art began to make allies and trade for food and clothing. Teaching English to a guard and acquiring some basic necessities for survival, as a tinsmith he found people to trade for food and gave gifts to his Kapo to gain favor and better treatment, he even fixed the boots of his wife's Kapo and afterwards his wife was no longer treated so poorly. Vladek had to salvage anything that might be of value to someone else and eventually was even able to move his wife closer so he could keep an eye on her. Soon his obsession with saving anything he can get his hands on starts to make sense.
As you take in the story of Auschwitz, there are moments when you realize how easily he Vladek is telling the story. He describes times when the prisoners are inspected for health and if they pass they are sent back to the barracks to continue working and if they are too sick then they are removed from the camp. Art uses the smokestack to represent those who are taken away and sent to the gas chamber, the devastating image is chilling and leaves a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach. It is such a simple drawing, small
Analysis Of The Book ' Maus ' Essay
A swastika, a cat, and two despondent looking like mice. The old maxim goes you can't judge a book by its cover, but the cover of Maus aptly sets us up for a reading experience like no other. Maus is a graphic novel that aims to display the gruesome, deplorable, and dehumanizing events that occurred during the Holocaust. The Holocaust, in simple terms, was the brutal genocide of over six million Jews by the hands of the Germans. It can be argued that at its core, Maus is a novel about the father–son relationship between Art Spieglmen and his father, Vladek. What separates Maus from various other novels published about the Holocaust, is the medium Spiegelmen uses to stylize his story. Maus is read through a series of expressive comic strips and Spiegelmen opts for animal masks to represent the humans in the novel, which has a multitude of impacts on the novel. The choice of animals associated with their typical "people" clearly tends to the wickedness of Holocaust, with each animal representing their own allegorical meaning. On the flip side, the usage of animals can be interpreted as means to lighten up a saddening story, and in effect desensitize the Jewish plight. Moreover, after reading "Prisoner of Hell Planet", (The short, almost surreal, comic strips illustrated by Spiegelmen as humans, which predates Maus and concerns the suicide of his mother) we truly experience this different set of emotions evoked from humans vs that of animals. There is a striking contrast in
Animal Characterization In Maus
Maus is an American graphic novel that is used to describe the different situation in the religious and societal norms. The graphic novel is well known for its use of characterization., the use of animals to represent the various people in the society. Characterization and personification are part of the significant literary devices that have been used in novels to display different characteristics of the people being discussed. It is a useful tool in the literature that raises the attributes of an individual or a group of individuals based on the characteristics of an animal as an object, in the book, Maus, the symbolic use of the mice is used to describe the different attribute of the Jewish people in the community.
The book Maus depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It, however, do not use the ancient presentation techniques but chooses to use post–modernist features and approaches to discuss and raise the different themes that make the objective of the book efficiently applicable in the society it is placed in. The Jews, as mentioned, are represented as mice while the German and other people in the community served as cats and pigs. Each of these animals has a repressively applicable attribute that relates to the people it represents. The discussion on the animal characterization and this representation of the people will be the focus of this paper. Each animal and its symbolic attributes on how it
Uses Of Symbolism In Maus By Vladek Spiegelman
The Holocaust was a horrible atrocity. This event killed six million jews and seventeen million victims overall, but many jews survived to tell the story of how it was inside the camps and how they were treated. One was Vladek Spiegelman, a resourceful man that had it rough during the Holocaust. His son, Artie Spiegelman, wrote the book Maus which he tells the story of his father when he was in Auschwitz and tells about his life in the time Artie is writing the book. In Artie's book, Maus, he uses a lot of symbolism in his work to get his point across. In Maus, Art Spiegelman uses symbolism to help the readers understand his characters and the conflicts they face, along with much more. To find symbolism, one must first know the meaning of the term. Symbolism is defined as the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. Symbolism is used all the time to help the audience understand what they are reading or seeing. Artie uses symbolism to define the characters he put in the book by drawing them as animals instead of humans. He also had different examples of symbolism like the conflict on the character's mask, his father's resourcefulness,his mother's journal,and the swastika pathway that he put in the book to help readers understand.
The first example of symbolism that caught reader's attention was the characters in his book. Artie depicted them as animals and not just any animals, animals that described their ethnicity. The Jews were mice, scared rodents
1. How does their story of survival compare to that of Primo Levi? 2. Why do you think Art Spiegelman draws the characters of his book as mice, cats, pig etc.? 3. Maus 4. What was Vladek like? 5. Vladek is an older person with a very précised in what he want and he son see this as being annoying. He feels you need to be aware of everything. He does not trust people specially his second wife Mala. He has hearth problems and he is diabetic. Sometime he used his sickness to his advantage. 6. During the Holocaust, he exhibited a spectacular resourcefulness, work ethic, and presence of mind that often enabled him to secure food, shelter, and safety for himself and his family. He was a shrewd businessman, and in the most...show more content...
Does these personality trains stem from the experience in the Holocaust? 21. Many of Vladek's peculiar personality traits can be linked to his experiences in the Holocaust. In 1978, Vladek is stubborn, irritable, and almost comically stingy with his money. His relationship with his second wife, Mala, is strained and seemingly empty of love. Before the Holocaust he does not exhibits none of these characteristics. He is kind, wealthy, and uncommonly resourceful, and his marriage to Anja is filled with compassion and intimacy. His experiences in the Holocaust undoubtedly played a role in these dramatic personality changes. 22. 23. Does Vladek and his wife survive the Holocaust? 24. Was it primarly luck? 25. What were the stages of persecution which they endured? 26. How does their story of survival compare to that of Primo Levi? 27. Why do you think Art Spiegelman draws the characters of his book as mice, cats, pig etc.? 28. Do you think this, and the cartoon format in general is an effective way of dealing with the subject matter? 29. Why or why not? 30. What are the problems Spiegelman faces in representing his fathers' experiences; how does he discuss those problems in Maus? 31. At the end of book I Art calls his father a "murderer" for destroying his mother's diaries after her suicide what does he mean by that? 32. Why it was so
Analysis Of The Book ' Maus '
Adolf Hitler stated, "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human."(2) Adolf Hitler was the man who started the Nazi Regime which became the biggest massacre in the world. The massacre was known as the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed. Maus tells the story of father who was a Polish Jew at the time of the Holocaust. Maus is also portrayed visually with high angle shots, low angle shots, curved lines, shadows and rule of thirds. Art Spiegelman drew his graphics in specific way, which was to grab the reader's attention more to the pictures rather than the words because a photo can explain a thousand words. There are two underlining stories in Maus. One story is telling how Vladeck survived Auschwitz and the other story is how Art, Vladeck's son, gets his story from his father and the relationship between Art and Vladeck.
A graphic novel is a standalone pictorial narrative or a collective of single comic issues published in a book format. Maus is a graphic novel where Art Spiegelman tell the story of his father's experience in the Holocaust through pictures. Art Spiegelman does this through the use of shadows, symmetry, low and high points and rule of thirds. A well balanced frame gives the readers a sense of peace and security but throughout Maus there are many times where he does not want us to feel peaceful or safe. The last frame on page 32 is a perfect example. The flag is the vocal point. The Jews are very scared and worried. The flag is also
Maus: A Survivor's Tale
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...show more content...
Even though Vladek is wearing the mask he still needs to go out at night to buy food, which shows that the disguises do not work as well in full clarity and light. Also on page 138, Vladek runs into another Jew wearing a pig mask, and this Jew had been hiding for over a year. When Vladek runs into the other Jew, the other Jew seems a little surprised to see another Jew, and this seems to mean that he has been successful at hiding, but has not had much contact with other Jews. Then on page 140, Vladek uses the disguise to sneak on a train in plain sight, and he chooses a German car over a Polish car, because "in the Polish car they could smell if a Polish Jew came in." The train scene again proves that the pig masks are not fool proof, but they must be used craftily at certain times with certain people who will not be fully engaged. Conforming to the contemporary world might have been exceptionally distasteful for Jews, but with the merciless Nazi military after them thee Jews must be willing to adapt in order to stay alive. Even though disguising themselves under other cultures was not the most failsafe plan, when this worked it could add months or years of life to many
In his graphic novel, Maus, Art Spiegelman tells an account of the Holocaust in the most daring of ways. Spiegelman's choice to tell a biographical account in comic book form is bold in and of itself, but his choice to portray all of his characters as animals is the most audacious and controversial choice of all. In Maus, every ethnic group is characterized by its own distinct animal: Jews are mice, Germans are cats, non–Jewish Poles are pigs, and so on. This deliberate choice alludes to the extreme essentialization of identity during the Holocaust. Just as in Maus people are very clearly labeled as mice, pigs, cats, etc., during the Holocaust, people were very strictly groups together by whether they were Jewish, Polish, or German. Each group's identity was very discretely defined, and there was meant to be no overlap between groups whatsoever. During the Holocaust, who you were was predetermined, and you were stuck with your assigned identity and the consequences and/or privileges that came with it. At key moments in the novel, however, Spiegelman diverts from this strict essentialization of identity. At two distinct moments he draws his characters wearing masks, outwardly portraying an identity different from their inherent identity. In Maus, masks are used as measure of deception and affiliation. Through the use of masks, the characters in Maus have a choice of identity. Masks allow autonomy over one's identity, an autonomy that did not exist during the Holocaust.
Maus Critique
The comic Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is an Animal Farm–esque story, using animals as means of communicating through characters, to tell the story of Hitler and the Holocaust. The Holocaust is often referred to as the most prominent example of racial discrimination and hatred. By Spiegelman's use of mice, cats, and pigs to tell they grim truth to his father's historical ties with the Holocaust, he is allowing the readers to experience the dismal past with clear understanding. This comic, printed first in 1980, was the first of its kind to give such comprehendible reading to younger or less educated people. This is important, as it helps refrain people from creating a similar lifestyle. The book also puts grave detail into the fact of how miserable