Maus is a very unique memoir in both content and form. Please use this thread to jot down your reactions to the text. If you're new to the graphic novel, what's your perception of the form?
I really liked how the memoir touches on both the present and past. While this is common aspect of the memoir style, it is even more effective because of the accompanying images. I think these two mediums compliment each other greatly.
I think the way mice were Jews, pigs were poles, and cats were nazis was brilliant. I also loved when a mouse was wearing a pig mask. It was an incredibly effective form of characterization. My favorite example was on page 136 in the bottom left. Vladek and Anja both have pig masks, but Anja has a large mouse tail hanging out of her coat, and the narration was "you could see more easy she was Jewish."
I was surprised at how quickly I got into the story. I felt like the graphics would distract me or not weave as intense of a story. The story was just as intricate and I was really drawn in. I loved the story. I kind of feel like if it wasn't graphic I might not have liked it as much. Everyone's read at least one holocaust story, but this one stand apart.
I think the way Maus uses animal imagery to explain a really historically important and really devastating topic is interesting. The mice as the Jews, the pigs as the Polish and the cats as the Nazis was really interesting because, underneath the way those peoples related is the way the animals in particular relate to each other in the world. I agree with Clayton on the characterization being interesting. I found the graphics very engaging, and I'm not a big graphic novel reader so when I was reading I found that I related in a really different way, because my brain sort of incorporated the pictures as I was reading the text. Its just a different experience than just prose, and it made me really excited to write my own graphic memoir.
This is a kind of random aspect of the book that I noticed and didn't think to bring up when we talked about the Prisoner on the Hell Planet segment. I don't know anything about Art Spiegelman's mother other than what's mentioned in Maus, but I liked how there was some foreshadowing concerning her depression and eventual suicide. It's on page 31, after Richieu is born, so I figured Anja had post-partum depression. Then she heads to the sanitarium, and things obviously get worse from then on. It's really sad how there's this little detail that's affected by the bigger picture, then affects the author tremendously. But it's really well done.
I really enjoyed reading Maus. I'm not a big reader, but I think the simple writing style of the graphic novel makes it both easy and enjoyable to read. My only dissapointment with the novel was that it didn't give closure to Vladek's story. I really want to read book two and find out how Vladek makes it out of Auschwitz alive. I thought it was interesting how Art Spiegelman ended the first part of Maus with him calling his father a murderer. The whole graphic novel seems to memorialize his father and his father's struggle to stay alive, so I thought the ending slightly deviated from the tone Spiegelman upheld throughout most of the book.
I thought Maus was an amazing story. I totally disregarded that the people were drawn as mice and cats and got into the story rather easily. I'm polish so the story being set in Poland was exciting but kind of heartbreaking at the same time. I've visited a concentration camp in Austria and this story totally brought me back to when I was there, actually standing in front of one of the ovens the Nazis had used. The subject matter is absolutely depressing but I feel like Art Spiegelman struck a good balance between a certain lightheartedness and a definite somberness.
Like Riley said, I really liked how Spiegelman didn't just write down his father's history word for word, but rather he intertwined the telling of the story with how it was told to him. At the beginning of the story Art tells his father that he wants to read his mother's journals and write about her memories of the war as well, to balance out his father's views on the war and family history. He told his dad that this would make his story more "real" to people. I think that Art achieved "realness" when he was able to not only eloquently illustrate his family's history, but bring to life his relationship with his dad, and the man his dad had become post war.
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9 comments:
I really liked how the memoir touches on both the present and past. While this is common aspect of the memoir style, it is even more effective because of the accompanying images.
I think these two mediums compliment each other greatly.
I think the way mice were Jews, pigs were poles, and cats were nazis was brilliant. I also loved when a mouse was wearing a pig mask. It was an incredibly effective form of characterization. My favorite example was on page 136 in the bottom left. Vladek and Anja both have pig masks, but Anja has a large mouse tail hanging out of her coat, and the narration was "you could see more easy she was Jewish."
I was surprised at how quickly I got into the story. I felt like the graphics would distract me or not weave as intense of a story. The story was just as intricate and I was really drawn in. I loved the story. I kind of feel like if it wasn't graphic I might not have liked it as much. Everyone's read at least one holocaust story, but this one stand apart.
I think the way Maus uses animal imagery to explain a really historically important and really devastating topic is interesting. The mice as the Jews, the pigs as the Polish and the cats as the Nazis was really interesting because, underneath the way those peoples related is the way the animals in particular relate to each other in the world. I agree with Clayton on the characterization being interesting. I found the graphics very engaging, and I'm not a big graphic novel reader so when I was reading I found that I related in a really different way, because my brain sort of incorporated the pictures as I was reading the text. Its just a different experience than just prose, and it made me really excited to write my own graphic memoir.
This is a kind of random aspect of the book that I noticed and didn't think to bring up when we talked about the Prisoner on the Hell Planet segment. I don't know anything about Art Spiegelman's mother other than what's mentioned in Maus, but I liked how there was some foreshadowing concerning her depression and eventual suicide. It's on page 31, after Richieu is born, so I figured Anja had post-partum depression. Then she heads to the sanitarium, and things obviously get worse from then on. It's really sad how there's this little detail that's affected by the bigger picture, then affects the author tremendously. But it's really well done.
I really enjoyed reading Maus. I'm not a big reader, but I think the simple writing style of the graphic novel makes it both easy and enjoyable to read. My only dissapointment with the novel was that it didn't give closure to Vladek's story. I really want to read book two and find out how Vladek makes it out of Auschwitz alive. I thought it was interesting how Art Spiegelman ended the first part of Maus with him calling his father a murderer. The whole graphic novel seems to memorialize his father and his father's struggle to stay alive, so I thought the ending slightly deviated from the tone Spiegelman upheld throughout most of the book.
I thought Maus was an amazing story. I totally disregarded that the people were drawn as mice and cats and got into the story rather easily. I'm polish so the story being set in Poland was exciting but kind of heartbreaking at the same time. I've visited a concentration camp in Austria and this story totally brought me back to when I was there, actually standing in front of one of the ovens the Nazis had used. The subject matter is absolutely depressing but I feel like Art Spiegelman struck a good balance between a certain lightheartedness and a definite somberness.
Like Riley said, I really liked how Spiegelman didn't just write down his father's history word for word, but rather he intertwined the telling of the story with how it was told to him.
At the beginning of the story Art tells his father that he wants to read his mother's journals and write about her memories of the war as well, to balance out his father's views on the war and family history. He told his dad that this would make his story more "real" to people.
I think that Art achieved "realness" when he was able to not only eloquently illustrate his family's history, but bring to life his relationship with his dad, and the man his dad had become post war.
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