# data[].attributes.headline
What influenced Art Spiegelman to Write Maus?

# data[].attributes.subject
What influenced Art Spiegelman to Write Maus?

# data[].attributes.body
Spiegelman always loved comics, writting, and illustration, so becoming an author was a no-brainer. Both of his parents, Vladek and Anja, were both survivors of Auschwitz death camp. Early in life, his mother committed suicide, and you can see him coping with her legacy throughout the text.

# data[].attributes.body
Art Spiegelman was born in February 15, 1948. He is the author and illustrator of Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, and Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. He grew up in Queens, New York, where he studied cartooning.

# data[].attributes.body
Mice as jews represents a lot all at once. Mice are dirty, small, smallest on the food chain, and less cared for by humans. In the holocaust camps, jewish people were all of these things to germans and poles. They were inferior and only truly mattered to each other. Spiegelman could not have done a better job at picking a way to represent their situation.

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, the author discusses how Art Spiegelman uses different animals to represent different groups of people. In this case, the pigs represent the Poles and the mice represent the Jews. This image shows the aggressive nature of the Poles and the effects Hilter had on other groups of people. It shows the Poles "doing the Germans dirty work." In this image, the viewer can already feel the negative impact Hilter had on society and the viewer also feels immense sympathy for the Jews and all that they endured.

# data[].attributes.body
This picture is one of the most classic predator vs prey relationships in the real world. By using mice to represent jews, and using cats to represent the germans it creates a picture perfect visual of the Germans superiority during this time period. Mice run from prey and have to constantly fight for their survival. This is what jews were during from poles (pigs) and germans (cats). Fighting for the life each day and running from something bigger than themselves.

# data[].attributes.body
"In general, if there is a need for the phrase, it's because people are embarrassed to read comics, but they're not embarrassed to read graphic novels."

This is very ironic, espcially because Maus is such an adult level comic. The sterotype that comic books are for children and superheros takes away from his work, which he is trying to avoid. Instead of being shameless about choices in literature, we sometimes get embarassed to defy soicetys norms.

# data[].attributes.body
"Comics have the advantage of existing between the two languages so that they'll stand still long enough for you to contemplate them rather than be part of the laser-beam barrage, and that gives them a certain potency."

This quote shows the power of a comic. It is able to communicate through not just one but two languages. It has the opportunity to give information through pictures and words. It has a larger impact because of this.

# data[].attributes.body
Serialized in Raw magazine and published in full in 1991, Maus was arguably the first critically acclaimed graphic novel, and established Spiegelman as the man who helped elevate comics into an art form.

This quote shows how impactful Maus was. It became so popular that it elevated all comics.

# data[].attributes.body
This picture shows what his final product was like, compared to the sketches he had used as a draft. He says, "It was also important with a story this complex that I not get in the way by [causing somebody to] stare at it for a long time to find out if that was a foot or a tree. I had to eventually synthesize something that looked like my first sketches but had the clarity of a typeface."

# data[].attributes.body
This picture represents his artistic representation of what it is like to plan and start work on something as intricite as a comic book. You can tell that his most important ideas that were put on paper are the mice, a mask, and wire/fence. It is very interesting to see the process of how he made the art into his final project.

# data[].attributes.body
"They're their own medium that synthesizes these two different strands of expression and ties them together."

Visual communication and written communication are both included in comic books to get the author's points and meanings of the artwork across. Visual and written communication mediums synthesize to create their own mixed media and therefore create their own and separate medium.

# data[].attributes.body
"Every great comic is the result of finding a new cocktail for how these things fit together."

This quote shows how the author feels comics should be described. That comics are a combination of multiple concepts and can be put together to create the ultimate story.

# data[].attributes.body
"One of the attributes that I like in comics is how things can be distilled to their furthest point, and then re-expand once they hit your brains through your eye."

# data[].attributes.body
Thought of his comics as "experimental—a comic that didn't have to worry about the obvious forms of communicating either a gag or a suspense story of some kind."

At the time, Spiegelman realized that his works were becoming stranger and stranger and described them as surrealist and experimental. Because of this, there was no obvious place to present or publicize them which made him wonder how his comics were developing.

# data[].attributes.body
"It never occurred to me that comics were anything other than worthy."

Spiegelman has always been greatly impacted by comics; comics introduced him to culture, even more than through media. His work of "Maus" shows what he considers as "worthy" comics; a historic comic that shows the impact of a huge piece of history, rather than an "un-worthy" comic; which could be considered as superhero comics that make a minimal influence.

# data[].attributes.body
"Jews portrayed as mice, Poles as pigs, and Germans as cats. Part history, part fiction, and part memoir.(Spiegelman's father was an Auschwitz survivor)"