Maus

I’ll be honest; I wasn’t excited to read Maus, because it is another Holocaust or World War II story. I do not mean to be offensive or insulting, but I am just not a fan of those stories. When reading, I found that in multiple places, I had to re-read pages, because of how it was written. The story seemed as if it was translated straight from Polish, or whatever language it was originally written in. Some of the translations were a little difficult to understand because of mixed up word placement, though it was only a minor problem. Though it was early in the story, one thing that stood out to me most was the joke that Spiegelman’s father made. When his father was telling about his birth, and the way his arm used to twitch, earning him the name “Hail Hitler”, I was so surprised that they could even make those jokes after what they had gone through. As much as I did not want to read Maus, after I started reading I got pulled in because it wasn’t exactly, like all the other stories. To start, I like that it was a story about writing a story, which made it more entertaining than just reading the story. I also like that it was a lot of pre war story, talking about how everything lead up to the war. Things I noticed in the story that were clever, was most obviously, the portrayal of the different characters. The Nazis were cats, and the Jews were mice, which gave the reader a real sense of evilness, of the Nazis and helplessness of the Jews. Because of this, I was really surprised whenever the Nazi characters showed compassion, or made jokes because based on the way they were drawn, I perceived them as being ruthless, heartless, and in general evil. A specific instance was with “The Shooter,” and how after learning Spiegelman’s name, he let him go with no hassle at all. Over all, I like the story better than I thought I would, though I did not get to finish it completely.