Week Seven: Maus - Art Spiegelman

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Maus - Art Spiegelman

Firstly, just the cover of the comic made me think of Nazis and World War II. I wouldn't expect that with just thinking about a mouse, but the book is titled 'Maus' not mouse. In the beginning he quoted Adolf Hitler, "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human". So incidentally the creator made his characters animals that are small, and morphed them with human like characteristics, in a way so you could tell it was like they were being alienated or dehumanized. He showed some very explicit things very subtly and the characters didn't even have expressions on their faces, but you could tell the morbid truth of what they were going through.

Spieglman created 'Maus' in a way to depict his conversations with his father, going from present to the time when it was crucial in WWII. It showed the times going into WWII and the experiences of two Polish Jews, Vladek as well as his wife Anja were killed by Nazis. You could tell there was a lot of mental problems they were going through, especially Anja. These panels were also created in black and white – but they had like a scratchy or hatching like quality to them. It just made it look a lot more sever and list blunt of how intense their situations were during this time period with no use of colors. With him using his foreshadowing and flashbacks it really helped with the cumulative force of making the story draw together. It just reminded me of the book that was turned into a movie – 'The Boy with the Stripped Pajamas". Because it showed you things from a child's perspective  and not just from the adults which made the situation even sadder and more depressing to me.

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