This week I read Maus:
A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman.
I have heard of this comic before but I have never gotten around to
reading it. I thought it was going to be
just another story of a holocaust survivor, just with cats and mice, and for
the most part I assumed right. What made this comic stand out from other
holocaust stories is the way Art Spiegelman drew it and told it. I thought that the comic was expertly
designed with the way that Spiegelman used his line work to get across emotions
and mood in the story. Characters
emotions could be seen though beads of sweat on their faces when they are under
pressure, as well as stress lines that can be seen under the eyes of all of the
prisoners in despair. You could tell the
disgusting conditions of the Nazi camps by the way fumes were drawn emanating
from the prisoners outfits and barracks within the camp.
I found it
interesting that Spiegelman portrayed the different races as different animals
with Jews being mice, Germans being cats, and the Polish being represented as
pigs. Although Spiegelman did this to
make it easy to distinguish the characters in the story, apparently making the
different races look like different animals in the story was criticized for
promoting ethnic stereotypes. I liked
how Spiegelman showed that the mice were trying to hide their identities by
wearing pig masks. I found the comic
easy to follow with it panels being placed in an easy to read manner with not
much text per page.
Before
reading, I assumed that the book was a fictitious tale about the holocaust,
except the characters were animals. I
did not realize that the comic was about the author’s father telling the story
of his family and experience of World War II.
The story was interesting and disturbing. I would definitely suggest this graphic novel
to anyone who has not read it.
