*****MAUS*******

Reflection #9

Maus is sort of like a novel written in form of comics. It is a novel because it’s telling a story. It’s sort of a biography; Vladek’s to be precise, written by his son Artie. It’s a story about the holocaust, how he had to go through that awfulness with his wife Anja, Artie’s mother, and how they had to move from place to place, how they lost their first son, how they had to separate and how that had to bribe and exchange the only things they had to get food and to stay alive. I found it really unique the way that he instead of using humans to represent the Jews, Germans, Polish and Americans, as it’s normally done, he used mice to represent the Jews, Cats to represent the Germans, Pigs to represent the Polish and Dogs to represent the Americans.
It’s impressing to read and imagine what Jews went through in the holocaust. How some did survive that maybe if something like that happened again today their would be even less survivors because now we live so comfortably that frankly many people you just take their cell phones away for a couple of hours and they feel useless and actually start depending on them imagine not having food, where to sleep, bathrooms, the normal everyday necessities.
In the story Artie doesn’t understand why his father acts the way he does (he doesn’t want to spend any money, wants everything to last forever, etc…) but in a way I do understand him. All of the things in the holocaust did affect him emotionally and psychologically. It was a long time that they had to live saving every single thing they could get their hands on to survive and now we don’t care about any of it, we throw food and things that can be reused by others and also there are people hungry in this world that wish they had at least a piece of bread in their house for their family every morning and we throw it away because we forgot to eat it because of so many food that we have in our fridge.
It’s a great novel and it’s written as a comic book so that it attracts every reader’s attention. It’s very interesting because you learn also history and it can be read easily and quickly.