The Complete Maus

8.5/10
Hard-hitting in all the right ways, Maus is as equally focused on the victims of the Holocaust as they suffered through it, as well on what happened after. Plus, I liked Spiegelman's depictions of humans from different races/nationalities being portrayed as various species of animals - because, after all, isn't that why the Second World War took place? I was also sold on the distinctions more or less breaking down near the end, which is what Spiegelman was going for - how arbitrary and fragile the differences we create are.
Truly one of the great graphic novels. An immensely readable and accessible account of the horrors of the 1930s and 40s, I'd highly recommend this.

Wow. Just wow. The author's tortured relationship with his father seems so petty in the face of all his father suffered. But his father's persecution during WWII informs many of his “quirks” and the reasons for strife between them. It's very sad but very important that people understand how horrific this time period was.

The characterization of the different races/ethnicities/religions as different animals helps the reader see at once which “side” a person is on—down to some nice wearing masks to pretend they're not Jewish.

Much of what we know about concentration camps comes from Auschwitz—it's one of the few camps where some people came out alive. Vladek's account of his time there confirms what we know and provides more depth and understanding.

A must-read for anyone and everyone.

-Why would you cry, Artie?
-I...I fell and my friends skated away without me
-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!

El diálogo entre padre e hijo que sirve de introducción a Maus advierte al lector sobre lo que se viene.

En un tema abordado de tantas formas y en tanta cantidad de obras como el holocausto es muy difícil ser original, pero Spiegelman lo logra con un talento inédito. El formato cómic, a priori de dudosa pertinencia para un tema tan sensible, es explotado por el autor al máximo: aplica las dosis justas de narrativa y de representación gráfica.

La intercalación del presente en el cual el autor escribe/dibuja y del pasado narrado por su padre es tan buena que la obra termina siendo, sin que el lector se de cuenta, también acerca de la relación de padre e hijo. Como necesariamente debe ser toda narración sobre el holocausto, la obra es cruda pero Spiegelman aplica un excelente criterio sobre qué mostrar y de qué forma hacerlo. Logra transmitir el horror y la tristeza, sin recurrir a lo explícito. En eso, la representación de las personas en animales ayuda bastante.

De lectura imprescindible.

I was surprised at how Spiegelman managed to give a new layer to a time in history that has countless books written about it and movies made and that many people think they know everything about. Vladek Spiegelman was a surprisingly unlikable narrator and the characters, be they Jewish mice, Nazi cats, Polish pigs or American dogs were frighteningly human.
Full review here: http://sffbookreview.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/art-spiegelman-the-complete-maus/

It was really good. I loved the way it is was written, sort of meta at some points which was really nice. It grounded the story even more in a reality than it already was. It tells the story of a Jewish WWII survivor personally, and it's so emotional. When volume II began and the author was telling about how the father had died and he was having trouble continuing the story, it's just felt so much. Really really liked it. Super sad, but also kind of cathartic. It was really easy to get into and I didn't at all mind the way people were drawn with different animal faces depending on what nationality they were. It was a nice way to show certain things, and how when a jew would disguise themselves as Polish officers, they would be drawn as wearing a pig-mask. I just really dig the way it was told and the honesty in the way the son had grown up with a survivor who had sometimes been a pretty harsh father, and he wasn't maybe particularly fond of him. But he wanted to tell the story and, ahh, okay I just really liked it.

I think I had read this in high school and remember thinking it was great, but I just re-read it and whew. It's great.

Also the idea of wanting to ban this over sketchy black and white mouse nudity is so absurd. Like of course the real problem is antisemitism. But to be like “it's inappropriate for my child to see a cartoon mouse without clothes on.” Like are YOU some kind of mouse pervert. What are you doing.

Anyway. I don't have a hot take on Maus or anything, it's just a great artistic achievement and document to a truly fucked up historical event and its ongoing repercussions and it's fucked up that anybody is mad about mouse nudity!!! I hate it here

I'm honored to read a memoir as compelling as this one. No words I say can suffice how beautiful the drawings were drawn nor could go at length on how well Art Spiegelman recalled his father's stories at the Holocaust and his strained relationship with his aging father. Kudos to Art Spiegelman for writing this memoir with dignity and integrity. I'm sure your father is proud of you for sharing this amazing memoir with others.

I didn't realize first going into this that this was a memoir. I guess from the cover I assumed it was a depiction of the Holocaust with a ‘cat and mouse' metaphor. I realized as soon as I started reading that this wasn't fiction and it made the analogy all the more powerful.

Comic writer and illustrator Art Spiegel tells his father's WWII survival story in a series of two books (combined into one edition in this printing). Though not illustrations of humans, the imagery of the concentration camps (and what Jewish people went through in general) is as grim as you'd expect them to be. This isn't a watered-down narration that tried to spare the reader from the horrors. It's a raw and honest account.

The book is told brilliantly going back and forth between Art's conversations with his father as he relayed his story to that story unfolding on the pages. There are some abrupt starts and finished here and there, but it added to the tone of the book. There is still so much we don't know about what happened during the Holocaust that we may never learn.

In addition to being a book about the Holocaust (namely in Poland), it's also a book about the relationship between a father and son. Intergenerational trauma is a fascinating psychological phenomenon. This has often been seen among children with parents who have had traumatic experiences before their children were born. This along with the natural generational gap between parents and children makes up a lot of the subtext in Art and Vladek's story.

Perhaps it's needless to say that this book is going to stay with me for a long time. It's right up there with The Diary of a Young Girl and The Boy on the Wooden Box. The stories of these victims must be kept alive. 

A real and horrifying look in the Holocaust and Auschwitz... A book that will haunt you. I feel this book should be read, so something so horrific never happens again, a reminder of the horrors done to innocent people.
Potent and filled with symbolism, the analogy of the Jews being mice, and the Germans as cats was horrifying in itself, and greatly fitting.

Maus by Art Spiegelman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about Art Spiegelman's relationship with his father, Vladek, who was a Holocaust survivor along with Spiegelman's mother, Anja. The book description from the publisher describes it best: “A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.”

I reread this brilliant graphic novel for the fourth time recently, having purchased a beautiful, hardcover edition in support of Art Spiegelman after a school board in Tennessee voted unanimously in January 2022 to ban this great book. Their reasons were nonsense, as the nudity in the book is nonsexual and the profanity is minimal. This graphic novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, the only graphic novel still to this day to have won this prestigious award. It is an affecting depiction of Art Spiegelman's parents both surviving the Holocaust during World War II as well as Spiegelman's relationship with his cantankerous father as he tries to dictate his father's story before he's too old and feeble to retell it. It is an artist's memoir and a father's biography about a marriage that survived one of the most horrific moments in history and a cartoon depiction of history all rolled into one. It even has moments of hilarity—if you can believe it—where Art and his father Vladek's personality differences are so stark that it's a wonder that Spiegelman ever finished creating this graphic novel. It has been on school library shelves since 1992. Banning it now is political garbage policy, a reflection of the fascist leanings of the current Republican Party. The news of banning this book has brought more notoriety and sales for this graphic novel; it became a bestseller for the first time in almost three decades and was on back-order the day I purchased it on January 30, 2022, as it should be. If there is one graphic novel or book about the Holocaust that you want on your family's bookshelf, then this is the one.

I really enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. I would give this book 5 stars.

Having seen many Holocaust films, this book provides an understanding of not just the gas chambers and concentration camps, but also Jew's behavior after the war. As survivors, they are impacted by PTSD, which affects their family and societal structure. There is no doubt that the characters provide a different perspective from the usual narratives. As an ambitious Polish Jew, this guy tries a variety of businesses and settles on marrying a rich Jewish girl in order to achieve upward mobility. The Nazis are sketched as cats, the Jews as mice, the Americans as dogs, and the Poles as pigs and they are highly relevant to the narrative, to illustrate the the Nazi campaign. It is more common for rich Jews to speak the language of the locals rather than Yiddish, and to name their children after Christian names rather than Yiddish.

Till 1920's wealthy Jews were into pan European nationalism and they settled in eastern Europe, east-central Europe and south-eastern Europe. Both the legal status of Jewish communities and their internal development differed considerably from region to region. In western Europe, the process of emancipand later they split into three parts, the ultraorthodox Haisdic jews were ultraorthodox, the blue collar jews were communist, and the rich jews were capitalistic, their lack of unity cost them dearly after WW1. When the Nazi party began blaming the rich jews for the loss of Germany in WW1. With these things, we can see how the socialist movement engineered anger towards capitalist Jews. Overall the story moves as any comic would without getting into these subtleties. Even so, it's obvious from what has happened that this was a catastrophic event when all odds were against them. It was through sheer will and survival instincts that protagonis survives the genocide.