Maus by Art Spiegelman

Finished Maus by Art Spiegelman. Just my thoughts after finishing the book.

Maus by Art Spiegelman

I had heard about the book before and knew it was considered one of the greatest graphic novels ever written, but I did not expect it to affect me this much. What stayed with me the most was not just the horror of the Holocaust itself, but the idea of survival and what happens to people after surviving something inhuman.

The book made me feel anger more than anything initially. Anger at how human beings can become so cruel to other human beings. Shooting people, starving them, separating families, treating them worse than animals. I kept wondering how there were not more people inside the German system who revolted against what was happening around them. Maybe fear takes over everything in such situations. Still, it is disturbing to think about.

At the same time, the book constantly reminded me that as readers we can only imagine the suffering, never truly feel it. Reading about starvation, fear and helplessness is one thing. Actually living through camps, seeing people die around you, being unable to protect your parents, wife or children is something else entirely. In some ways I even felt surviving might have been harder than dying. The dead were gone, but survivors had to carry the memories for the rest of their lives and somehow build a new life from nothing.

What really surprised me was how much I sympathised with Vladek. I later saw some discussions online where people viewed him negatively because of how miserly, controlling or difficult he was. But honestly, he felt completely normal to me. Not perfect, but understandable. His obsession with saving things, worrying about money, holding on to old wires or leftover items because they may be useful later reminded me strongly of older people in my own life, especially my father. Even now my father sometimes struggles to accept how expensive things have become compared to his younger days. That mindset does not come from greed alone. Sometimes it comes from having seen scarcity too closely.

There is a line in The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel which says something like every person’s actions make sense once you understand what they have lived through. I kept thinking about that while reading Vladek.

That said, I strongly disliked the way Vladek behaved towards the black hitchhiker. That part genuinely disturbed me because he himself had suffered terribly because of racist thinking. I kept hoping he did not actually carry such prejudice, but he clearly did. The book does not try to clean him up or turn him into a perfect victim, and I respect the honesty of that.

I also found myself slightly unconvinced at times by how resourceful Vladek seemed throughout the war. He always somehow found a way to survive through contacts, trading, bribing or finding the right people at the right moment. Part of me wondered how much of this was memory reshaping events after survival. Not that I doubted the suffering itself, but occasionally Vladek almost felt too capable, too adaptive, almost like a survival genius navigating impossible circumstances. Maybe that is exactly how some people survived. Still, the thought crossed my mind several times.

The graphic novel format itself was brilliant. Truly அசாத்தியமானது. I do not think the same story would have stayed with me this much in plain prose form. The decision to portray people as animals initially felt unusual, but somewhere around the middle of the book it suddenly clicked for me as a masterstroke. Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, Americans as dogs. Even though everyone belonged to an “animal group,” Spiegelman still managed to show individuality through expressions, clothing and behaviour. It gave the work a strange emotional immediacy while also making it easier to absorb something so horrifying.

I also loved the moments where the book became self aware and almost meta. Spiegelman discussing the success of the first volume, talking about the comic strip he had made after his mother’s death, showing himself struggling to tell the story properly. Those moments made Maus feel less like a polished historical retelling and more like a son trying to understand both history and his father at the same time.

Some smaller moments stayed with me deeply too. The woman who risked helping Vladek and Anja communicate because she believed in their love. Prisoners fighting desperately over even spilled drops of soup. People chewing wood because hunger had become unbearable. Those details made the suffering feel frighteningly real.

I had watched films like The Pianist before, but Maus felt different because of how personal it was. Not just a story about war, but about memory, trauma, survival and the long shadow these things leave on ordinary life.

More than anything, Maus felt deeply human.