MAUS

MAUS

Thank you!

Persecution - Collection and exploitation

by Art Spiegleman

Exploitation

Collection

Persecution - identification

Persecution

Take note of the symbols we see..

Page 79 - 85

Unable to get a job

Unable to by without coupons

Note the Star of David

Reviews

Persecution Page 85

Maus memorializes Spiegleman's father's experience of the Holocaust - it follows his story, frame by frame, from youth and marriage in pre-war Poland to imprisonment in Auschwitz. The 'survivor's tale' that results is stark and unembellished. ONe of the cliches about the Holocaust is that you can't imagine it - like nuclear war, it's horro outfaces the artistic imagination. Spiegleman disproves that theory.

The Independent

Maus

Speigelman represented each if the different races and groups of people as different animals

Jews - Mice

Germans - Cats

The most shockingly relevant anti-Semitic work I found was The Eternal Jew, a 1940 German “documentary” that portrayed Jews in a ghetto swarming in tight quarters, bearded caftaned creatures, and then a cut to Jews as mice—or rather rats—swarming in a sewer, with a title card that said “Jews are the rats” or the “vermin of mankind.” This made it clear to me that this dehumanization was at the very heart of the killing project.

Art Spiegleman

In representing the Jews as mice, Spiegelman is playing off the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as vermin or pests, as less than human.

Poles - Pigs

Americans - Dogs

The Americans are depicted as dogs - they chase away the mans (cats) and save the Jews (mice)