Week 7 Maus

I took the Holocaust class a few semesters back and we briefly talked about Maus, i had heard of it before then but never really wanted to read it until after the class. I thought overall it was very interesting storytelling wise, i've read a lot of book about the Holocaust and survives tales so im familiar with the names of camps and the timeline of the war and other peoples perspectives from the camps. I liked the set up of how it was him talking to his dad and it would skip to the present to show what hes like now and his problems now and how Art Spiegelman reacts to his father. I thought that made it more personal for not only his dad but for him as the artist of this book and putting himself in it too. I also thought it was neat that he actually put the comic he made about his mom into it he didnt just talk about and move on, we got to actually see it.
I thought it was ironic that his dad was treating the black hitchhiker like the Nazis treated him but didn't really understand it. Or when Art brought up that his dad was basically one of those caricatures of old Jewish men, because he wanted to save money i thought was also ironic. I liked that it told what he did to survive what he traded and what stuff was worth, and what he remembered happening to the people he knew in the camps. I thought it was selfish of the dad to remarry and not actually like the person but demand she stay with him, even if she did just want money.
I thought it was interesting what animals he picked to represent what people. i thought it was funny that his girlfriend is french so he wanted to make her a frog but because she converted he made her a mouse, and how he wanted to portray that in the story to his dad.
Overall i liked it and it was interesting, the art style was simple and i could tell what was going on most of the time and i could read the font so that makes it very accessible. The storytelling was good and i really enjoyed all the little details. I was sad that his mothers diaries were destroyed i thought that would have really added something to the book and given it another good perspective. i liked that it showed the father son relationship between them also and the relationships of everyone made it more real. I also really liked that it focused on the camps and survivors and not just Germany and Hitler, in a lot of books it focuses on Hitler or hate of Germany and Hitler and it was nice to see something more focused on the survivors in the camps and how they got there and their timeline and how they felt.