Reviews with content warning for Violence - Maus: A História de um Sobrevivente. I, O Meu Pai Sangra História

even though the book's subject has been done countless times, maus somehow feels even more harrowing than most because of its characters' depiction as mice, cats, and pigs..like a graphic novel version of orwell's 1984. It was surreal seeing the spiegelmans disappear to the nazi's atrocities one by one. also appreciate the author's realistic and humanistic portrayal of his father.

despite being about an event that has been told in various forms countless times, this book still manages to be shocking, jarring, and evocative through the personal tale that illustrates people as complex beings and very impactful drawings. drawing the characters as animals is such a simple method, but it's surprisingly effective.

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selfsoulfriend's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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bekkabergamot's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

This book is heartbreaking and it is also essential. Sadly, Holocaust misinformation and denial is at an all time high, so is antisemitism. Reading books by survivors and the children of them is crucial in understanding the true horrors that were inflicted upon the Jewish and other communities. Approximately 6 million Jewish people and 5 million prisoners of war were murdered by the Nazis. According to the World Population Review, there were 14.7 million Jewish people reported globally in 2021. While that number is subjective, it does adequately display that the Holocaust eliminated almost half of the population of surviving Jews, or slightly under 1/3 of the Jewish population at the time.

<i>Maus: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1)</i> goes between the complicated relationship that Art Spiegelman had with his father as he interviews his father for his book and then goes back in time to depict his father's story of anguish and survival. If you haven't read this yet, add it to your TBR!

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rozz's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

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rachelwierick's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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erine's review against another edition

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4.75

I've read these books so many times at this point, but with a book like this it lands a little differently each time. As a kid, it was a thrilling, realistic, horror-filled tale of history. I could imagine myself doing the right thing, or being clever enough to survive the deprivations and tragedies. I read it as a comfort, confident that these horrors would not happen again. As a grown-up, I read it in the full knowledge that humanity's depths are never fully plumbed. People never get tired of cheap tricks for power, of diminishing another's humanity in order to reinforce one's own worth, of sowing chaos for pleasure. And while I also know that there will also always be beacons of humanity's light, people willing to take risks both big and small to help others, who will always reinforce another's humanity, the weight of the former knowledge is heavy.

What I like about this narrative is that it shows not only what happened during the Holocaust, but simultaneously tells of the contemporary relationship between father and son. In this context, the two timelines are somewhat reassuring: the Reader knows that Vladek will not die because he is here before us, telling his son his story. But he still has to pass through the horrors. The back-and-forth has the added benefit of showing the Reader what happens to history: how much is forgotten or lost. Art listens to his father's story, but also hungers to hear what his mother's experience would have been like. In our current time, as Holocaust survivors are lost to old age, this lesson of history hits hard.

By depicting each person as an animal, Spiegelman offers the tiniest distance between the Reader and reality. The book comes across as fantasy, to a degree, with the cats chasing the mice and the dogs coming in later to fight the cats. But the underlying tale is stark and depressing, and despite the cute animal faces, every piece of tragedy is clearly communicated. There is no mistaking the pain and suffering, even on a mouse face.

What strikes me as I'm reading this now is how lucky Vladek was. There's no questioning his intelligence and competence, but over and over and over and over again, he is saved by pure chance. A gun pointed at his head, only to have his name recognized; running into a person by chance on the street who can hide Vladek and Anja; even his bad luck ends not in immediate death but in imprisonment. In the United States, where rugged individualism and personal accomplishment is so highly prized, there's no doubt many readers who will hear Vladek's tale and think, "how clever, no wonder he survived." But there's absolutely no doubt reading his words that his sharpness only got him so far, and pure luck combined with the help of others also carried him through.

In the end, this is a highly accessible story of the beginnings of the Holocaust, as well as a clear-eyed story about the relationship between an aging father and his son.

Note: reference to depression and suicide, and Holocaust violence including executions and child abuse.

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