Through the eyes of a one survivor, a tragedy of immense proportion (millions) can be illustrated in such a way that the details are felt by the reader. Art Spiegelman captured the tragedy of the Holocaust through his father's experience. Maus I and Maus II grasp this story through an unusual style - a cartoon. Spiegelman used cartoon animals to represent the different ethnic groups during the Holocaust. The emotions, thoughts, and actions of the animals directly show the affects of the Holocaust and the destruction of the Jewish people.

As I was reading through the books, I couldn't help but place myself in the Vladek's position Vladek was in. I became wrapped up in the emotion and the history. It made me think and analyze my own life. In my generation, we have never and hopefully will never experience any thing as detrimental as the Holocaust. Because of Spiegelman, we can hopefully remember what not to repeat in the future. It takes something as costly as a war and loss of human life to force people to think. I believe in studying and learning from history in order to further expand our modern world.

This loss of human life of the persecuted Jews was captured not only in a widely ranged social destruction but also individually through Vladek. By concentrating on this main character, the reader can get to know and become attached to the character by allowing for emotions and feelings to be involved.

This was the magic of Maus I and Maus II. Spiegelman was able to illustrate the effects, feelings and trauma felt by all the Jews and personalize it to the reader by through a main character.

Not only did Spiegelman include the past where his father's stories came from, but he included the present when he was concurrent with his writing the books. He put in his own thoughts and feelings to show what history meant to him and how difficult it was to write. He was able to intertwine the two, past and present, in order to provide some relief to the intense scenes of the Holocaust.

The honesty and abruptness could be felt throughout the books. This was a big point to the credibility and the effectiveness they had on the reading audience. The reader could become intwined in the story and characters solely because of the rich emotion and directiveness illustrating the Holocaust. Sympathy and empathy are essential elements for the reader. Spiegelman's main focus is to capture these feelings onto paper, that not only those of his father had but those that he, the son, also he experienced also.

These feelings that saturate the pages of Maus I and Maus II cannot be missed by the reader. This passion is the very backbone of the books and probably the reason he is writing them. History without a message is a lost generation.

The unusual style Spiegelman chose was easy to illustrate and understand. The different characters weere a clever way to show the differences in people and personality. The mice represented the persecuted Jews. In a frail, weak gene ppol, mice are definitely not the supercreatures of the earth. Spiegelman chose this character as a symbol for the weak state of the Jews. The Germans so aptly stated drawn as cats dominated the Jews. They possessed the quickness to think, quick-to-act response which was central in the extermination survival of the Jewish people. The cats' dominance over the mice was a game. They strung the mice out, so to speak, on a string and slowly led them towards death only to tug onto the string to keep them alive before the string was cut and death was near.

These main animals, plus several more, created a distinction of the separate peoples during the Holocaust. This distinction was well defined by supplying the reader with adequate redemptions of the Holocaust. ??? The emphasis on the Jewish people provided an unusual look at the actual costs of the war. Because Spiegelman was so effective in creating the emotions, the books made the readers think and reanalyze the Holocaust. Maus I and Maus II are definitely a good supplement to the understanding of the history of this world war. Most importantly, Spiegelman supplied a fresh look at how the Holocaust disaster is affecting and will continue to affect the world for generations to come.