Maus I

Maus I: My Father Bleeds History is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about the Holocaust. The novel is told in the point of view of the author, the son of a Holocaust survivor, who visits his father's house from time to time to learn about his experience in the Holocaust. One notable aspect of the graphic novel is that Spiegelman chooses to represent the different groups of people with different animals: the Jews being mice, the Poles pigs, and the Nazis cats. This was to easily distinguish between the three different kinds of people, and allowed Spiegelman to easily depict the times when his father would pretend to be a Pole (a mouse wearing a pig mask).

Compared to the first graphic novel I picked up for this project, Watchmen, Maus has a much simpler art style and seems to focus more on conversation and description rather than action. Narration or dialogue accompanies each panel, and events like shootings and hangings seem to all happen at a distance - for example, in a scene where Vladek (Art Spiegelman's father) volunteers to help bring his family to safety, he is simply drawn looking around the corner at a shooting represented by only sound effects.

Maus transitions seamlessly between two worlds: the world of Vladek Spiegelman struggling for survival, and the world of Art Spiegelman as he interviews his father. Yet, the two worlds could be no more different - one takes place in work camps, attics, and secret bunkers in Nazi-controlled Poland, and the other in a relatively peaceful neighborhood in New York. In the 1940's Vladek would be scavenging for food, digging hideouts, and making decisions that could determine the fate of his wife, his family, and himself, and in the 1980's he would be counting his pills, pedaling his exercise bike and having arguments with his second wife Mala over his will. To show this contrast is a great way to expose the true nature of the Holocaust. Over the course of the novel, Art Spiegelman's interviews also reveal much of his father's true personality, which runs consistently with his actions during the Holocaust.

The graphic novel ends on a cliffhanger, as it is continued in Maus II.