The Bucks County Free Library resource guide for MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale I: My Father Bleeds History MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman One Book / One Bucks County 2005

About Maus

Background notes

Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale is published in two volumes:

Maus: A Survivors Tale, I: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon, 1996. (ISBN 0-394-74723-2)
Maus: A Survivors Tale, II: And Here my Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1991. (ISBN 0-679-72977-1)

Written over a thirteen-year period, the books tell the story of Spiegelman’s attempts to learn about his father and mother’s experiences as Jews during the Holocaust and later as survivors in the United States. Maus also documents Spiegelman’s difficult relationship with his father, his own search for understanding as a survivor of this relationship, and his artistic odyssey in creating the work. The historical content is based on dialogues between Spiegelman and his father, Vladek, over many years. Spiegelman uses animal heads with human bodies to portray characters: Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs, Frenchmen are frogs, and Swedes are reindeer. While the subjects treated in the book are serious, there is also humor. The setting moves from Rego Park, New York, to various cities and towns in Poland, to a resort in the Catskill Mountains, to Germany, to Florida. This device helps Spiegelman tell the larger story of the Holocaust with the authority of a survivor’s memories while at the same time telling the story of his family’s history and relationships during and after World War II. The books are hard to classify since they have elements of fiction, nonfiction, biography, and autobiography.