Compulsory reading (Maus: A Survivor's Tale - Art Spiegelman)

Member Name: madSEM

Product:	Maus: A Survivor's Tale - Art Spiegelman
Date:	05/10/09 (77 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A compelling read that will have you absolutely absorbed from the first to last page

Disadvantages: None

I studied Maus as one of the books for my dissertation on Holocaust literature. As a piece of Holocaust literature it is completely unique. It is hard to know where to start with what makes Maus so special yet so important to read.

For a start Maus is narrated in comic form. You may think this is an inappropriate method to relay the Holocaust yet it allows Art Spiegelman to illustrate his interpretation of Vladeks (his fathers)story through a use of symbology and metaphor. The characters in the comic form appear as animals depending of their nationality, for example: the Jews are rats, the Germans the cats, Americans dogs, the French frogs and the Polish are pigs. The cats hunt the rats, the dogs chase the cats etc.

Another important part of Maus is the presence of Vladek in the past (in the story he tells Art) and also in the present day. The reader can see the effects Vladek's story has had on his present self. Art's job as the writer is to portray Vladek's story as closely as he can. The reader can actually see the difficulty Art faces in portraying Vladek's story. It is such a huge burden and responsibility to portray the Holocaust. Maus shows what it means to be in the second generation that the generation after those who experienced the Holocaust. The suffering is so fresh still and the events so relevant to Art's own life that he feels himself strangulated by the need to tell the tale but the importance to tell it properly.

However what Spiegelman comes up with in Maus is nothing short of a triumph, it is the middle ground between a survivor testimony and a fictional tale - Vladek's story and Art's interpretation, the effects of the Holocaust on Art and Vladek - the tremors that move through time. Make sure you read this book if you have any interest in the Holocaust.

Summary: A must read