Essays on Maus

Art Spiegelman’s ‘The Complete Maus’ explores the devastating impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their families. Through the lens of his father Vladek Spiegelman’s past experiences and their present day relationship, Spiegelman highlights the obsessive behaviour and depression that splinter the lives of Holocaust survivors....

In Maus, Art Spiegelman produces what can be seen as a reaction to the Holocaust and its complicated aftermath. It is a graphic representation of the various horrors of the Holocaust and he chooses to make his characters anthropomorphic. One may argue that in an...

Through the use of modulating points of view, Art Spiegelman pieces several stories into one in order to portray his father Vladek’s Holocaust story as well as his experiences with Vladek as he wrote the book. The conflict between Art and his father is one...

There is an enigmatic quality to Art Spiegelman’s survival guilt, a guilt which presents itself subtly in Book I and much more palpably in Book II. This ambiguity, so to speak, stems from a perplexing notion. That is, how could one of the only characters...

Art Spiegelman (1986), a creator, author, illustrator, interviewer, and narrator uses the medium of comics to narrate the experiences of his parents, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, Jews who’d survived the Holocaust. Jumping back and forth between the past and the present, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale...

In “Maus II” by Art Spiegelman a series of three panels helps to encapsulate a continuous theme throughout the two part story. In these panels Artie and Francoise are in the car driving to assist Artie’s father who has just been left by his second...

Maus is a graphical story derived from the visits Art Spiegelman made to New York to visit his father Vladek. Vladek was a Polish Jew and a survivor of the world war 11 holocaust. This survival and the visits Art made brought to life Maus...

People thrive on relationships. The relationships that people make define who they are and family and friends are who we depend on for love and support. However, when obstacles are put in the way of relationships, it can result in the unification or separation of...

In general, comic strips and graphic art are given little attention as complete works of literature. Considered to be lacking substance and novelistic qualities, graphic novels are undeservingly lumped into a category that does not account for their quality and influence. With that being said,...

Contrary to what some might think, the literary field of graphic novels tackles important issues such as gender, race, and religion. One work has stood out amongst the rest as a classic and revolutionary piece that has tackled one of, if not the, most important...

Today, most Americans can only imagine what the horrors of the Holocaust must have been like – and, to be frank, they are probably very glad that they have no personal experiences to draw on. However, the Holocaust, and other catastrophic events in history, must...

The graphic novel Maus by Art Speigelman displays an increasingly tense relationship between him and his father, Vladek. Although Vladek is initially portrayed as frivolous, contriving, self-pitying, detrimentally offensive to his loved ones, and compulsive, the reader eventually learns, through his recollection of the horrors...

In any artistic work, aesthetic style is a crucial aid to the viewer’s understanding of the piece as a whole. Art Spiegelman’s remarkable publication Maus breaks the conventional barriers of the past between comics and what were then considered to be serious novels. As a...

While Art sits at his drawing board, a pile of emaciated Jewish bodies lies below him, seemingly unnoticed while reporters and businessmen climb over them (II.41). These bodies represent the grave nature of Art’s subject matter, the millions of dead Jews demanding that their story...

An element of tension runs through both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. The two narratives running parallel to each other throughout Maus, namely those of Art and his father Vladek, converge at the end of volume two in a shaky synthesis. The two narratives, do...

From January 30, 1933, to May 8, 1945, around 17 million people were killed in Germany in what is known as the Holocaust. At the time, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany aimed to remove people who were not of German descent from Germany, especially those who...