Purpose | Maus: A Survivor’s Tale

The analytical approach to this memoir was that Spiegelman ‘interviewed’ his father (Vladek) in purpose of writing a book about his past. I feel as though originally the novel/story’s first intentions began to transform into how he portrayed and understood what his father went through, in both an emotional and physical way and resulting as a memoir on his empathetic conception. Throughout the graphic memoir Spiegelman mentions how his relationship with his father was never strong, compassion, or intimate, there was always a blockade between one another, forever questioning the others morals, thoughts, and habituals and therefore preventing them from understanding one another. It is almost as though there were so many questions answered, and eye opening information to help Spiegelman and his father break-down this barricade, to allow for him to look into his father’s past in order to see what made him who is was today. 

In other critics perspective’s, some believe the purpose of Maus: A survivor’s Tale was to shine light upon the events that took place during World War II through the most brutal, raw, and tormented perspective of them all, the Jewish.  The new generation is able to fully understand the consequences of these events, as stated before, when you are aware of history it is bound not to repeat itself (Crow, 2011). 

Perhaps this visually-subdue memoir allows for people to not only understand through a first-Holocaust victim’s perspective of what it was like during World War II, but also how discovering one’s past have impacted person they are today. Understanding can help one, like Speigelman, become more compassionate and understanding towards another, Vladek, as well as accept them due to this breakthrough acceptation who that person is. 

Two generations uniting together to understand, perceive, and accept 

Reference List

Yahoo, Crow. (2011). Best answer: what was the author’s purpose for writing the book Maus?. Received Apr 5, 2015 from https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110710133338AAPcMae