MAUS
Art Spiegelman
RESERVOIR BOOKS

This book, winner of a Pulitzer prize (the only comic book to win it), deals witht the II World War holocaust. In symbolic way, the jews are depitcted as moice, while the nazis are cats. The Polish who are not jewish are pigs, maybey to show their lack of ethic, in some ocassions, because they did not alwways help them

The story begins with a flashback. Vladek Spiegelman, an old jew who lives in the States, is visited by his son. He is working on a grapgic novel, and watns to base it on his father's experiences as a victim of the holocaust. Then a sequence of flashbacks begins.

The fact that the characters are animals helps to soften some of the hardest moments. However, Maus is a sharpen story, full of emotions and drama. it would be very useful to combine its reading with some documentaries or films about the IIWW.

On the ohter hand, this book is very well documented, and it could be good to read with a map of europe in front, because it mentions a lot pf real places where hard events took place. Films like "The Wave" could be watched while reading it, because it would be interesting to see how those facts could happen again if some conditions occurred. It is also important to see the psychological effects of the war on the individual. Vladek goes living with suffering, with some kind of tension he cannot get rid of.

- The work is full of drama and suffering. But in the middle there are some "islands" of life, optimism and even successful action, to flee from horror. Try to find these moments and the pages where they are.

- Vladek's character: notice his evolution along the years. Photocopy some scenes from his beginnings, from later moments, and finally from his elderly years. Comapre them analyse them, and write about his inner evolution.

- Make groups of four people. Each groups has a mission, find samples of film shots: the group in charge of CLOSE-UPS, MEDIUM SHOTS, AMERICAN SHOTS, LONG SHOTS, FULL SHOTS. Once you find the samples, copy them and cut them out. Stick them on a board and show them to your fiends. You can also give a short speech on them.

- After reading the book, prepare a public speech in front of your mates, at the library, or in front of your friends. Tell them about what you learnt from the book, about the nazis and their rise to power, about the death camps; about cooperators, and about the ones who helped the jews. use images to do it, and even music (maybe some song from those times), yours words. Do not only inform them: move them, make them feel the disater and the same emotions they should have felt when those terrible things happened.

- If you were a scriptwriter of a second part of MAUS, and you could change the types of characters, what animals would you choose to depict them?: nazis, jews, the non-jewish Polish...? make sketches of the new characters, dress them properly, give them a personality.

- The work was thought in BLACK AND WHITE. This way it is more dramatic and expressionist. Photocopy one page, the one you like most, and try to colour it. Make the colours have a meaning.