Maus Reading Response

Maus Reading Response

            Maus is one of those stories that just tugs at your heart strings. I can’t imagine being this character, Vladek and have so many horrible things happen to you. Even though I did not go through the troubles and hardships like Vladek did I still felt a lot of empathy towards him and the other people in this story. If you aren’t familiar with Maus, it was the first graphic novel to really get the graphic novel genre popular. It is so sophisticated in it’s writing that it feels like you are reading a serious novel but it’s merely a comic book. When people think comic book they think of silly looking characters and a bunch of gags or people with superpowers in tights. Maus is unlike any of these stories as it is a story based in reality.

            What I like visually about this story is that the illustrator plays with the idea of cat and mice. They turn the innocent people into mice and have them running away and hiding from the evil Nazi cats. What I like about that decision was that this is exactly how cats and mice interact in real life as well as other works of media. It is staying true to the whole feel of being based in reality which is what this story is so much about.

            Maus was extremely difficult to read. Reminded that these events, of WWII actually happened. It made the story that much more of a depressing narrative to consume. The entire time I was reading I just sat there and thought to myself; "wow, I couldn’t imagine being in Vladek’s shoes." With all the destruction in the world, having your business destroyed, being thrown in concentration camps, separated from your family and losing all of your loved ones. We sometimes forget that stuff like this has happened, because we didn't live through it. This story really hits you in the head, reminding us about the harsh and cruel reality of humanity.

            I had a family member who grew up in Poland during World War 2. Joe was his name. He was about 5 years old when the Nazis took him and his family to concentration camps. The worst part of it all though was that the Nazis separated him from the rest of his family. Joe was all alone, 5 years old at this camp. He was forced to work on an assembly line, making wallets for the Nazi soldiers. Joe lived a full life until he recently passed away, last year at the age of 89. In all that time of his life, Joe never found out what happened to his family nor ever reunited with them. Maus is a story that makes you stop and think that something as far fetched as a story like this has to be fake, it has to be made up. It can’t be real, but it is. This story stands as a reminder of humanities horrific past during World War 2 and of how many families were destroyed during this time in our history.