Maus I

I, too, was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading Maus I. One aspect I found to be successful was the simultaneous stories taking place in the present, with Art Spiegelman and his relationship with his aged father, and the past, with his father's recount of what happened to him during the Holocaust. The story also is full with irony, one example being when Anja became frightened by seeing rats while hiding in a cellar. To calm her down Vladek told her, "They're just mice" (Spiegelman 147)! The irony in this is that their characters are portrayed as mice, but Spiegelman treats this as something that just is, and needs no literal explanation for why he chose to portray different people as animals. This I can make up some guesses as to the meaning of mice as the Jews, pigs as the Poles, and cats as the Nazis, but I am very curious as to what his definite intention was for this. If it goes beyond the nature of the animals and into historical meanings of them. 

Another aspect of the story I am still curious and a bit unsatisfied about is Art's mother's suicide. The short comic inserted into Maus I about her suicide called "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" reveals some insight into how it happened, but not why. On a side note, I really liked that Spiegelman included this in there and how it is a different type of comic in terms of illustrations and writing than the rest of Maus. But yet, how tragic that Anya had struggled and survived through the Holocaust only to take her own life years later. 

Vladek's character is the most fascinating to me, especially the aged, post-war Vladek. He is extremely stubborn and money-conscious. While venting to Art about Vladek, Mala (his new wife) states: "He's more attached to things than to people" (Spiegelman 93)! My first assumption is that he may be like this because things are more permanent in his life than people are, after all the people he lost during the war and then his wife after. I think there may be something deeper to it than this, but what he went through during the Holocaust has traumatized him in several ways.