maus book report

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-2

Part 1, Chapters 3-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-6

Part 2, Chapters 1-2

Part 2, Chapters 3-5

Key Figures

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

Maus by Art Spiegelman is the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. It originally ran in Spiegelman’s Raw magazine between 1980 and 1991 before receiving mainstream attention as two collected volumes, Maus I in 1986 and Maus II in 1991. This guide is based on the 1996 complete edition. This historic memoir interlaces two narratives, one of Spiegelman’s Jewish father as he survives World War II Poland and the Auschwitz concentration camp, and the other of Spiegelman recording his father’s story while navigating their contentious relationship. The graphic novel is notable for its art style , with the Jews drawn as mice , the Germans as cats , the Poles as pigs, and the Americans as dogs. The characters are depicted as animals to reflect the dehumanization caused by prejudice, war, and genocide.

Over several years cartoonist Art Spiegelman interviews his aging Jewish father, Vladek, to record his survival in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II, including roughly 10 months in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp (for this guide, “Spiegelman” refers to the author, while “Art” refers to his presentation of himself in the text). In the 1930s Vladek is a talented, multilingual salesman who weds the intelligent Anja Zylberberg. As the couple have a child, Richieu, and treat Anja’s severe depression, Nazi Germany ignites a new wave of anti-Semitism throughout Europe. When the Nazis invade Poland, Vladek reluctantly fights on the frontlines before facing capture and internment in a POW camp that purposely places Jewish prisoners in squalid conditions. Upon release, Vladek sneaks back into German-controlled territory to reunite with Anja and her family.

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Vladek takes black-market jobs and secures work papers to avoid both the Nazis and the Jewish authorities that cooperate with them. He and Anja’s family survive a mass inspection to send the elderly and large families to concentration camps, but it claims his father and sister. After initial resistance from Anja, they send Richieu into hiding with her relatives; sadly, Anja’s sister poisons herself and Richieu when soldiers clear out their ghetto. The Nazis send the remaining family to Srodula, where they build bunkers to avoid capture until an informant discovers them. Vladek and Anja escape deportation by paying off Vladek’s cousins, but they can’t save Anja’s parents. After hiding from the final elimination of the area, the Spiegelmans return to Sosnowiec to stay with sympathetic Polish residents. After several near discoveries, Vladek convinces Anja of a plan to sneak into Hungary, but the smugglers turn out to be Nazi collaborators.

As Art records his father’s story, he brushes against Vladek’s overbearing and stingy attitude. He is stubbornly self-reliant but cannot take care of himself due to heart, diabetic, and vision problems. Vladek discovers a stark comic by Art about Anja’s suicide, and Art rages at Vladek after learning that he burned her diaries. Vladek feuds with his second wife, Mala, and Art briefly stays with Vladek after she leaves him. As Art works on the second half of Maus , he struggles with his father’s death shortly after the interviews, the birth of his own son, and media scrutiny following the book’s breakout success. He reveals his paralysis at depicting Auschwitz and the psychological therapy he receives about his unresolved family tensions and the random nature of the Holocaust.

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Now a prisoner at Auschwitz, Vladek avoids elimination by teaching English to a Polish supervisor. The supervisor transfers Vladek to a tin shop, where he appeases his communist superior with food, and Vladek eventually becomes a shoe repairer. Learning that Anja is alive in the nearby Birkenau camp, Vladek reconnects with her and saves a stash of cigarettes to trade for her transfer to Auschwitz. They must avoid Nazi guards, however, with Vladek suffering a beating on one occasion.

As Russian troops approach Auschwitz, the guards march the prisoners hundreds of miles on foot to Gross-Rosen, where Vladek waits for days in a train of dying prisoners. At the Dachau camp, he contracts a debilitating case of typhus. When news arrives of a prisoner exchange, he pays other prisoners in bread to take him on the train. The Allies’ approach forces the Nazis to abandon their final attempts to eliminate the Jews. After several days in an abandoned farm, Vladek meets a group of American soldiers who take him in. Vladek learns that Anja waits for him in Sosnowiec, and the two reunite.

In the present, Vladek shares with Art a collection of family photos from before the war. The father goes to Florida to reconcile with Mala, but Art flies down after he suffers another medical incident. Vladek calls Art by Richieu’s name as he finishes his story and falls asleep.

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Maus: A Powerful Graphic Novel about the Holocaust

Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Published in two parts (Maus I and Maus II) in 1986 and 1991 respectively, the book tells the story of Spiegelman’s father Vladek, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. What sets Maus apart from other books about the Holocaust is its unique visual style, as Spiegelman portrays the Jewish characters as mice and the Nazis as cats. This approach not only adds a layer of symbolism and metaphor to the story but also makes it accessible to a wider audience, including young readers.

Since its publication, Maus has received widespread critical acclaim and won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. The book’s impact extends beyond the field of literature, as it has been credited with helping to establish the graphic novel as a serious and legitimate art form. Maus continues to be widely read and studied today, and its themes of trauma, family, and identity remain as relevant as ever. In this article, we will explore the various aspects of Maus that make it such a significant and enduring work of literature.

Maus book summary

Characters and characterization, historical and cultural context of maus book banned.

Maus is a two-part graphic novel that tells the story of Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. In Maus I, we follow Vladek’s experiences leading up to World War II and his eventual imprisonment in Auschwitz. Along the way, we also see Art struggling to come to terms with his father’s traumatic past and the impact it has had on their relationship.

In Maus II, the story picks up where Maus I left off, as Vladek and his wife Anja are liberated from the concentration camps and try to rebuild their lives in post-war Europe. We also learn more about Anja’s experiences during the war, including her struggles with depression and suicide. The book concludes with Vladek’s death and Art’s reflections on their relationship and the legacy of the Holocaust.

Some of the key themes explored in Maus include:

• The trauma of the Holocaust and its impact on survivors and their families
• The importance of family and relationships in times of crisis
• The power of storytelling and art to preserve memory and bear witness to historical events
• The complexity of identity and the role of culture, ethnicity, and nationality in shaping it

By weaving together Vladek’s personal story with broader historical and cultural themes, Maus creates a powerful and moving portrayal of one of the darkest chapters in human history.

Maus is primarily a character-driven narrative, with Vladek serving as the book’s main protagonist. Art Spiegelman himself also plays an important role in the story, as he narrates and interacts with his father throughout the book. Here are some of the key characters in Maus and how they are portrayed:

• Vladek Spiegelman: Vladek is the book’s central figure, and his experiences during the Holocaust form the backbone of the narrative. He is portrayed as a complex and flawed character, with strengths and weaknesses that are both admirable and frustrating. On the one hand, Vladek is resourceful, determined, and courageous in the face of adversity. On the other hand, he can be stingy, stubborn, and difficult to deal with, especially for his son Art.
• Art Spiegelman: Art is both the author and a character in the book, and his interactions with his father are an important part of the story. He is portrayed as a sensitive and conflicted person, struggling to come to terms with his father’s traumatic past and the impact it has had on their relationship. Through Art’s interactions with Vladek, we see how the trauma of the Holocaust can ripple through generations and affect family dynamics.
• The Jewish people: Throughout the book, Spiegelman portrays the Jewish characters as mice, emphasizing their vulnerability and powerlessness in the face of the Nazi regime. This imagery also highlights the dehumanizing effects of the Holocaust and the way that victims were reduced to mere objects in the eyes of their oppressors.
• The Nazis: Spiegelman portrays the Nazis as cats, using their predatory nature to underscore the brutality and violence of the Holocaust. The Nazis are portrayed as faceless and almost robotic, emphasizing their cold and inhumane approach to their victims.

In terms of characterization, Spiegelman uses a variety of techniques to convey complex emotions and experiences. These include:

• Flashbacks: Throughout the book, we see Vladek’s experiences during the Holocaust through a series of flashbacks. This technique allows us to see how the trauma of the past continues to affect him in the present, and how his memories shape his behavior and interactions with others.
• Dialogue: The book’s dialogue is often fragmented and disjointed, reflecting the characters’ struggles to express their feelings and communicate effectively. This technique adds a layer of realism to the story, and emphasizes the difficulty of conveying the full impact of the Holocaust through language alone.

Maus is deeply rooted in the historical and cultural context of the Holocaust and its aftermath. Here are some key points to consider:

• The Holocaust: Maus is primarily a book about the Holocaust, and it seeks to convey the horror and trauma of this event in a personal and intimate way. As such, it is important to understand the historical context of the Holocaust in order to fully appreciate the book’s impact. This includes understanding the rise of Nazism in Germany, the persecution of Jews and other groups, and the genocide that took place during World War II.
• Aftermath of the Holocaust: In addition to depicting the events of the Holocaust itself, Maus also explores the aftermath of this event, both for survivors like Vladek and for their descendants. This includes the difficulties of rebuilding a life after such trauma, as well as the ongoing impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations.
• Genre of Holocaust literature: Maus is part of a larger body of literature that seeks to explore the Holocaust through personal narratives and first-hand accounts. This genre includes memoirs, diaries, and other works of nonfiction, as well as fictional works that explore the Holocaust from different perspectives. By situating Maus within this broader context, we can better understand its impact and significance.
• Reception of the book: Since its publication in 1986, Maus has had a significant impact on both the literary world and the wider culture. It has been widely praised for its innovative storytelling techniques, its emotional resonance, and its ability to convey the horror and trauma of the Holocaust in a new and powerful way. At the same time, it has also been criticized by some for its use of animal imagery and for its portrayal of Vladek as a sometimes difficult and unsympathetic character. By exploring the reception of the book, we can better understand how it has been received and interpreted by different audiences over time.

Overall, Maus is a deeply impactful and important work of Holocaust literature, one that continues to resonate with readers and critics alike. By understanding its historical and cultural context, as well as its place within the broader genre of Holocaust literature, we can better appreciate its power and significance.

Maus is a masterful work of graphic storytelling that explores the deeply personal experiences of one family during and after the Holocaust. Through its innovative use of animal imagery, complex characterization, and powerful storytelling, the book manages to convey the horror and trauma of this event in a way that is both emotionally resonant and intellectually profound.

The book’s unique structure, combining the story of Vladek’s experiences during the Holocaust with Art’s attempts to capture those experiences in his art, creates a powerful sense of intergenerational trauma and the ways in which the legacy of the Holocaust continues to shape the lives of those who survived it.

At the same time, Maus also offers a broader commentary on the nature of storytelling itself, exploring the ways in which we tell stories about our own lives and the lives of others, and the power of those stories to shape our understanding of the world around us.

Overall, Maus is a landmark work of graphic storytelling and an important contribution to the larger body of literature that seeks to explore the Holocaust and its impact on subsequent generations. Its lasting impact on the literary world and the wider culture is a testament to its power and significance, and it remains a must-read for anyone interested in the history and legacy of the Holocaust.

What is the book maus about?

The book Maus is a graphic novel that tells the story of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust named Vladek Spiegelman, as recounted by his son Art. It explores the experiences of Vladek and his family before, during, and after the Holocaust, as well as the impact of those experiences on subsequent generations. The book also uses animal imagery to portray different groups of people (Jews as mice, Germans as cats, etc.), creating a powerful and unique metaphor for the events of the Holocaust.

Why is maus a banned book?

Maus has been subject to some attempts of censorship in certain schools and libraries due to its graphic depiction of violence and sexual content. Some critics have also argued that the use of animal imagery to represent different groups of people, such as Jews as mice and Germans as cats, is a form of racial stereotyping. However, the majority of the literary community has widely praised Maus for its innovation, power, and significant contribution to the body of Holocaust literature.

Who wrote the book maus?

Maus was written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman, an American cartoonist and graphic novelist. The book was first published in two volumes in 1986 and 1991 and has since become a landmark work of Holocaust literature and a seminal contribution to the field of graphic storytelling.

When was the book maus published?

Maus was originally published in two volumes. The first volume, "Maus I: My Father Bleeds History," was published in 1986, and the second volume, "Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began," was published in 1991. Both volumes were later published together as a single book in 1996.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the complete maus.

A child of Holocaust survivors, Art Spiegelman created a striking retelling of Nazi Germany in  Maus . He took a disturbing quote from Adolph Hitler (“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human”) and used it as inspiration for turning the Holocaust into a grisly cat-and-mouse game. Moreover, he laid bare his own troubled relationship with his father and his guilt over the suicide of his mother. The result is epic and so simple at the same time; the combination is ultimately so disarming that the reader is overwhelmed by the sheer force of it all. You don’t so much read  Maus  as surrender to it. The atrocity of the situation is magnified by the storyteller’s innate gift at bringing out such specific examples of humanity, from its simple joys to its deep sadnesses. Is there something very telling about the child of a Holocaust survivor depicting his own people as rodents and their oppressors as sly cats? Possibly. The question is certainly worth pondering while reading, especially considering how Spiegelman and his father interact and the painful way they can’t ever seem to see eye to eye. But the use of cartoon animal imagery in the book shows off the fact that this is the most insidious example of the predator and prey relationship in recent human history. The first  Maus  won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 (its almost equally moving sequel,  Maus II , is collected here as well) and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and deservedly so.

Reviewed by John Hogan on November 19, 1996

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

• Publication Date: November 19, 1996
• Genres: Graphic Novel
• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon
• ISBN-10: 0679406417
• ISBN-13: 9780679406419

Art Spiegelman

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Why Maus Was Banned

What makes the book controversial is exactly what makes it valuable.

In the 1970s, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman jotted down a thought in a notebook. “Maybe Western civilization has forfeited any right to literature with a big ‘L,’” he wrote. “Maybe vulgar, semiliterate, unsubtle comic books are an appropriate form for speaking of the unspeakable.” It came to him around the time he started making comics about the Holocaust, which would eventually lead to his two-volume, Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale .

Forty years later, at an event where I was interviewing him, I asked about that quote. “For one thing, the unspeakable gets spoken within 10 minutes, by me if nobody else,” Spiegelman quipped. (He got up in the middle of the same event and went outside to smoke a cigarette, leaving me facing an empty chair, and a packed house.) It’s true that Spiegelman “speaks”—and draws—the unspeakable in Maus . In black line art, it presents two narratives: the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States in 1951 with his wife, Anja, also a survivor, and their toddler, Art—and the story of the cartoonist son, as an adult, soliciting his father’s testimony. It is taught routinely in high school, college, and graduate school. It is, in addition, taught to many middle-school students. This came to wide attention this past January, when Maus was banned from an eighth-grade English-language-arts curriculum by the McMinn County, Tennessee, school board. The ban became a global news story; Maus sold out on Amazon.

Read: Book bans are targeting the history of oppression

But the ban didn’t surprise me. A new wave of politically driven censorship, particularly one motivated by a discomfort with discussions of America’s history of slavery, has grown in the Trump and post-Trump years. And Maus ’s frank visual depiction of horrors, the way it acts as a form of witness to dehumanization and genocide, is controversial. Of course, that confrontation with horror is exactly what makes it valuable. In fact, a work like Maus could not be any more urgent during an era of rampant division, one in which racism and anti-Semitism are rising both nationally and globally. One of Spiegelman’s longtime catchphrases—“Never again and again and again”—feels eerily prescient; he gave what he calls “ Maus Now” talks after the fatal racist, white-nationalist Charlottesville, Virginia, rally in 2017 (which included the chant “Jews will not replace us!”), and the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018.

Maus ’s importance cannot be overstated: It shifted how people talk about history, trauma, and ethnic and racial persecution. The critic and journalist Alisa Solomon, for instance, notes in her 2014 essay “The Haus of Maus ” that the book “became the proof text for academic study of the transgenerational transmission of trauma and its representation.”  It also is a high-water mark for comics—exemplifying the medium’s productive tensions between word and image, presence and absence, that are so key to expressing memory. The series famously articulates its characters as animals; they understand themselves as human, but readers see Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, Polish gentiles as pigs, and Americans as dogs. This level of abstraction, which repurposes a metaphor from Nazi propaganda, is hard to imagine being effective in any other medium. The drawing allows Spiegelman to do more than say what happened. In a rich, layered way, he can show it.

Maus is also a tricky text, prone to misinterpretation—and, as in Tennessee, censorship. It was notably banned in Russia in 2015 because the modified swastika on its cover was categorized as violating anti-Nazi-propaganda laws. Maus was also subject to book burnings in Poland in 2001 , the year it was published there (long after other foreign editions), by people who objected to its depiction of Polish gentiles.

When the book emerged as a fresh target in the culture wars this year, the school board’s official, and flimsy, reasons for removing it from the curriculum amplified the outrage. The board cited bad language (such as “bitch” and “goddamn”) and nudity (specifically, one small image of Spiegelman’s mother, drawn in human form, in the bathtub after taking her own life, a profoundly troubling visual on which to pin the charge of obscenity). These aspects, while perhaps not ideal for an eighth-grade audience, feel beside the point in a narrative that bears witness to genocide.

Read: The banned books you haven’t heard about

The meeting minutes from the McMinn County school board are especially telling. At one point, a board member seemingly singles out a striking scene in Maus I , where Vladek sees four Jews, executed for trading on the black market, hanging on a central street in the Polish city of Sosnowiec in 1942. “Being in the schools, educators and stuff, we don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff,” the member said. “It shows people hanging; it shows them killing kids; why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy.” As with other enacted and proposed bans—on works about slavery, for instance—this rationale whitewashes racist and anti-Semitic violence. The visceral reaction to these books’ imagery ignores the message behind the pictures. Graphic histories and testimonies like Maus intentionally ask readers to encounter, in small part, what their subjects also encountered, including the malevolent power of Nazi symbols.

Maus is not “promoting” murder by bearing witness to it. As some in the meeting pointed out, hangings and other forms of fatal violence happened. Spiegelman observed in a post-ban event at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville that the censors “want a kinder, gentler Holocaust they can stand.” That version, needless to say, doesn’t exist. What Maus does offer are pages, like the one depicting hanging Jews in Sosnowiec, that engage spectacle—that ask readers to confront a shred of the horror that Vladek Spiegelman experienced. It invites us to witness—in the anthropologist Michael Taussig’s sense of witnessing as pausing that moment when shocking things pass “from horror to banality.” Even as it resists the politics that drive them, Maus asks readers to encounter violent realities and their role in our present. In 2022, facing those realities—and in some cases, teaching them—is a condition for recognizing their ever-present possibility.

This article is adapted from Maus Now: Selected Writing , edited by Hillary Chute.

by Art Spiegelman

Maus summary and analysis of book ii, chapter 2.

Note: Maus jumps back and forth often between the past and the present. To facilitate these transitions in this summary, the Holocaust narrative is written in normal font, while all other narratives are written in italics.

Auschwitz: Time Flies

It is February of 1987, and Art is sitting over a drawing table smoking, now portrayed as a human in a mouse's mask. Flies buzz around his head. Vladek died of a heart attack in 1982, he writes, and he and Francoise are expecting their first child in a few months. The first book of Maus was published last year to great success, but he is feeling depressed. The image zooms out to reveal that Art's drawing table is sitting atop a pile of dead Jews from the concentration camps. He is overrun by interviews and profit-seekers. One asks him if there was any message in the book. Another proposes marketing an official Maus vest, patterned on the one that Art so often wears. As Art becomes increasingly overwhelmed, his image begins to transform into that of a small child.

He visits his psychiatrist, Pavel , also a Jewish survivor. He, too, is wearing a mouse mask. Art tells him that when he has time to draw, he feels mentally blocked from continuing the story. It seems to him that nothing he ever accomplishes will compare with his father's survival of the Holocaust. They begin to discuss Vladek's and Auschwitz's effects on Art. Perhaps Art feels remorse that he has portrayed his father in a less-than-positive light in his book, Pavel suggests; or maybe Vladek himself felt guilty about surviving Auschwitz when so many other people died and subconsciously passed this guilt to his son. They also discuss exactly what it means to have survived the Holocaust. If surviving is admirable, does that mean that not surviving is not admirable? Pavel tells Art that survival in the Holocaust wasn't based on skill or resources. Ultimately, it was random, based purely on luck.

As Art leaves his session, he grows from a small boy to an adult again. These sessions always seem to make him feel better. Art returns home and begins listening to the tapes he recorded of his conversations with his father. On one tape, Vladek is complaining to his son about Mala's constant attempts to get at his money, and Art, frustrated, yells at his father to continue his Holocaust story.

Vladek is working at the Auschwitz tin shop, though he has never been trained in this profession. Yidl , the chief of the tinmen, sees that Vladek doesn't know what he is doing. Yidl is a communist and despises Vladek's past as a factory owner, and Vladek becomes afraid that he will be reported. He arranges with some Polish workers - specialists from nearby towns - to trade for pieces of sausage, eggs, and bread, and he offers Yidl this food as a gift to smooth their relationship. Food throughout the camp is in short supply, and the rations of bitter tea, spoiled cheese, turnip soup, and bread - made from sawdust and flour - are insufficient. On top of the hunger, the guards are brutal. On one occasion, a prisoner yells to the guards that he is a German, not a Jew, and that his son is currently serving in the German army. In response, the guards take the man into an alley, push him down, and jump on his neck.

During this time, Anja is at Birkenau, a larger camp two miles to the south. Whereas Auschwitz is a camp for workers, Birkenau is just a waiting area for the gas chambers and crematoriums. Vladek maintains contact with his wife through a Hungarian Jewish girl named Mancie , who has a higher status at Birkenau because she is having an affair with an S.S. guard. Anja is frail and dejected, and contemplating suicide. Her Kapo treats her poorly, giving her jobs that she cannot perform and beating her when she fails. Mancie passes notes and food between the two, though to be caught in this offense would surely mean death.

When an S.S. guard comes to the tin shop looking for workers to go to Birkenau, Vladek volunteers on the chance that he might see his wife. The smokestacks at the camp are ever-present, lording over the buildings and constantly spewing smoke. When he arrives at the camp, he calls out for his wife and eventually finds her. She is very thin, and they speak without looking at each other so that the guards will not notice them. She tells her husband that she occasionally works in the kitchen and brings scraps of food out to her friends, and Vladek responds that she should save the scraps for herself. Everyone in the camps is looking out for their own survival, and not the survival of others.

At another meeting in Birkenau, a guard spots them speaking to each other and takes Vladek into an empty room, where he is beaten with a club and forced to count the blows. So far, though, Vladek is still relatively strong, and he is able to survive the daily selections where the weak are listed and later sent to the gas chamber. He vividly recalls one selection when one of his fellow prisoners had a rash and was taken off to one side to have his number recorded. The prisoner screamed all that night in the barracks, in fear of his impending death the next day. Vladek calmed him by telling him that everyone at the camp was going to die eventually, and that he must be brave. Besides, perhaps it wasn't even his turn yet. Sure enough, though, the guards arrived the next day to take the prisoner away.

In the tin shop, Vladek is still worried about Yidl, so when a need arises for a shoemaker, Vladek offers his services, having learned a bit about shoe repair while working in Miloch's shop. He makes excellent repairs, and officials prefer to send their shoes to him instead of to the larger shop in camp. Because of these repairs, he often receives gifts of food. Vladek learns that some of the prisoners at Birkenau will be sent to work in at a munitions factory in Auschwitz. In Birkenau, Anja is still having a terrible time, and her Kapo beats her at the slightest infraction. The Kapo's shoes, however, are falling apart, and Anja suggests she send them to Vladek in Auschwitz to be repaired. When the shoes come back, they are as good as new, and the Kapo treats Anja far better from that point on.

In order to arrange for Anja to be transferred to Auschwitz, Vladek saves food and cigarettes to bribe the guards. He keeps all that he saves in a box under his mattress, but one day it is stolen and he is forced to start over again. Eventually, though, he saves enough and Anja is brought over. Vladek throws packages of food to his wife, but one time she is spotted and chased into her barracks, where a friend hides her under a blanket as the guard searches from room to room. The guard is furious and makes the entire barracks run and jump and exercise until they are exhausted. It continues like this for days, but nobody turns her in. Vladek soon loses his job close to his wife when the tin shop is shut down. He is made to perform physical labor, carrying stones and digging holes, and he becomes dangerously skinny. On the next selection, he hides in a bathroom to avoid being sent to the gas chamber.

Father and son return from their walk in the Catskills, and Francoise meets them outside. She has finished the bank papers and made sandwiches for lunch. Vladek makes tea with a tea bag that he had used for breakfast and left to dry by the sink. He then continues his story.

When the Russians advance into Poland, the Nazis begin to disassemble the camp. Vladek is again made to work as a tinman, taking apart the machines in the gas chambers. Underground, there is a room for undressing, and the prisoners are made to believe they are going in for a shower. When they are undressed, they are herded into a shower room, also underground, and the room is filled with pesticides. The bodies are loaded onto an elevator with hooks and brought to ovens on the ground floor, where they are incinerated.

At this point, Art asks his father why the Jews didn't try to resist, and Vladek responds that everyone was tired, and that they couldn't really believe what was happening all around them. And there was always hope that they could survive until the Russians liberated the camp. If you tried to resist, you would surely be killed. Just then, Vladek drops a dish and it shatters. Art and Francoise clean up the mess, but Vladek tells them to save the pieces so that he can glue it back together. When Art offers to wash the remaining dishes, his father refuses, saying that his son would only break the rest of them.

Later that night, Francoise and Art are sitting on the porch after Vladek has fallen asleep. Art tells his wife that he hopes his father will get back together with Mala, if only because otherwise Vladek is his responsibility. Just then, Vladek begins to moan loudly in his sleep.

The structure of Chapter 2 is unique, in that it does not follow the traditional Present-Past-Present trajectory. Rather, the chapter begins with a third type of narrative that can be referred to as a "meta-narrative." The chapter therefore follows a path of Meta-Past-Present. The meta-narrative takes place in 1987, one year after the publication of Maus I and five years after Vladek's death, and deals directly with Art's doubts and worries about the book's publication. The section also goes into further detail regarding Art's still unresolved issues of guilt surrounding his father. The meta-narrative is one of the most thematically important sections of the book, with detailed examinations of many of the book's themes, especially guilt , survival , and luck .

One of the most striking features of this meta-narrative is a shift in the nature of the animal metaphor. In both the past and present narratives, all characters are drawn with human bodies and animal heads. In the meta-narrative, all characters are drawn as humans wearing animal masks, with the string clearly visible on the back and sides of their heads. Previous instances in the book have suggested that on some levels, the author considers the animal metaphor to be inappropriate and overly simplistic (see, for example, the discussion in the previous chapter about his decision to draw Francoise as a mouse). The meta-narrative, however, offers the most direct challenge to the validity of the metaphor on which much of the book is based. In other words, Art is having second thoughts about his decision to assign distinct animals to distinct races and nationalities. By placing all of his characters in masks, he is suggesting that issues of race and nationality are purely products of our minds, and that underneath we're all just people. Even though he is having second thoughts, he continues the metaphor throughout the rest of the story.

This section also includes one of the book's most powerful images: A depressed Art Spiegelman sitting at a drawing board balanced atop a pile of dead, emaciated Jews. Similar piles line the sidewalks outside of his apartment. These images are a haunting representation of the Holocaust's continuing effect on the author, and a reminder of the effects of the past upon the present. Despite the many years that have passed since the Holocaust, and despite the fact that he never lived through it himself, the events are a part of his everyday life.

Art's discussion with his psychiatrist delves further into these issues, focusing particularly on Art's guilt. Pavel suggests that Art feels guilty about his father's less-than-positive portrayal in Maus I . He then talks about survivor's guilt, suggesting that perhaps Vladek felt guilty about surviving the Holocaust when so many of his friends and family were killed, and that he took this guilt out on his son. This idea of Vladek's own guilt is never corroborated by Vladek personally, but there are instances in the book in which we can see this transference take place. Perhaps the best example of this occurs during the brief prologue to Book I, which takes place in Queens, when Art is ten years old. In the scene, Art is roller skating with his friends when his skate breaks and his friends go ahead without him. When he comes crying to his father, Vladek only admonishes him and says that until he has been locked in a room with a group of people and no food for a week, he cannot even know the meaning of the word "friend."

Art's therapy session also delves into a discussion of survival and luck. Pavel asks Art whether it is admirable to have survived that Holocaust, and by the same token, whether it is not admirable to have not survived the Holocaust. In the end, says Pavel, all survival was random and based purely on luck. Though Vladek clearly possesses many qualities that helped him to survive the Holocaust - resourcefulness, the ability to save food and money, etc. - his survival was nevertheless dependent upon a great deal of luck. Instances of this luck are everywhere, and many examples can be found within this chapter. When Vladek becomes too skinny to pass the daily selections, for example, he hides in the bathroom, and is never discovered based purely on chance. Similarly, when the guard sees him speaking with his wife, he is severely beaten. Prisoners in Auschwitz were killed for far lesser offenses, and the fact that his life was spared was again based purely on chance.

MAUS Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for MAUS is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Page 32, “Right away, we went.” Where are Vladek and Anja going and why?

Right away, we went. The sanitarium was inside Czechoslovakia, one of the most expensive and beautiful in the world.

Anja, Vladek's wife and Spiegelman's mother, went to a sanatorium in Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Vladek wants to go to Hungary in order to escape the danger and uncertainty of his life, as well as Anja's. Hungary represents hope and safety.

The visual device used to show the difference betweem Vladek and Anja is that Anja has a tail protruding from under her coat, a detail that emphasizes her Jewish identity.

Study Guide for MAUS

MAUS study guide contains a biography of Art Spiegelman, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• MAUS Summary
• Character List

Essays for MAUS

MAUS essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of MAUS by Art Spiegelman.

• Stylistic Detail of MAUS and Its Effect on Reader Attachment
• Using Animals to Divide: Illustrated Allegory in Maus and Terrible Things
• Father-Son Conflict in MAUS
• Anthropomorphism and Race in Maus
• A Postmodernist Reading of Spiegelman's Maus

Lesson Plan for MAUS

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to MAUS
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• MAUS Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for MAUS

• Introduction
• Primary characters
• Publication history

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The complete maus, common sense media reviewers.

Unforgettable graphic memoir of the Holocaust.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

The Complete Maus presents a true story of surviva

The Complete Maus celebrates human resilience and

Vladek is a complicated person: clever, brave, and

The Complete Maus includes many instances of viole

One of Vladek's girlfriends has a breakdown becaus

Vladek refers to African Americans as "Schwartzers

Artie smokes cigarettes.

Parents need to know that Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus is a powerful graphic-novel memoir of the Holocaust that features disturbing content. Jews are drawn as anthropomorphic mice; Germans are cats, Poles as pigs. Characters are starved, beaten, shot, gassed, poisoned, and hanged. Others commit suicide…

Educational Value

The Complete Maus presents a true story of survival during World War II and is set partially at the notorious concentration camp Auschwitz. It offers an opportunity to discuss the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Positive Messages

The Complete Maus celebrates human resilience and the family bonds that sustain people even in the midst of great tragedy.

Positive Role Models

Vladek is a complicated person: clever, brave, and resourceful as a young man; neurotic, manipulative, and needy as an old man.

Violence & Scariness

The Complete Maus includes many instances of violence: shootings, hangings, poisoning, beatings, starvation, and much more. Sensitive readers should beware.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

One of Vladek's girlfriends has a breakdown because he wants to leave her.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Vladek refers to African Americans as "Schwartzers," a German word for blacks.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus is a powerful graphic-novel memoir of the Holocaust that features disturbing content. Jews are drawn as anthropomorphic mice; Germans are cats, Poles as pigs. Characters are starved, beaten, shot, gassed, poisoned, and hanged. Others commit suicide. Sexual content is minimal. Adult characters smoke cigarettes.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (11)

Based on 5 parent reviews

A important story

An important read for understanding the truth about the holocaust, what's the story.

At the start of THE COMPLETE MAUS, cartoonist Art Spiegelman wants to interview his aging father, Vladek, about his experiences in World War II Europe. The older man is reluctant at first, but gradually he talks about his days as an enterprising young man in Poland. When the Nazis arrive and steal the Jewish-owned businesses and factories, Vladek is drafted and quickly becomes a prisoner of war. He escapes, only to be rounded up with his family and sent to the dreaded concentration camp, Auschwitz.

Is It Any Good?

Some works of art change their medium forever, and this graphic memoir is a sterling example of a book that upended all expectations about what comics could accomplish. With a sharp eye and skillful hands, Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father in two time periods, each rendered with powerful emotion. Even though they wear the heads of mice, cats, dogs, and pigs, the characters are all recognizably human in their struggles to survive in the midst of war and terror. Mature readers can learn much about how the Holocaust affected three generations of Europeans.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how The Complete Maus uses the comics medium to tell its story. Why are some topics particularly suited to becoming graphic novels?

Some of Vladek's associates are slow to realize the danger they're in. How do authoritarian regimes take power without much resistance?

How do his experiences in the war affect Vladek's behavior as an old man? How do survivors of deep trauma cope with their emotions?

Book Details

• Author : Art Spiegelman
• Illustrator : Art Spiegelman
• Genre : Graphic Novel
• Topics : History
• Book type : Non-Fiction
• Publisher : Penguin Group
• Publication date : October 2, 2003
• Number of pages : 296
• Available on : Paperback, Nook, Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
• Last updated : January 31, 2022

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The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale Hardcover – November 19, 1996

Purchase options and add-ons

• Print length 296 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Pantheon
• Publication date November 19, 1996
• Dimensions 6.75 x 1.17 x 9.45 inches
• ISBN-10 0679406417
• ISBN-13 978-0679406419
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; Reprint edition (November 19, 1996)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679406417
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679406419
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.95 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1.17 x 9.45 inches
• #5 in Biographies & History Graphic Novels
• #22 in Jewish Holocaust History
• #301 in Memoirs (Books)

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Maus Part II

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