Book Review

         

     From one artist to another, I must say I was completely taken a back from this graphic novel. I have a huge fascination with history and this book was absolutely perfect for me. Maus is different from pretty well every graphic novel I’ve seen, what I mean by that is the drawing style is less like a typical graphic novel you’d expect for example Watchmen, V for Vendetta..etc. and reads more like a newspaper comic strip. The drawing is very simple that consists of basically black and white sketches and yet it’s really effective for this story. Maus is a World War 2 story, and the story of Art Spiegelman’s conversations he has with his father Vladek Spiegelman who explains his time during world war two as a polish Jew. It begins with Vladeks early life, meeting and marrying Anja and trying to survive as a polish Jew while all the Jews are being rounded up by the Nazis. There are two aspects that specifically make Maus stand out. First is the drawing style, in addition to the simple style of drawing, all the human characters are depicted as animals. Or rather they have animal heads, the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats. The characters are human begins they just happen to look like animals and it’s never really acknowledged within the story that the characters appear this way, they just do to represent this game of cat and mouse. Normally I wouldn’t enjoy books that have animal characters; however it surprisingly is very effective. The second thing that makes Maus so good is the frame story. Maus is a story within the story, the internal story is of course the story of world war two and the time before Vladek got sent to Auschwitz. However the frame story involves Art Spiegelman and his relationship with his father as he tries to get these stories about World War two from his father. We see some well fleshed out characters with Art and Vladek, as we watch Vladek try to deal with the demons of his past and also the demons from the present because his wife Anja has recently committed suicide. We see that he and his son must both deal with that together. A prime example of this in the novel is on page 93 when Vladek discovers an old comic Art made just after his mother’s suicide called “Prisoner of Hell Planet “The comic was so personal, so dark and twisted but yet so real. It literally through me back in my seat, but I can appreciate it so much because it shows that Art isn’t afraid to go places where other artist shy away from. Vladek is not easy to get along with or fall in love with, he’s very miserly and very stubborn and very much the stereotypical Jew. A Fact that Art actually points out at one part of the story. “In some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew” (pg-131) so even though Art is frequently irritated by his father, he is attempting to understand his father by gaining an insight to these stories. We often see his father is not in the best of health; he recently suffered a heart-attack and is most likely not long for this world. Art see’s that it is important for him to get these stories while the previous generation is still living. I think this is the most important point to take from this book, the generation that actually lived through world war 2 is dwindling and it is important that we speak with them and get their stories while there still around. That’s how we gain the true stories of history and the true fascination that is inherent in history by listening to those generations and getting a real life perceptive.

Maus-Pantheon Books-1991