Maus
Author: Art Spiegelman
Release: November 11, 1996
Tagline: A Survivor’s Tale
Publisher: Pantheon
Genre: History, Graphic Novel
ISBN-10: 0679406417
ISBN-13: 978-0679406419
Synopsis: It is the story of Vladek Speigelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
Declassified by Agent Palmer: Being Jewish colors the black-and-white history in Maus
Quotes and Lines
Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week …. …then you could see what it is, friends!…
Wait! Please, Dad, if you don’t keep your story chronological, I’ll never get it straight … Tell me more about 1941 and 1942.
No, Darling! To die, it’s easy… But you have to struggle for life. Until the last moment we must struggle together! I need you! And you’ll see that together we’ll survive. This always I told her.