Instructors’ Teaching Experience

I have had only good experiences teaching Maus I and Maus II. Students find both texts easy to read and quickly become attached to the characters. Spiegelman's formal choices create space for multiple interpretations and encourage readers to take leaps. Students get comfortable with the "far-fetched" and take risks in their analysis. My only suggestion is to take a bit of time throughout the text to explain various historical details concerning Judaism and the Holocaust. For example, very few students understood that Jews were forced to wear the Jewish star on their coats. Little details like this may go overlooked if you don't provide some history. Other than that, enjoy pulling out small formal elements with them—they'll surprise you.

Classroom Strategies

Lesson Plans

Day 1 (Vol. 1: pp. 1-40)

Go through PowerPoint with graphic novel history, terms, and formal elements to look out for. Ask the following questions to the class (informal group discussion)

  1. Look at the epilogue
    1. What is the purpose of this narrative?
    2. What can we already glean just from this short excerpt?
    3. What is Artie's relationship with his father

Goal: For students to recognize how difficult it would be to be raised by a Holocaust survivor. Every normal thing that bothers Artie seems miniscule in comparison to his father's suffering. He doesn't get to have a normal reaction to pain and suffering. You may want to bring in the idea of post-memory, or how trauma transcends generational divisions.

  1. Why mice? Why animals at all? Why black and white?
  2. Vladek's response to the Holocaust
    1. How does he seem to deal with the horrors of the Holocaust?
    2. What behaviors of his do you associate with his having survived the Holocaust?
    3. What are some of his weird habits that might be a result of his experience?
  3. Why are Mala and Vladek married when they don't actually like each other?
  4. Formal elements
    1. Why is Vladek portrayed in all black on page 23?
    2. What other interesting elements do you notice?
Day 2 (Vol. 1: pp. 41-93)

Group work with different questions. Students are handed a question that deals with the text They discuss and write down bullet points of their discussion. Then, as we go through the questions as a class, they'll kick off the discussion.

  1. Group 1
    1. Find some places where Spiegelman draws images of trains.
    2. Why do you think he highlights these?
    3. What about the bike that Vladek rides?
    4. In general, how is transportation portrayed and what do you think it means? What does it symbolize?
    5. Pick an image of transportation that you think would be good for analysis. Discuss it, and be ready to talk about it with the class.

Ideal image: children play with a toy train before trains become the site of transportation to the camps. It shows how naïve everyone is as the process begins, and how innocuous things suddenly become dangerous and horrible.

  1. Group 2
    1. How does Spiegelman depict moments of practicing Judaism?
    2. What is the role of faith in the Holocaust and in their lives?
    3. Does Spiegelman play up Jewish stereotypes? How so? And why?
    4. Find a particular moment where Spiegelman highlights the Jewish star, or Jewish faith. Discuss why he does that.

Goal: The irony that their faith puts them in this position and yet most of them lose their faith as a result of it.

  1. Group 3
    1. How are money and material possessions discussed in the text?
    2. When does money help? When does it fail?
    3. How does Spiegelman depict Vladek's privilege?
    4. How does Vladek's trade help him through the whole process?
    5. Why do you think Spiegelman emphasizes this aspect
  2. Group 4
    1. What do we find out about Mala? What is she like? Describe her.
    2. What else do we find out about Vladek and Mala's relationship?
    3. How do Mala and Vladek handle death? How do they speak about it?
    4. Why is it like this?
  3. Group 5
    1. How has Artie and Vladek's relationship developed in this section?
    2. What do we learn about each of them?
    3. Why do you think Artie wants his mother's diary so badly?
    4. What do we learn about Richieu?

Discuss together what they talked about. When they provide images to talk about, model how you might consider the formal choices and important details.

Extra discussion points:

Page 80: Vladek surrounded by Jewish star. What does this say about Judaism and visibility?

Page 83: Use it to set up the "order of analysis"

  1. What is happening, generally?
  2. What is the dialogue indicating?
  3. What are some of the thematic or interpretive elements?
  4. What formal elements stand out? How do they change or add to our original interpretation?
  5. What are the multiple ways of interpreting this formal effect?
Day 3 (Vol. 1: pp. 94-159)

Quickwrite: Why does Artie call Vladek a murderer? Who/What does he murder? What does it mean for Artie's identity? Why is he so upset?

Group work: Each group will get one page from Artie's "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" to analyze.

Go through the steps we practiced to analyze the formal elements of each page.

  1. What is happening, generally?
  2. What is the dialogue indicating?
  3. What are some of the thematic or interpretive elements?
  4. What formal elements stand out? How do they change or add to our original interpretation?
  5. What are the multiple ways of interpreting this formal effect?

Use this opportunity to write a thesis for each page if time permits.

Day 4 (Vol. 2: pp. 1-74)

Spend almost entire class focused exclusively on page 41.

Quickwrite: Turn to page 41. Perform an analysis using bullet points.

  1. What is happening, generally?
  2. What is the dialogue indicating?
  3. What are some of the thematic or interpretive elements?
  4. What formal elements stand out? How do they change or add to our original interpretation?
  5. What are the multiple ways of interpreting this formal effect?
  6. Write a thesis about page 41.

Discuss it together in insane detail. Consider in relation to the following pages on 42-45.

  1. Why is Artie comforted by this therapist?
  2. Why might we get more insight into Artie's writing process?
  3. How do we understand survivor's guilt? How is Artie's writing connected to his surivor's guilt?

Follow up with a thesis exercise.

  1. Share the thesis you wrote in the quickwrite with a partner or 2
  2. Create a better one together
  3. Write it on the board.
  4. Edit these with them and work on specificity.
  5. Have them go back to their individual thesis and rewrite one more time.
  6. For homework, have them submit a thesis online so you can see if they're really understanding.
Day 5 (Vol. 2: pp. 75-136)
  1. Focus almost exclusively on Vladek's racism (99-100)
  2. Ask the following questions
    1. Why does Artie include this moment in the text?
    2. How does this influence our perception of Vladek?
    3. What does it tell us about race, and in particular about perceptions of color?
    4. How does this point to issues of race in American, rather than in Germany?
      1. Direct them to page 79 again. We can re-read this in terms of lynching.
  3. Write a thesis for this section.
  4. Now focus on how to write an analysis of these pages.
  5. If you have time, look at 116 to practice analysis.
  6. Final discussion

Additional Resources

Major Essay: File MAUS Close Reading Paper