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Maus I: My Father Bleeds History (Maus #1)
A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.
Hardcover, 160 pages
Published
November 1st 1991
by Pantheon Books
(first published 1972)
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Chandra
rated it
Who'd a thunk a 'cartoon' about Nazi cats and Jewish mice would be a heartbreaking and gut wrenchingly profound read? I sure didn't. You'd think the Pulitzer Prize might have clued me in. Today is the day that I officially stop underestimating graphic novels.
The way that Art Spiegelman intersperses his father's gripping survivor story with their present day uneasy,bickering relationship is pure genius. His honest portrayal of his miserly, broken father and his mother's suicide i...more
The way that Art Spiegelman intersperses his father's gripping survivor story with their present day uneasy,bickering relationship is pure genius. His honest portrayal of his miserly, broken father and his mother's suicide i...more
When I switched my major to English in my senior year, I had a lot of back classes to take, especially intro classes with freshmen and sophmores, though my last intro class was a night class with primarily older women, who worked full time jobs in Edison or the Amboys and a bushel of kids waiting at home. Basically, they were there to learn more about literature, sort of as a self-improvement class for the non-literary. The class was taught by a flame hair TA, who had the personality to match. Y...more
Megan
rated it
Recommends it for:
history lovers
Recommended to Megan by:
Marie Burt
Shelves:
biography,
graphic-novel
This was my first foray in the world of graphic novels, and I have to say I was very impressed. "Maus" is the Pulitzer Prize winning biographical tale of a Jewish man named Vladek, who survives many hardships in Poland during World War II.
Told through a series of events and stories to his son Artie, Vladek, recounts this dark time of family separation, ghetto life, starvation, hiding, military service, POW camp, and finally his shipment to Auschwitz. Through it all, Vla...more
Told through a series of events and stories to his son Artie, Vladek, recounts this dark time of family separation, ghetto life, starvation, hiding, military service, POW camp, and finally his shipment to Auschwitz. Through it all, Vla...more
I know I'm not breaking any new ground by calling Art Spiegelman's "Maus" amazing -- easily one of the best Holocaust memoirs ever published. But, as if that isn't achievement enough, "Maus" also is much more than that: a nakedly honest portrayal of the strained relationship between artist-writer Art and his elderly father Vladek, neither of whom has gotten over the loss of Anja -- Art's mother and Vladek's wife -- to suicide years before. (The four-page "Prisoner on the...more
I have a real, real problem with this book. It's a powerful piece, and tells the story of one family's experiences of the Holocaust in grim and gripping detail. it's also an amazing exploration of the relationship between a father and son. I'd love to give it 5 stars. And yet... I couldn't give a decent rating to a book that depicted black people, Muslims or gays as pigs, and I can't give a good rating to a book that depicts Poles as pigs. The book is not the history of the Polish people during ...more
Kirstie
rated it
Recommends it for:
people interested in historical fiction, the Holocaust, and graphic novels
Shelves:
graphic-novels
Told through the format of a graphic novel is the story of the Spiegelmans and how they made it through the Holocaust. The story alternates between the present in which the son is in NYC speaking to his father about the past he escaped and the depictions of the actual horrors through his father's life story. One gets the sense of devastation that isn't surprising both in the retelling of the story and the way the experience has affected him to the present day. And, I thought it was a really cr...more
There's a lot of praise out there for this book, and it's all well deserved. There are countless books that tell stories of the Holocaust. None do it the way Maus does. By telling a real story through a medium that values the surreal, the author, Art Spiegelman, (who is also the artist) gives a fresh look at a dark chapter in the history of the world. Representing the characters in this story as animals could, at first, be an affront to some. It seems insensitive to de-humanize the victims of th...more
Maus I is Vladek Spiegelman (Art's father's) tale of survival from the rise of the Nazi party through his imprisonment in Auschwitz in Spring, 1944. This is the story of the Nuremberg laws, the progressive isolation and desperation of the Jews, the inexcusable acts of bystanders, and the formation of ghettos throughout Poland. Maus II is the story of Auschwitz and beyond.
What I loved so much about this book was Spiegelman's visual representation of the genocide. The Jews are mice; th...more
What I loved so much about this book was Spiegelman's visual representation of the genocide. The Jews are mice; th...more
a graphic novel of the holocaust? that features MICE? with crazy cats and dogs and pigs as the bad guys?
this is bloody brilliant. i know, i never would have believed it either, but just - it's the story of a young mouse whose father is plagued by his history as a concentration camp survivor, and he just doesn't get why his father can't get over it. (mice-jews, cats-nazis, pigs-germans, and i actually forget who the dogs are. i'm guessing the americans.)
the first volume i...more
this is bloody brilliant. i know, i never would have believed it either, but just - it's the story of a young mouse whose father is plagued by his history as a concentration camp survivor, and he just doesn't get why his father can't get over it. (mice-jews, cats-nazis, pigs-germans, and i actually forget who the dogs are. i'm guessing the americans.)
the first volume i...more
This was difficult to get through at times- but Art Spiegelman makes a tricky attempt at relating the Holocaust to a game of cat and "maus" look easy. The entire narrative is laid out in comic strips. And while "comics" make us think "funny," the author/artist keeps the severity of the story in check.
Maus I is definitely a triumph of the graphic novel form, both because of the extraordinary content and the intelligent use of the graphic medium that Spiegelman wraps around that content. [return][return]By concentrating his story on a person (his father, Vladek) and not simply on the inevitable series of horrible events the reader knows is coming, Spiegelman manages to weave a narrative thread that transcends the horrors. This is not to suggest that Maus I glosses over any of the many sad pa...more
Best graphic novel I've ever read. This is a bit like Elie Wiesel's Night but in comic book format with cartoon mice. Surprisingly this works on so many levels. Story and graphics are haunting. Graphically there are some interesting choices like using mice, cats, pigs to illustrate various groups of people. The holocaust survivor telling his story to his son results in a back-and-forth narrative of the horrific events of the holocaust jucstaposed with how those horrors and huge losses effect...more
Though I read through this book in just an hour or two, I literally could not put it down, though I was supposed to be getting ready for work, eating breakfast, etc. My kids are learning about the history of WWII and the holocaust now, and we had picked up the second of these books at the library a few weeks ago. I ordered the first one (for years I'd heard so much about these books) and found it absolutely compelling and frightening, as so many holocaust stories are. Spiegelman's parents (dr...more
Matt
rated it
Maus is Art Spiegelman's graphical interpretation of stories his father related about surviving the holocaust. Despite the way the stories are presented, Spiegelman doesn't pull any punches.
The majority of the text is (or seems to be) his father's words verbatim. Often Spiegelman's father Vladek, in his present-day dealings with his son and his wife, comes across as an antithesis of his former self. No longer resourceful, caring and heroic, but rather callous and self centred.
...more
The majority of the text is (or seems to be) his father's words verbatim. Often Spiegelman's father Vladek, in his present-day dealings with his son and his wife, comes across as an antithesis of his former self. No longer resourceful, caring and heroic, but rather callous and self centred.
...more
“Maus” is a common holocaust survivor’s tale. The fact that the style is a graphic novel adds an entirely new dimension to the already provocative plot. The story is being told by a Jewish man from Poland, only it is many years in the future and is being transcribed by his son. Flashbacks comprise most of the story, but the times when the father and son are talking in present time are some of the most eloquent of scenes. Since the story goes back and forth from present day to wartime Poland,...more
Okay, so part of me feels like I am supposed to give this book a higher rating because of the subject matter - but I really did not enjoy it. I promise I went in with an open mind, but I will admit it was my first graphic novel. I had a hard time trying to slow myself down enough to look at the pictures... so I feel like I missed a lot of it just because this is not how I am used to reading.
It was not that I didn't enjoy the story. I did. I also enjoyed the fact that you could hear the...more
It was not that I didn't enjoy the story. I did. I also enjoyed the fact that you could hear the...more
How is it even possible for art to confront the Holocaust? Those years constitute the most horrific display of humanity's ability to be malicious, pitiless, gullible, apathetic... and enduring. In a sense, the Holocaust is too real to become art. Art is the process of the limiting of infinity. Art is excision and definition. This limiting, after all, is why Marcel Duchamp's Fountain can be considered art; by placing the urinal in the context of an art museum, Duchamp denied it the ability to ser...more
Actually, I read this book in English, but I could not seem to find it that way here. This book is about Art Spiegelman and his relationship with both history and his father. Because of his father's experiences as a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camps, Art is raised feeling allot of guilt for his easy life, he also feels guilt for the pain his parents feel. His mother had committed suicide a while before the book starts, and this weight also presses down on him. Told in conjunction wit...more
Maus I: My Father Bleeds History is the story of Artie, a writer who decides to pursue the story of his family during the Holocaust. He interviews his father who, failing in his health, begins telling Artie his story, a Jewish man trying to keep his will to survive throughout the war. Valdek married Anja who, after the birth of their first child, suffered postpartum depression, thus he did all he could to comfort her. As Veldek told his story to his son, it was obvious how the war changed things...more
This was a shaking read. I will try to unload some of my thoughts about it.
- son inheriting the hate/broken hearted ness from his parents' horrific expereince
- ways of repairing
------dad does it through hording and destroying
------son does it through unloading in his cartoons
the never really move on from the Holocaust. Anja is such a big character, bigger than the son.
like a transgenerational tragedy inherited by the boy. It ends so hollowly. I just wanted the...more
- son inheriting the hate/broken hearted ness from his parents' horrific expereince
- ways of repairing
------dad does it through hording and destroying
------son does it through unloading in his cartoons
the never really move on from the Holocaust. Anja is such a big character, bigger than the son.
like a transgenerational tragedy inherited by the boy. It ends so hollowly. I just wanted the...more
Lbordnic
added it
Maus I
By Art Spiegelman
Maus I is a graphic novel that illustrates life during the Holocaust. This graphic novel provides an interesting view point of both the Jewish people of this time and the German’s as well giving the Jewish people the outer appearance of mice and the Nazi’s the appearance of Cats. Other interesting character portrayals include the German’s being portrayed as pigs and Americans portrayed as dogs. Interested yet? The visuals in this novel provide readers with a ...more
By Art Spiegelman
Maus I is a graphic novel that illustrates life during the Holocaust. This graphic novel provides an interesting view point of both the Jewish people of this time and the German’s as well giving the Jewish people the outer appearance of mice and the Nazi’s the appearance of Cats. Other interesting character portrayals include the German’s being portrayed as pigs and Americans portrayed as dogs. Interested yet? The visuals in this novel provide readers with a ...more
Maus is a book I've long known about but never felt compelled to read until I had the opportunity to hear Art Spiegelman read from his new book ‘Meta Maus” that tells the back story to the ‘Maus’ series”. Spiegelman is a master of the graphic novel, a form he essentially created with the underground comics that he did in the 70’s. A student and later co-conspirator with the of the late, great Harvey Kurtzman who brought you MAD magazine, in “Maus” Spiegelman tells the story of growing up ...more
S.
rated it
I remember this as being THE book that brought the graphic novel to prominence and I've wanted to read it forever, but was always too stingy (like Mr. Spiegelman senior) to cough up the dough for "a comic book."
This was a terrific book in many ways: 1) the story 2) the drawings 3) the mice vs cats among pigs among rats 4) the interspersing of past and present 5) the emphasis on the importance of oral history, even though the story is told through written words and pictures...more
This was a terrific book in many ways: 1) the story 2) the drawings 3) the mice vs cats among pigs among rats 4) the interspersing of past and present 5) the emphasis on the importance of oral history, even though the story is told through written words and pictures...more
Though Spiegelman has a great command of pacing and the technical aspects of storytelling in the comics medium, Maus never really comes together for me and the conceit of the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats seems somewhat arbitrary and pointless. Does it help us understand the story of the holocaust any better? Does it really tell us anything about the characters? Or is it a cute way to make a cartoon of the whole experience?
Notes:
Is Spiegelman's mouse and cat conceit a...more
Notes:
Is Spiegelman's mouse and cat conceit a...more
Some people might question the propriety of whether a subject as sensitive as the Holocaust be portrayed in the medium of cartoon. However, Spiegelman pulls this off brilliantly and the drawings are neither overly flamboyant or over-the-top. Instead, he blends the two together so well that it is impossible to tell the same story in any other format (different perspectives used, symbols of the swastika superimposed in the background, characters portrayed as animals, etc). The fact that he can mer...more
Genre: Graphic Novel, Biography
Rating: ***A survivor's story about the Holocaust. This book is an unique first-person account, but it is confusing at times when the story goes back into time. There are also several instances of bad language.
Summary: Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, tells his story of survival to his son, Artie. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's late...more
Rating: ***A survivor's story about the Holocaust. This book is an unique first-person account, but it is confusing at times when the story goes back into time. There are also several instances of bad language.
Summary: Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, tells his story of survival to his son, Artie. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's late...more
This graphic novel had been hanging over my shoulders since I was a sophomore in high school. I always underestimated its power of storytelling because it had pictures. Then, my sophomore year of college, I had to read Fun Home for class. This was my first experience with a graphic novel that wasn't a comic book. And, since I thoroughly enjoyed that experience, I thought I would give Maus a try. My boyfriend had to read it for his class and he needed help on a paper, so I decided to just sit dow...more
Nicole
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Lovers of Graphic Novels, and those looking for a new point of insight into the Holocaust.
Recommended to Nicole by:
Comics and Graphic Novels (Class)
Shelves:
graphic-novels
There's a stigma that most people accuse the world of: that comics, graphic novels, whatever you'd like to call them, usually are to be defined as things only for the humorous, the light, the silly~ But tackle a serious subject, of any kind never even thought of to fall into the realm of the "drawn literature" that is so often taken for granted, and it's seen as blasphemous, scandalous, or simply garish and uncouth. This work by Art Spiegelman, a true story depicting his father's exper...more
This was one of the first graphic novels to gain popular praise so I thought I'd finally include it on my Goodreads list as it still has so much to recommend it. The characters are all tied to the Holocaust in one way or another. They are complex and as we see their oft-heated family exchanges, they are "drawn" with a fabulous sense of reality to them. I even recognized something of my own now deceased father in Art's father, also a WWII survivor. Dad would spend hours straightening na...more
Greg Douglas
added it
If you’re into to holocaust stories or Germany in WWII then you might find this book interesting. The story takes place in the 1930’s- 1940’s era in Germany. Its sounds like your typical holocaust story but here’s the twist. All the characters are animals. But they’re grouped by race, for example the mice are the Jews and the cats are the Nazis. Its portraying the holocaust as a cat and mouse chase, but it goes deeper than that. The mutual party is the pigs. The pigs differ in morals and views j...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7L/Blue Discussio...: MAUS | 7 | 8 | Oct 19, 2011 01:17pm | |
| Wild Things: YA G...: AUGUST: Maus I A Survivor's Tale My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman | 32 | 151 | Sep 30, 2010 09:30pm |
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Art Spiegelman (born February 15, 1948) is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic memoir, Maus. The second volume of Maus was dedicated to Richieu and to Spiegelman's daughter Nadja. He also has a son, currently a junior at Brown University.
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“To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.”
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“Disaster is my muse.”
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