Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began is the second part in a comic book memoir by Art Spiegelman that details his father Vladek’s Holocaust survival story. Maus II picks up right where Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History leaves off, with Vladek and Art’s mother, Anja, being taken to Auschwitz after their attempts to flee Poland in 1944 backfire.
This book goes a little farther in showing how the Holocaust continues to affect Vladek decades later. His second wife, Mala, has left him, and he begs Art and his wife to spend the summer with him in his cottage in the Catskills. The two just want to make sure Vladek is okay on his own, but Vladek’s frailties and hoarding are on full display; when a dish breaks, he says he will glue it back together, and he even tries to return half-eaten groceries to the store so they will not go to waste.
Vladek’s hoarding and refusal to spend money anger Art, who still struggles with his parents’ Holocaust experiences and his mother’s suicide. He even feels some sibling rivalry with Richieu, the brother he never knew except in faded photographs. After Vladek’s death, Art has trouble writing about his father’s Auschwitz experiences and dealing with the success of Maus I. He sees a psychiatrist, a Czech Jew who survived two camps and helps Art overcome his writing block.
Much of Maus II is about how Vladek survived Auschwitz. The creativity he exhibited in finding work and trading for food while he and Anja were in the ghetto and later in hiding also helped him stay alive in the concentration camp. Vladek’s story is both heart-breaking and downright amazing, and the fact that he was able to communicate with his wife in the camp and even help keep her alive shows the depth of their love and makes it easy to see why he fell apart after her suicide. The evacuation of Auschwitz, the death march to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, the overcrowded cattle cars to Dachau, and the spread of typhus are described in few but powerful words.
Just like Maus I, the illustrations in Maus II are horrifying and necessary. They tell a story of their own, rich with symbolism given that the characters are once again drawn as animals. The Jews are depicted as mice, the Nazis and other Germans as cats, the Poles as pigs, and a lone Frenchman as a frog. Once again, I was so involved in the story that I forgot after awhile that the illustrations were of animals even while I appreciated the symbolism.
Honestly, I didn’t expect Maus to affect me as much as it did. I didn’t think a comic book tale with illustrations of animals could be so powerful, but I’m glad I was wrong. These books brought me to tears, and some scenes hit me hard like a kick to the stomach. I am always amazed at how people are able to survive the harshest and worst of circumstances, and Maus is one of the most gripping survivor stories I’ve ever read. Spiegelman does an excellent job immortalizing his parents and showing the burdens that the survivors carried throughout their lives, even passing them on to their children. It’s hard to put into words just how these books affected me, so I urge you to read them. I hope you find, like I have, that they provide much food for thought and will sear their haunting images into your mind for a long time.
Disclosure: I borrowed Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began from my local library. I am an IndieBound affiliate and an Amazon associate.
© 2012 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.
Aren’t these books amazing? I have been thinking the last couple days I really need to reread them..
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I can totally see myself rereading them at some point.
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I cannot wait to read these someday.
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Sooner rather than later, I hope. 😉
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Wow, the author is obviously very talented if he was able to pack that much emotion into a graphic novel.
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Definitely!
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Just looking at the cover I would not have picked up this book because it gives me an impending sense of dread but your review makes me think twice about reading it.
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When you finish the first book, you just know darker days are in store for the characters.
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I just heard of this book this week, and I’ve read two rave reviews. I think I’m going to have to check this one out. I don’t read many graphic novels, but I would like to explore them more this year.
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I do hope you check them out. I’m so glad I got over my resistance to graphic novels and memoirs.
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I have found that when a graphic novel is about highly emotional things, the fact that it is in pictures just intensifies the experience. Reading the GN about the Green River Killer was like that. I have had these two GNs on my list forever, as you might imagine. My library doesn’t have them so I will probably just have to go out and buy them at some point.
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They are totally worth buying!
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I still think that I could not read this one, the images would make it so horrible that I would cry and would not be able to read on
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The images are sad and horrible. Spiegelman amazingly packs so much emotion into the animals’ faces, which is intensified by the narrative.
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I’m going to read this series. I think it is important that he continues on with the story. That is important to understand as well.
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There is so much going on here, from his father’s Holocaust story to how it still impacts him decades later and how the children of Holocaust survivors are affected.
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This sounds like a must-read book/series. You wouldn’t expect so much from a graphic novel, but this one seems quite powerful and affecting. Terrific review, Anna!
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Thanks, Suko! I was very impressed with these books.
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I love being reminded about books like this, which have been sitting on my TBR for years, and, as in the case of this book, sitting to one side of it, too, because I know they will be demanding and exhausting reads, and feeling that desperate sense of “must read now” that something like your post inspires.
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They are demanding and exhausting but oh so worth the read.
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I think these books are even more powerful because of the combo of words and pictures. It’s like reading a great work of literature while watching it enacted in an oscar-worthy film.
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Great comparison!
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these two books are truly classics of the genre- of any genre or form. thanks for such great reviews of both!
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Definitely. Thanks, Marie!
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wow Anna, these two books do sound intense. I can imagine the illustrations to be haunting and very sad. I’d probably cry while reading. It always amazes me reading stories about the Holocaust how people survived such atrocities.
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These survival stores are amazing and fascinating. That’s why I keep reading them even though they make me sad.
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We both posted Maus reviews today too!!! Such wonderful graphic novels. I had to read them as text books for a Holocaust history class I took in college. They made the Holocaust so personal; it wasn’t just another book of facts.
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They do personalize it for readers, giving the victims a face so to speak. What a coincidence that our reviews appeared on the same day!
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I was moved in quite the same fashion as you were. This one and Maus I are books that I feel should be used in high school. I think they really help get the students engaged and could open up some amazing dialogue!
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They would be great teaching resources. I wish I would have read books like them in high school.
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[…] I: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman — A graphic non-fiction tale of the Holocaust with interesting symbolism […]
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