Mighty Maus

In Maus II, Art continues interviewing his father, Vladek, about his experiences during the Holocaust. As in the first Maus, they constantly bicker, but Vladek finishes his story just before he passes away. Most of the story takes place in the concentration camp Auschwitz. A common battle in the story is Vladek's determination to be with his wife Anja again. In our discussion yesterday, Chad mentioned some characteristics of a “great idea.” As much as I hate to admit it, by this definition (the idea impacts a large group of people), the holocaust was, indeed, a great idea. I do think that a lot of the reason this was able to take place was because of how gradual the changes were. I know that this is not the entire reason, but I don’t think you can deny that gradual changes rather than extreme changes are more likely to be overlooked by the people being impacted. I also think it is understandable how it was easy for the Germans to jump on the bandwagon the want to kill the Jews because there was a lot of bitterness towards them from World War I. WWI devastated the country of Germany and many people were looking for a scapegoat. It was not just something random like America all of a sudden wanting to kill everyone from Paraguay. I’m sure Hitler wasn’t just sitting around his room thinking, “Hmmm, I really feel like committing mass genocide today… but which race should I pick…. How bout the Jews…” I don’t really see that happening. The events that took place were no doubt wicked, but I think it is important to try to get inside the Nazis heads to try to understand what was going on.
I have to say that this reading has been by far my favorite assignment this semester. I love the way it was written as much as I love the information it contains. My favorite and simultaneously least favorite part of Maus II was the scene on with Art and François on the porch with the bug spray (page 74). The parallelism was intense. I liked how Art used this to give the reader a glimpse of what was happening in the minds of the Nazis and the mentality they had toward the Jews. They simply saw them as vermin to be eliminated. The part I don’t like is that that mentality disgusts me. I almost don’t want to believe that any person could possibly think that about another person. I have to wonder what Art did when he was writing Maus and looked back on that conversation. Did he realize the parallelism right away? Or was it afterwards while recalling what to include in the book?
It is a bit unnerving to know that things not unlike the Holocaust of WWII are still occurring today. I think the class got a taste of this from watching Hotel Rwanda. Genocide is still happening in Africa, especially in Darfur. I think there are some videos on youtube about it if you are interested in learning more.
And speaking of youtube, here are the links to the song and