Art Spiegelman Analysis

Art Spiegelman takes the harsh reality of the Holocaust and illustrates his story in a comic book. Rather than drawing out humans to portray the characters in his story, Spiegelman effectively portrays each nationality and religion to an animal. This, in my opinion, works very well and the animals can relate to those specific groups in story. Such as the use of Mice as Jews, which are viewed as pest, in other words less than human to the Nazis. I will be able to explain why each of the animals of the story is used effectively and the significance of those animals. In my opinion Spiegelman uses a very classic example of the Nazis and Jews playing the cat vs mouse idiom. Jews are portrayed as mice which are first seen at the beginning of the story. (Maus1 P.5) As the story goes on the Nazi characters are introduced as …show more content…
It all tied together and made sense having cats versus mice. Mice are considered a natural prey to cat and a pest overall. This made sense to me because the Nazi views on Jews was that they were less than human and need to be rid of. Mice naturally live the life of hide and seek for shelter while cats hunt down mice and kill them. This easily relates to the Jews running and hiding from the Nazis as they were rounded up and killed in mass numbers. Spiegelman also introduces other animals such as the pig which portray the polish people. In my opinion, Spiegelman’s use of the pig was on a personal level. The pig is a symbol of greed and gluttony and in some religious views seen as an unholy animal. The Polish were apart of rounding up the Jews and making some of the first arrest in the story. As the story goes on some of the Jews seek shelter and hoping that the Polish will help in return. Almost all of the Poles refuse to help or ask for compensation in return or there was no deal at all. Rather than having moral values, they were materialistic and had no