Maus
Art Spiegelman (1991)
“A son asks his father how he survived Auschwitz. The answer breaks both of them — and you.”
At a Glance
In the present day, cartoonist Art Spiegelman interviews his aging father Vladek about his experiences as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust. The story alternates between Vladek's past — his courtship of Anja, the Nazi occupation of Poland, hiding, capture, and survival at Auschwitz — and Art's difficult present-day relationship with his difficult, penny-pinching, traumatized father. Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs. Vladek survived; Anja did not — she killed herself years after the war. Art's guilt over her suicide, his resentment of Vladek, and Vladek's destruction of Anja's wartime diaries form the book's emotional core alongside the Holocaust narrative itself.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Maus was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize (Special Award, 1992). It permanently altered the cultural perception of what comics could do and what subjects they could address. Before Maus, 'comics' and 'Holocaust' were not in the same sentence; after Maus, the graphic memoir became a legitimate literary form with serious cultural authority. The book has sold millions of copies worldwide and is taught in high schools and universities as both a Holocaust text and a work of formal literary art.
Diction Profile
Low — Vladek's broken English dominates the past narrative; Art's voice in present scenes is casual, darkly ironic
Very low in verbal content