Maus
author:Art Speigleman
Job #6: Risk Taking Researcher
The theme of this book is the Holocaust during WWII. The Holocaust was an event in which the genocide of the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, communists, homosexuals and the mentally and physically disabled was ordered by Adolf hitler. Approximately 11 million people were murdered, among them, 6 million jews. In the book, the Jews are portrayed as mice, while the Nazis are portrayed as cats. The term Holocaust comes from the greek words hólos, "whole' and kaustós, "burnt", since a method of mass murder was to burn the jews alive. The tie to the text is that Vladek, Artie's father and the one who is telling the story, is a survivor of the Holocaust. He is a polish soldier who is drafted to fight the Nazis but is captured and sent to a concentration camp. Then he is "freed" and put on a train destined for the Reich, but instead, it goes to the Protectorate, where almost all the jews get shot in the forest, but Vladek gets freed by a friend, and escapes to the Reich on a train and goes to his family. Basically, the tie to the text is that the entire story is based on this theme of the Holocaust.
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Sources:
"The Holocaust." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Aug. 2014. Web. 20 Aug. 2014
Congrats on your post Lucca! I agree with you that the books theme is the Holocaust. The author of this book creates the setting and story is a very interesting way. I interpret that the book establishes its characters as mice ( jews) and cats ( nazis) in a some of what a food web chamber. In other words, the author creats the Jews as rats and the nazis as cats since cats eat mice. It as a metaphoric way to creat a really interesting story. As you stated in your post the holocaust was a mass murder of jews ( cats eating mice ). In my opinion you should have done more background research, your post is concise. You could have rigged into personal stories or even maybe describe the book better. Vladek describes his post with numberless details that you could have included. For instance, when he states that he bathe himself everyday even though the water temperature was freezing cold or also, how he prayed everyday and night wishing one day he would be free, in addition, how he has a dream in which his grandma comes to him and says he will be a free man in a couple of months. I don't mean to be a cruel person; your post could be done better. You could have added more research and facts from the book.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Guilhermo Pagnano Gonzalez
Dear Lucca,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your blog post! You have a lot of great information in it. I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know about the book and the Holocaust. I also really liked that you had data in their which is usually not found in theses kind of posts. Awesome Work!