MAUS+I+&+II

MAUS I & II by Art Spiegelman

I really enjoyed these two books. Art Speiglman was able to really help me understand and comprehend what happened during the Holocaust. Even though I already new a lot about it form previous years of studying it in school, the books really helped me understand more of the emotional side of the Holocaust. I liked how in a way, I could understand what was going through the characters' heads, and I could tell how their experiences were affecting them. One question that I have about this book is wether or not this is an auto biography or not, because the author never actually states if it is or not. The similarities are so close that it has to be, right? I liked how the author included a little part in the second book that I took to be about him writing the book. I especially liked the drawing with the pile of dead mice. I think that was supposed to represent all of his ideas, and how they didn't work out. They all, in a way, died, just like a lot of the Jews/mice did during the Holocaust. One thing that I wish the author had done better in this book is explain more about Anja. Maybe for one part of the book he could have switched over to her perspective. I was always a little confused where Anja was in the books in terms of what concentration camp or hide out. Also, I was a little confused about when Anja was "replaced" with Mala. One character that I was confused about was Mala. I didn't understand why she stayed with Vladek for so long. She said almost every time Art was at their house how much she hated living with him. And then, even though she left him, why did she go back? I wish the author had gave us more of Vladek and Mala's history, rather than just having them together and that be it. Overall, I really enjoyes the book, and would definetely recommend it for others to read -Ali B

I really enjoyed reading MAUS for several reasons. Primarily because this is the first graphic novel that I have ever read. Secondly, I think that it was very well written as well as well illustrated.

What makes this book different than other books about the Holocaust is how the author has a lot take place in the present. I think that this shows how Vladek was changed by the Holocaust and expresses how much the people affected by it were changed forever. Vladek is always trying to save things and at one point he even glues a cereal box closed to return it because he cannot eat the cereal. He was short of food and money when he was in the camps which changed him so that now he is very money and food conscious. Once Vladek and Artie were walking to the bank and Vladek picked up a piece on phone wire. When Artie asks him why he picked up this wire when he could buy a nicer one from the store. Vladek replies,"Pssh. Why always you want to buy when you can find!? Anyway, this wire they don't have in stores. Inside it's little wires. It's good for tying things."

I recommend MAUS for everyone to read because it helped me understand the Holocaust better and because it is very well written. Still some parts are still confusing to me. Do you think that even though Mala ran away that she truly loves Vladek? I do because they ended up remarrying in the end. Also, why do you that Vladek burned Anja's diary?

-Jacob Payne

I believe that Jacob wrote a really great piece and I think that he is right in many ways and also has great posts. I think it is really sad what the holocaust did to Vladek and how he can never waste anything like when Mala opened the second container of salt even though there was still some salt left in the other container and Vladek went insane, I thought that was really sad because it is mainly a really bad case of post traumatic stress disorder. Also I think that Vladek has a really depressing life on how he went through the holocaust and survived but all of his friends and family had died and he could only help Anja survive by giving her few bread scraps. What I thought was really depressing was that Vladek couldn't help Anja to the extent that if she didn't have the will to live then she would have died but luckily she did want to live, which brings me to my next point. I didn't get it when Art wrote the comic prisoners from hell and when he went home and his mother had committed suicide I didn't get if she had killed herself because or Art or because she was just so depressed. The worst part of all in the books I think is when Vladek burns all the diaries and writings of Anja which could have been made into a great book by art and how he got so mad at Vladek and called him a murderer which was sad to see because Vladek was so depressed. I think Vladek had the worst life, his former wife who he loved so much killed herself, his son hates him to an extent, he married Mala who can't stand him, Mala leaves him, he has P.T.S.D., and is very depressed, I'm surprised he didn't kill himself by now because he seems like he hates life itself.

These books are great reads and I would recomend them to anyone who would like a great read. -Drew

I loved Maus and Maus 2. They both really spoke to me. I have never read a book that primarily focussed on the holacaust before. I know the numbers, but I have never followed the story of one specific Jew. The books made me view the holacaust in a dramatically different way. The one thing that really stuck out to me was the racism, and how Nazism was so deeply implanted in the European culture. One specific incident of racism was in Maus one when Vladek was walking through a park. It was in 1942, so the holacaust was in full swing, while he was walking through the park, a bunch of kids saw him and yelled. "Jew! Jew! Mommy help me!" Vladek then ran over to the kids and their mothers and raised his arm up and yelled, "Its okay! Hail Hitler!" the mothers then said "Im sorry, you know how kids are." That scene really spoke to me. I didnt know that even children had been trained to hate jews. Another thing i found wrong with that scene was how the kids could just tell that he was jewish, you have to be trained to do that, and they obviously were trained. The third thing that bugged me about that scene was how the mothers didnt do anything to their children when they yelled "Jew! Jew!" as if they were expected to do that. Vladek told Art Speiglman that they told their kids that Jews would bag and eat them. I dont think that is something that you tell your kids. A new thing that I discovered by reading this book is how concentration camps deteriorated people. In Maus 2 Vladek makes a friend named Mandelbaum. He isnt one of the main characters but it describes him before concentration camp. One thing that really alarmed me was how Auschwitz just deteriorated him as a person. I couldnt imagine myself in concentration camp. I cant imagine losing so many family members and basically accepting the fact that i was going to die. Could you? It would truly be horrible. I think that Vladek burned Anja's diary because it reminded him to much of the war. Why do you all think that all of the characters were represented by animals? I think that it was because __Animal Farm__ by George Orwell was such a powerful book representing real life events with animals -Robbie H

I enjoyed reading Maus 1 and 2. I thought it was really smart of the author to use animals as characters instead of humans. I think it makes the story more interesting to read. At some points of the story I thought that the Germans would eat the Jews because of real life. The cat eats the mouse. I have lots of respect for Jews that had to go through this hard time. After being sent to camps, hiding, and almost being caught, they survived. While reading this book, I would stop, and I’d asked myself. Would I have been able to survive that? This book made me think of how privileged I was. I had a bed that comforted me, a home that sheltered me from the evils of the world. Vladek slept on the ground, in tents, in the cold. A theme that this books represents is that until something happens and opens your eyes, you don’t fully see how privileged you are. Something that annoyed me was that Vladek wouldn’t divorce Mala in Maus 1. Vladek knew that all was his money, but he still wouldn’t divorce her. I agree with Robbie on the kids’ scene. It surprised me that the kids were able to tell that he was a Jew. By just reading that scene you can tell that Jews were a huge topic of conversation. I thought that Vladek, Anja and Art Spiegelman were the most important characters of this story. Art Spiegelman was a main character because if it wasn’t for his idea of creating the book his father wouldn’t have shared his story. I thought that Vladek and Anja were also important characters because it’s both of their experiences being shared to form this story. I recommend these two books for next year. The author talked about a sad, terrible time that Jews had to go through, but at the same time he added creativity to it. -Jennifer R.

I really liked Maus I and Maus II. They were both great, but I thought that the second book was especially good. I didn't like the first book as much because I don't really think it had a great ending. I thought the ending to the first book was quite sudden. The book was starting to flow and everything was coming together when you flipped the page and it is over. I loved the second book though. The explanations of the camps were great. The illustrations also helped a lot in making you really see what went on. I agree with Jennifer's statement about why the author used specific animals for people from each different country. The cats were probably put as the Germans because, as Jennifer said, cats are known to eat and chase mice and the Germans were the oppressors. I think that the author made the dogs the Americans because when the mice are being chased by the cats, the dog comes and scares off the cat. In the second book, at the end when they are all out of the concentration camps and just wandering around in the town, they keep getting caught by germans, but then when they think the germans are going to kill them, the germans just end up running away because of the americans liberating the town. The two animals that confused me were the pigs and the fish. The pigs were the non-jewish pols, and the fish were the british. The british were never a big part of the story, but close to the end of the second book, you see two fish driving a jeep with a british flag on it. The pols were in both the books a lot, and they were never shown as the good guys, or the bad guys. There were some that housed the jews and did anything they could to help them. Then there were pols who were shown as being just as evil as the germans. Throughout Vladek's time in the multiple prison camps he was at, most of the pols were friendly and shared their food with Vladek for small favors, but some of the pols that were just civilians, were not so nice. Most of the civilian pols would agree to hide some jews, but then when a german jeep went by, they would just turn them in. Also some of the pols would still kill jews for no reason after the war. I think the use of animals made the book really good. -Henry Fink

I really liked this book. I have never read anything that follows one person through the Holocaust, and it made the things that happened more real to me. One part that was especially disturbing to me was the story of when the one Jew returned to his home and found another family living there. He tried to tell them that it was his house, but they laughed, and killed him. He had survived Auschwitz, came home expecting to find his family and some food, and was instead killed. Just when he had hope that he was finally free and his life could return to normal, he died. What the Germans did squashed many hopes, dreams, and lives. I liked both of the books, but in the second one, I didn't like the section when Art reaches a block. He shows himself as a child being surrounded by people asking him questions, and all he wants to do is be alone. Although it was chronologically accurate, I didn't feel that it was necessary. It did show his internal conflicts with the death of both of his parents, but it did not assist his father's story, or his relationship with his father. After his father died, it was lucky he had everything on tape. If his dad had died before the end of his story, we could never have known what happened to the crazy old man who survived the Holocaust. When Vladek went to Auschwitz, I think Art did a dood job of showing things, even though he could not have known what it actually looked like. The dead bodies that were shown in the background in a lot of scenes really showed how horrible it was there. This book showed two stories, and both were very important. Without the scenes with his father, we couldn't have found out how the Holocaust affected Vladek later, Art's relationship with his father, or how his father eventually died. Without the scenes in his father's story, there wouldn't have been this book. His mother's death showed how much it affected the whole family, and his father's relationship with Mala showed that they could never be the same again. This book showed how the holocaust still affects people, even though it ended many years ago. -Bess R

I really enjoyed reading this book. Actually, I take that back. I do think that Maus l and ll were pretty incredible books, but to say that i enjoyed reading them isn't true. I found it hard to wrap my mind around not only the written words but also the illustrations. The way Vladek so easily told the story in brutal detail quite honestly left me stunned. If that weren't enough, the images that accompanied this gruesome story of survival seemed horrifyingly accurate. The creative choice of using cats, mice, and pigs as the people made the book much more manageable, but it still seemed more real than I'd ever like to imagine. Though the Holocaust was and still is an undeniably important time in history, it never really felt believable to me. I was not one of those people who denied it ever happened, but I found it hard to imagine that all of these people acted like Jew killing robots without seeming to feel any sort of remorse. The way Vladek describes the officers smashing little children into brick walls, that just seemed too gruesome for words, but after reading more and more, it became clear that these people either believed what they were doing was right or were too scared to do anything but what they were ordered to do. After you kill someone, I think, you'll look for any way to justify it, and that makes it all the easier for you to be controlled. Don't get me wrong, I'm not siding with the Nazis, and I don't really see how you could not eventually notice that killing kids is wrong, but reading this book you cant help but wonder how the officers didnt simply open their eyes to how wrong what they were doing was. This book, as a whole, really helped me understand just how real this nugget of historical horror was and still is to many. Although I said that the illustrations scared me, I don't think i would have made it through this seemingly endless story of constant struggle without them. The mice, cats, and pigs were much easier to see in pain than humans. Overall, though i struggled getting my overly protected mind around the struggles and death which surrounded that time, the books did an amazing job of educating me on this particularly memorable genocide. -Alice G

This book was the first graphic novel I’ve ever read. It was hard to read at first because I didn’t know how to read it when two boxes were connected horizontally. After learning what to do with that, I understood the book.

I liked the book a lot. I didn’t know that people tried to make deals with the Nazi soldiers to run away. I also didn’t know that Jewish people had to work while they were kept in concentration camps. This book taught me a lot about the Nazis that I didn’t know about.

I didn't like how Anja died. I know that this book is based off of a true story, so the reader won’t know why she died. It says that she didn’t leave a suicide note. That’s what I didn’t like. Why would she kill herself after surviving something that most Jews didn’t? She was one of the luckiest people, and she threw her life away and the information that she could have passed on to people.

I liked this book because it taught about the Holocaust, but it did so in a way that kept readers engaged. It wasn’t like a documentary. It wasn’t boring. At the end of the book, It was sad how the author put his parents’ grave and then it said that he died as well. That was the worst part of the book. It was also the most powerful part because it shows to the reader that the author has done his part by teaching us about the Holocaust, and now, it’s our turn to do it as well. The death symbolizes accomplishment, that you’ve done your part in the world. We read the book so that we could do our part next. Overall, I think the book was great. I encourage others to read it as well. Sisay T.

I enjoined the combination of these two books because it showed how Art Spiegelman, the author, really tried to educate his readers about how bad the holocaust was by making it into a graphic novel for young adults. He was very creative my making different animals different people and nationalities. The author kept the reader wanting to know what would happen next just like any old chapter book.

Being Jewish, I have grown up knowing about the holocaust in a more educational way. For example in Sunday school we had to do a bunch of writing assignments in the holocaust and how that holocaust still effects our lives currently. My point is that this book by Art Spiegelman depicts the horrors and how it wasn't just a mass killing of Jewish people in Europe, it was also a battle to be granted true freedom. Because I am Jewish and have ancestors who were from Poland I have heard many stories that are alike but not as gruesome.

To answer Sisay Tadesse's question about why Anja would just kill herself after what she had done escaping the wrath of the holocaust, I would think that maybe she had just seen to many terrible things in her lifetime. Maybe she just couldn't live a normal life after being in a concentration camp. Multiple concentration camps.

This book I think could be used to be read by people to learn about the hola cause in not such a direct way. Instead of talking about how many people were killed, they very well could read this book and connect themes from this to a part of World War 2. I do have in question that I couldn't really find in the graphic novel. Are Artie and his father close? Has the holocaust come between them?

Overall this book was very helpful and interesting, and I recommend that people read it.

Leo S.

I definitely enjoyed this book. It was the last and best reading bowl book i've read so far this year. I really liked the graphic novel aspect of the story, because although i've read books about the holocaust, the pictures really helped convey the image to the readers. The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and Art Spiegelman proves that to be true in both books. I also liked how the story was divided into two parts. It gave me a clear view of the midway point in the story, and it helped me understand what time period we were in during the story.

I liked Leo's perspective on the book. Although I am not Jewish, I though his second paragraph was really good. He talks about growing up and learning about the holocaust in SUnday school, and how it was not only a mass killing of Jews, but how it was also a fight for freedom. As i said before, i think that learning about the Holocaust through pictures rather than just text helped covey the emotions and made you feel like you were actually in the story.

I would like to also talk about Sisay's question, because I think it is very good. It addresses a key point in the book which is discussed very briefly, which is the aftermath. It seemed so odd that Anja decided to commit suicide after all she had been through. The book did such a good job of describing their physical and emotional pain, and it leaves me to wonder why she would do this. I think the reason is a kind of PTSD. She was so traumatized from the affects of the Holocaust, seeing her family and her friends taken away, that she never really recovered. They talk about this with his father also, and how he refuses to spend a penny because he is obsessed with saving money. I believe this is because he had to save everything during the war, no matter how insignificant.

In conclusion, I thought this was the best reading bowl book and I would recommend it to anyone who was interested in learning about this time period.

-Cade W

I really enjoyed reading this book because I liked how much detail the pictures provided and showed the image to the reader. I think it helped to understand at certain points, and it showed how much more real it was for so many people. Especially on the parts where the prisoners were in the bunks and disease was spreading, it conveys how horrible it was. I also think it was very creative to use mice and pigs instead of people, so it would not be so awful, that readers would not like to continue reading. In some of the pictures, had the animals been humans, you would not have known who was a Jew, and who was German. That being said, The animals also add sort of an unrealistic story feeling. If Art Speigleman had made them humans, he could've made the story more realistic because the history is always told about humans, and the animals are never mentioned.

I enjoyed how the story went from arts life, dealing with his father, to his story about the haulocaust. I think it provided a good way to make the book interesting, rather than if drone on and on about one story. I also think that it showed how well vladek can remember it, in great detail. Also, this counteracts the animal thing by letting the reader get to know the person who went through the story, and is telling the story. My favorite part of this book was that it was a graphic novel. The images help readers understand the suffering, and awful things that happened, as well as the happy ending. Graphic novels go with the saying, "a picture tells a thousand words." Also, the drawings make it impossible to tune out and keep reading. You always have to be consciously reading the speech bubbles, and descriptions.

Overall, this was one of my favorite reading bowl books, and I thing it should continue to be a reading bowl book, because it gives a cool perspective on something terrible that happened. -Riley O

I really liked these graphic novels, and I thought they were very interesting and intriguing. The author does a great job of making the audience being able to relate to his grandfather's stories because it is coming from an actual person and he shows the illustrations and story to such depth. I found it very interesting how he wrote the whole story in a graphic novel form rather than a written story. I feel like making it into a graphic novel was a good choice so he could depict the story in very symbolic ways. He draws all the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats that makes you feel that there is an even at there is an even greater barrier between them. He depicts the Jews at that time being treated less than the Nazis as he drew them as cat and mouse so it show the Nazis were dominating them. Hence, this is the game of “cat and mouse”. I really liked how the author had lots of authorial intrusions but in a drawn version. He always had multiple stops where something happened in the present time period that caused the storyteller(his grandfather) to stop regaling. Not only does he do a great job in captivating it, he also does a great job making the audience think that the book actually takes place in the present. He makes it so that even though the stories being told are in the past, the pictures make you feel like it was actually happening at that time in the book.

The author constantly shows us the theme of grief, sorrow, memory, love, and passion because his grandfather doesn’t want to talk about the Holocaust but does anyway. When he tells the stories, they are in great detail and he remembers all the names of the people whom he interacted with. He also shows lots of emotional reactions during certain events that happen in his storytelling and shows it in the present of the book during authorial intrusions. The thing I like most is the author’s writing. His writing in the conversations of the story is very refined and quick to the point. He creates an aura and personality of himself in the authorial intrusions when he asks his father questions.

All in all, this book was amazing and very heartfelt. It shows the struggles of the author’s grandfather and other Jews during the Holocaust. It was inspiring and kept the audience on edge, always wanting for more. It was a quick read, yet it still leaves many important attributes to life and shows off important morales.

- Sophia H.