MAUS

I had heard a lot of good things about Maus before I signed up for this class. When I read through the syllabus and saw that we'd be reading it I was slightly excited. All I knew about Maus before reading it was that it was about the holocaust, the jews were mice, the germans were cats, and the americans were dogs. When I actually started reading Maus I ended up seeing something I never expected.

It was very clear from the get go that Maus was about itself being made. Instantly that caught my attention. I had no idea this story was an actual telling of somebody's life during the holocaust. I found myself wrapped in the storytelling quite quickly. The story felt so wonderfully real even though every character had become an animal. I felt more interested in learning about the holocaust than I had in a long time.

Spiegelman did amazing things with the way he illustrated his story. He constantly goes back and forth between what is the holocaust story and what is the learning of the story in present day. I feel like if you were to tell someone that the story goes back and forth to present day and flashbacks every other panel they would think that sounds confusing. It does sound confusing, but somehow when reading the story I never found myself getting lost between the two settings. It feels as seamless as a movie.

I found myself enjoying the first volume a lot more than the second volume. There was a really nice balance between the holocaust story and the present day story in the first volume. It maintained that balance all the way through the volume. Even though the holocaust story was more of the before the camps in volume one, it was definitely more interesting to hear. In the second volume the side of the story about the story took over most of the volume and I found myself hating it more and more as I went along. It got old fast. The second volume was riddled with how much Art couldn't stand his father and that all he wanted from the man was his story. The turning point from the end of the first volume shows reason for this behavior, but it's still really over the top and annoying.

There were a lot of small artistic nuances throughout Maus which made it even more lovely. Such things as the masks of other animals when pretending to be something else and the idea that people could just tell that you were a jew somehow. It was all very fascinating. I think my opinion on this whole Maus story has to fall on the line of I loved the first act, however the second act was lacking in that strong appeal the first one had.