Maus
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Maus Teacher Guide
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Maus Audio - Chapter 1
Maus Audio - Chapter 2
Maus Audio - Chapter 3
Maus Audio - Chapter 4
Maus Audio - Chapter 5
Maus Audio - Chapter 6
Ch. 1 "The Skeik"
What is the significance of this first page in relation to the book? What is the author trying to demonstrate?
What does the author include this moment? What does this reveal about his motivation, his relationship with his father, etc.?
What is your first impression of Vladek Spiegelman? His remarks about friends?
What has happened to Artie’s mother? How do you think that might affect his relationship with his father?
On page 12 we see a close-up of Vladek as he pedals his exercise bicycle.
What is the meaning of the numbers tattooed on his wrist? How does this single image manage to convey information that might occupy paragraphs of text?
Chapters 2 and 3
What is the irony of the title of this chapter?
What do you believe is the overall purpose of Ch. 2 in relation to the text as a whole?
How does Art characterize his father in this chapter? What is his purpose?
Why might Spiegelman have chosen animals rather than humans for his book?
What are the two most significant moments in Ch. 3? Why?
What does Vladek see while traveling through Czechoslovakia?
Why does the artist place a swastika in the background of the panels that depict the plight of Jews in Hitler's Germany (p. 33)?
Why, on page 125, is the road that Vladek and Anja travel on their way back to Sosnowiec also shaped like a swastika?
Why was Vladek's father so reluctant to let him serve in the Polish army?
What means did he use to keep him out?
How does Vladek arrange to be reunited with his wife and son?
What visual device does Spiegelman use to show him disguising himself as a Polish Gentile?
Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
What is the significance of the chapter title?
How does Spiegelman characterize his father? What made Vladek this way? Cite moments from chapter 4.
During the brutal mass arrest depicted on page 80, Vladek is framed by a panel shaped like a Jewish star. How does this device express his situation at that moment?
What happened to Vladek's father? What does the scene on pages 90-91 suggest about the ways in which some Jews died and others survived?
Describe the strategies that Vladek used to conceal Anja and himself during the liquidation of the ghetto. How did the Germans flush them from hiding?
How did Vladek care for Anja after the destruction of the Srodula ghetto? Contrast his behavior toward his first wife, during the worst years of the war, with the way he now treats Mala.
Chapter 6
On page 136 Vladek says that he was able to pass for a member of the Gestapo but that Anja's appearance was more Jewish. What visual device does Spiegelman use to show the difference between them?
Given the fact that the Spiegelmans are "mice," what is the significance of the panels on page 147, in which Vladek and Anja's hiding place turns out to be infested with rats? Why might the author have portrayed this incident?
Why does Artie call his father a murderer? Is he justified?
Who else has he called a murderer, and why