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The Bucks County Free Library resource guide for
MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale I: My Father Bleeds History
MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began
by Art Spiegelman

One Book / One Bucks County 2005


About the One Book One Bucks County Project
About graphic novels	About Art Spiegelman	About Maus	Characters
Summary chapter-by-chapter	Themes/issues	Discussion Questions	Booklist for further reading
Additional Website Resources	One Book Team members	Community Partners	Sponsors

Themes/Issues

Maus is a complex work with multiple levels of meaning. It can be read as a fable with a moral for the future, as a personal account of the Holocaust, and as a story in which the tension and conflicts of a family parallel those in the public world. The animal characters are metaphors for the racial and political conflicts of Germany and Poland in the 1930s and 1940s.

Family conflict - between Art and Vladek, between Vladek and Mala, between Art and his dead brother Richieu
Racism - German racism, Vladek’s racism, Art’s possible racism in portraying races and nationalities as animals
Guilt - Art’s – about surviving when his brother did not; about not being worthy as the child of parents who went through so much; about putting Vladek’s personal stories in print when Vladek had asked him not to; about not treating his father as well as he should; about how he treated his mother when she turned to him for love just before committing suicide
Survival - Vladek’s, Anja’s, Mala’s, Art’s
Dominance – (racial and personal) Vladek is as dominant to Mala and Art as the Germans were to him; dominance of favored prisoners over those less fortunate; dominance of cats over mice
Depression and suicide - Art’s, his mother’s, Vladek’s
Prisons and prisoners - including POW camp, concentration camp, and more figurative experiences in which characters feel like prisoners
Artistic process - Art’s various struggles with telling the story both in words and pictures
Irony - Anja survives the Holocaust only to commit suicide; Vladek dominates everyone just as the Germans did him; Richieu is sent to a relative to be safe, but the relative poisons him so he will not be taken by the Germans; Vladek makes racial comments about an African-American though he was the victim of racism; the success of Maus makes Art feel guilty

Other Themes/Issues
Include: Fiction/Nonfiction, oral narrative, animals as metaphors, graphic art to convey meaning

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