Maus I: Un Survivant Raconte: Mon Père Saigne L'histoire (Maus #1)

Mario the lone bookwolf

Rating: really liked it
A way to deal with the unspeakable that makes it even more disturbing and weird.

Using animals for certain nations is a balancing act
It´s still a great work, but maybe all the same animals of one species would have been an even better choice. Not just because it would have been ideal to show that they´re all the same, just different, let's say with dogs or cats and many breeds, but because it´s just an unnecessary point of criticism that could have easily been avoided. It's petty and art is free, but some nations might not find it that great to be associated with certain animals.

Definitively nothing for kids or even some adults
It´s just too hardcore, by using anthropomorphized animals and the art of painting, it gets even worse and kind of more graphic. But the impact and mind blowing factor are amazing, because it´s

Much more memorable that way than in general anti war productions
Because people are used to war movies, games, satires, pictures, etc., which creates a kind of habituation effect and deadening, but this is something different and more tangible. Each page screams out the terror, the underlying themes are the sickest possible for even the most murderous apes on the planet, and one will never forget the associations between the pictures and reality itself.

It could be used for visualizing other atrocities too
There have been other genocides in colonial history without numbers of the people killed, starved to death, or infected with plagues and no real interest in redemption by giving back land to Native Americans of both Americas or historical revisionism. Let´s say removing statues and street names of mass murderers in the US, just imagine this in Germany with nazi leaders and the swastika instead of slave trading warmongerers and the confederate flag. Impossible and unthinkable in Europe after WW2, but in the bible belt, it´s totally fine more than 150 years after the American civil war.
Even more disturbing is the 20th century history of Russia and China with numbers between dozens of millions up to 100 million people killed per country. Especially adapted to one country and its history, the Maus concept would have immense potential for opening minds and maybe even something like redemption and a real reappraisal of history besides political correct drivel, bigotry, and empty promises. The crazy and disturbing thing is that it would mean imprisonment or even death for the artists creating such works in many countries that are still developing or already full scale dictatorships, with advanced surveillance technologies making the police states seem too perfectly developed to ever fall. Because resistance and rebellion have become impossible.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

Regan

Rating: really liked it
4.5


Very very very powerful and I like that you see the relationship between Spiegelman and his father throughout.

Diane S ☔

Rating: really liked it
I'm not a graphic novel reader for the most part. I've probably only ever read five or six, but if a book is going to be banned, I'm going to read it to find out why. This is a book that is based on this Pulitzer prize winners own father. In the story the father, portrayed as a mouse, is telling his painful story to his son, who happens to be a graphic artist. It is a different and maybe a little less harrowing way to show the many abuses of the Holocaust. Less so because of the figures used and the form in which it is told.

A school in Tennessee seems to be banning this book that is on the eighth grade list. I've had seven children, now grown, and would have no problem with them reading this book. Eighth graders are already exposed to many worse things than this horrific historical event. Video games,, Facebook, snap chat to name a few. I don't agree with book banning in any way shape or form. What are these parents afraid of? I could offer my opinion, but won't. This world is already bereft of understanding, empathy and sympathy, kindness. This book might elicit some.

They have proposed this after more than twenty years onto the bestsellers list. If you are a member of scribe there is a pdf that can be downloaded.

Caro (Bookaria)

Rating: really liked it
I am extremely moved by this book, it is as relevant and important today as it was when it was first published over 30 years ago, possibly even more so.

Maus tells the story of Vladek Spielgeman, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. His son, Art Spiegelman, is an illustrator and wants to write the story of his father's experiences during World War II. The story is also of Art himself, the interviews and relationship with his father.

The story alternates between the present day interviews and shifts into the past through Vladek's recollections. The illustrations are straightforward and in a black-and-white style.

I highly recommend this book, it is a powerful and emotional story. I am starting the second volume right away.


FINAL NOTE: below is what I found to be one of the most powerful scenes in the book.

Diane

Rating: really liked it
The Maus books were just as incredible as promised. I was deeply moved by Spiegelman's story about his father's experiences in Poland and Auschwitz during World War II.

My ancestors are from Germany and my mother was a WWII buff -- our bookshelves at home were filled with hundreds of books about that war. When I asked her why she was so fascinated by that period, she said she was trying to understand how something like the Holocaust could have happened. Now I'm an adult and I often read books about atrocities around the world. Even though they are depressing and soul-crushing, I guess I'm also just trying to understand how people can do such horrible things.

But I digress. Despite having already read a great deal about WWII, one of the things I especially liked about the Maus books was hearing how Spiegelman's father managed to survive. His father was gifted at quickly mastering skills and being able to talk his way out of tough situations. Those abilities helped him and his wife to survive the concentration camp.

Most reviews of Maus comment on Spiegelman's choice to draw the races differently: Jews are mice, the Germans are cats and other Poles are pigs. I liked the minimalist drawings because it kept the story moving and the focus was more on the words and the meanings.

I think this is a significant memoir of the Holocaust and would highly recommend it.

Will M.

Rating: really liked it
This is one of those graphic novels that everyone is telling the world to read. Acclaimed as one of the best graphic novels out there. My take on it is that it was really enjoyable and informative, but not the best. While it was very enjoyable, I still had a few problems with it. Overhyped in my opinion, but still highly recommended for me.

I honestly have no problem with the plot. Straightforward and informative. I'm a huge history fan, and the topic of Nazis in general was nothing new for me. It's been a while since my last read of this certain part of history. This graphic novel was a good way to refresh my memory. It's still very unsettling that the Nazis were this abusive back then. The way they tortured the Jews and such was very inhumane. I know that somewhere in the world today, people are still being abused like this, if not worse. Such a shame, and quite unthinkable how some people could be this cruel.

The characters were not as amazing as I wanted them to be. Some weren't developed enough. I seem to have this problem with most of the graphic novels that I read. I'm not sure if it's the graphic novels itself, or the way the author describes them. The whole character thing is a huge problem for me to be honest, because i'm a reader who heavily depends on the characters for enjoyment. I like a well written set of characters. The plot thankfully made up for the not so great characters. Artie and Anja were really enjoyable, but the other ones felt a bit dull.

One more problem that I encountered would be the artwork. I'm very choosy when it comes to the artwork. I know this aimed to provide a historical feeling, but it didn't work that much for me. I didn't like the rough drawing and the way it was presented. It could've been done better. Not a huge problem, but still something that bugged me from time to time.

4/5 stars. It's a solid 4 for me. Hopefully the next volume would continue to be this good, or be even better. I'm going to rate the compilation of the two volumes separately after reviewing the second one. Great way to introduce history to aficionados and also beginners. Highly recommended.

Elyse Walters

Rating: really liked it
Extraordinary.....
If there was a Pulitzer Prize for the BEST ALREADY
winners of the Pulitzer .....Art Spieglman's books would be a very high contender.

Point is... The creation of Maus exceeds expectations... which you might have heard
through the grapevine.

Maus, Vol 1: "My Father Bleeds"....is painful, personal, brilliant ..,and needs to be experienced first hand...( as all his books do)....
Then we might have a discussion

still worse to come, is Vol 2. "My Trouble Begins"

Nandakishore Mridula

Rating: really liked it
I don't read much Holocaust Literature nowadays.

In my teens and twenties, I read everything I could get my hands on on the Third Reich and the Middle Ages, as I had an abnormal urge to seek out the darkness in human souls. I was repelled and at the same time, fascinated by it - like people drawn irresistibly towards gruesome road accidents.

As I matured, this urge to torture myself diluted, and I moved on towards more wholesome stuff. However, I decided I would make an exception with Maus because of one important reason - it is a comic, or to use the more accepted terminology nowadays, a graphic novel.

The comic is a seriously underutilised narrative format. Like the fairy tale and the animated movie, Disney has corrupted it and confined it to a corner where it can only babble and make baby talk. It is heartening to see it breaking out of that straitjacket and maturing - in books like The Complete Persepolis and the this one.

--------------------------------------------------------------

"The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but not human" - Adolf Hitler

Dehumanising the enemy is the first step towards eliminating them: which is what Hitler tried to do with Jews and nearly succeeded. In this book, Art Spiegelman tells us a story from that dark era - a very personal one, that of his father - yet distances us emotionally brilliantly by using Brechtian techniques. The Jews are portrayed as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs and Americans as dogs.

The story is delivered brutally, pulling no punches. However, changing the characters into animals accomplishes two things - by taking away the individuality, we are forced to look at the big picture: and the race differences are emphasised so as to be insurmountable(a Jew and a Gentile are both human beings, but a mouse can never become a cat). So even when we are caught up in the story, the political subtext is never forgotten.

A brilliant, brilliant work.

BTW, a bigger review is up on my blog.

Sophia

Rating: really liked it
Actual rating 4.5 stars.
I am generally not a fan of WWII stories. All the ones I’ve read lean so much into depicting Hitler and his army.

This is not that kind of story. It’s about a man finding ways to survive in a world that wanted him dead.

I loved the personal moments between Art and his father. That balance of humour and relatability to the shock and tragedy helped me continue reading.

This is one of those stories I never thought I’d read but I’m glad I did.
It’s incredible to read about this tale of survival in this medium.

Juliet Rose

Rating: really liked it
It's hard to review a book which covers such dark history and suffering. This is a unique way to bring this subject to light but no less painful than say Night or Schindler's List. The graphic novel style did help the subject matter be more digestible but I still found myself having to set it down and walk away to deal with the horrors being shared. Despite the comic style, the author did an amazing job in showing the humanity both in the cruelty but also in the hope. I feel the art lent to the story.

This is something we should never, ever let fade in our memory.

Ariel

Rating: really liked it
It just didn't do what I wanted.

I had high expectations, my friends, I had high expectations. That might not be fair, but there you go.

My biggest problem was the misused animals. The book is called Maus. The characters are mice and cats and pigs. BUT NONE OF THEM ACT LIKE MICE OR CATS OR PIGS. WHATS THE POINT? In conversation with my friend Barry* it came up that "It's just cats chasing mice. That's the extent of the metaphor." He disagrees, on the whole.. he actually quite enjoyed this (we're budding reading again, I never want to stop buddy reading with this boy), but regardless he saw my point of view. I feel that there was great potential to use the animal characteristics to do interesting and inventive things, but basically they're just humans that look like animals.

I have a few other issues: I don't like the way the son treats the father (that won't make sense unless you've read this, sorry), and I haven't really been able to feel emotionally attached to anything (apart, of course, from the normal sense of sadness that comes from thinking of the holocaust).

It's not terrible, by any means. The illustrations are interesting, the story is interesting, and I flew through it. I very much look forward to reading Volume II, but this just wasn't good enough.

*Barry: https://www.youtube.com/Bazpierce!

Arnie

Rating: really liked it
When I was a kid I read comic books (mostly Superman). The Maus books are the only graphic novels I've read and I consider them masterpieces (Mausterpieces?). Like Spiegelman's alter ego, I was a middle class child growing up in Queens (NYC), the son of Holocaust survivors and couldn't communicate with my father when I was growing up. He got it down perfectly. It was spot on and ranks among the best of Holocaust related literature.

Maxwell

Rating: really liked it
Re-read September 5, 2015: I think I absorbed a lot more of the story and its power the second time around. It's really wonderfully crafted, and I can't wait to finally read the second volume because this one ends sort of abruptly.

First read January 3-9, 2014

Calista

Rating: really liked it
This is a powerful story. It doesn't seem like these horrors could be possible and yet they are. This is a black and white comic with mice as Jews and cats as Nazis. I can only hope that this history remains a reminder of why compassion toward all people is so very important. When we lose our compassion, we lose our humanity. It is also a reminder of the darkness people are capable of and the strength of the human spirit. This is not a fun story or a comforting story; it is a tough story about survival and after you do survive, what is life like then. I'm glad I read this story.

Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell

Rating: really liked it

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I didn't intend for my first book of 2018 to be so depressing, but MAUS is such a creative, important book. In MAUS, Art Spiegelman uses the medium of graphic novel to tell the moving, and sometimes hair-raising story of his father, Vladek: a holocaust survivor from Poland.



Juxtaposed against scenes where a now middle-aged Art is chatting with his elderly father in his home in Queens are scenes of the gradual chokehold that that Nazis formed around what later became Nazi-controlled territories. Vladek Spiegelman married into wealth with his first wife, Anja, and their lives before the war were rather luxurious. Slowly that all dwindled as their predominately Jewish area became one of the ghettos, and they were forced to run and hide for many years, until at last, someone promising to smuggle them both into Hungary betrayed them to the Nazis, and they ended up at Auschwitz.



Even though this is told biography-style, MAUS reads as being a little surreal, because Art chose to draw all of the "people" in his book as animals: the Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, the neutral Poles are pigs, and the Americans of the present day are dogs. It was a really interesting choice stylistically, and I'm not completely sure why he did it - maybe to remove the reader one step from the horrors contained within the comic? There's a scene in here, one of the modern parts, about what happened when Vladek found a comic strip he did about his mother's suicide, which is included as an excerpt. This comic, "Prisoner on Planet Hell" is done with real people, which adds an extra layer of surrealism: a mouse, writing his memoir as a human.



If you're interested in WWII history and enjoy those "literary" graphic-novels that are about more weighty topics than capes and superheroes, I really recommend MAUS. Vladek is such an interesting man, and his firsthand account of survival is just that: firsthand. Really exceptional read.



4 to 4.5 stars