MAUS

When I was in high school I used to hate reading. In my English class we would always have reading assignments and those were the ones I dreaded the most. But after graduating I began reading books on my free time. So when we were asked to read Maus I was really excited. It has been one of the best books I’ve ever read. In the book Art Spiegelman tries to connect and relate to his dad by listening to his story and the struggles he went through in the Holocaust. His father Vladek tries to make Art understand all the sacrifices he made at the time and how it wasn't easy.

To me Vladek was a great man. He had his flaws like being greedy and not being able to understand other people. But he was also one of the strongest persons in the book. Not only with the fact that he survived, but also that almost everyone in his family died. I admire him for his bravery in trying to keep himself and his wife Anja alive. He did everything he could in order to stay alive and help his wife stay alive. Even though he was scared in certain situations he pulled through. Like when he risked going to the black market to get himself and his wife food they needed. He saw so many people die and suffer but he never gave up.

Anja on the other hand was not like Vladek. She had a whole different mind set. She was very scared of everything and she didn't hide it. Whenever they were put in difficult situations she wanted to give up. She was strong to a certain extent. She knew she had to be strong in order to survive but there were times when she would breakdown and want to die. Many people thought it was crazy of her to kill herself 10 years after being able to survive a tragedy like the Holocaust. In a weird way I understand her. As we learned in the book Anja was not mentally healthy she had to be on medications. She was indeed traumatized. She had seen her whole family die she had seen other people die and she couldn't bare it. Unlike Vladek, Anja couldn't live knowing that all her family including her eight year old son had died.

Many people now-a-days known as the “Holocaust Deniers” say that historians made the whole thing up and nothing like that ever happened. Many believe that it was a tactic to frame the Germans and leave them at fault for something that they did not do. They strongly believe that no such thing happened and that people are lying about the whole thing, even though there are people who survived and are able to provide with proof of the events. They believe that everything is staged. Some can be blinded and that's why they believe that nothing like that happened. They are so set on that others are just trying to make them look bad.

This book is very interesting because it shows all the struggles Art's dad went through and how Art is trying to cope with the fact that his parents were always comparing to his deceased brother. He never really understood why his father was the way he was and he he treated him that way. So he decides to listen to his story to connect with him better. Art gives us full detail of the conversations he had with his dad. My favorite part about this book was how Art portrayed his dad by showing how his dad actually spoke and his grammar.