Chapter 1 of MAUS

Please take the quiz below before the end of the week:

CLICK HERE FOR CHAPTER 1 QUIZ

 

Also, for your participation grade, comment below (respond to each other, agree/disagree, discuss) in response to the following question:

At the end of this chapter, Vladek specifically asks Artie not to include the story about Lucia and Anja in Artie’s book about the Holocaust, but Artie does anyway. Why do you think this is?

11 thoughts on “Chapter 1 of MAUS

  1. Agree, because he says that it make everything more human and says that he wants to write his story the way it happend.

    1. Hi Yanou, not sure this is an agree or disagree question. Can you elaborate on why Vladek didn’t want Artie to include his life before the Holocaust in the first place?
      Personally, I agree with you to a certain extent about why Artie wrote the events with Anja and Lucia in his book.

      1. Hey Eleanor Vladek thinks it’s too personal and private, and he would prefer if Artie mentioned other stories in his book, not his love problems.

  2. Artie wants to make the story of Vladek, during Holocaust but also of what happened in his life before. Vladek thinks that this part isn’t important because it only talks about love and another girl that tries to make his girlfriend stop loving him. Artie says that this makes the book more human which I totally agree. Vladek also says that this is too private.

    1. Hi Victor, I totally agree but do you think Vladek doesn’t want that Artie include the story about Lucia and Anja in the book because he doesn’t want to demean Lucia ? I think that may be one of the reasons he doesn’t want it.

  3. At the end of this chapter, Vladek specifically asks Artie not to include the story about Lucia and Anja in Artie’s book about the Holocaust, but Artie does anyway because he says that it would make everything more real, more human in the book. I agree because in almost every story, whether it’s about war or whatever, there’s a love story. Artie wants to tell Vladek’s story, the way it really happened, but Vladek says that this is too private and he shouldn’t mention that.

    1. I agree with you on the fact that Artie included the events with Lucia and Anja in his book to make the story seem more human, because it helps make the Jews seem less vulnerable and show the reader they had actual lives before the war, just like anyone else.

  4. Vladek asks Artie to disregard the events preceding his time during the Holocaust as he says they are too personal. He also thinks it isn’t respectful towards the victims of the Holocaust if his life before is included, as the book will focus less on them and more on his story. This evokes that he doesn’t want to be the ‘main character’ in the narrative and he wants Arties’ book to be more generalised and talk about known facts like Hitlers’ participation in the Shoah and the number of deaths in the camps, not his petty love stories.
    However, Artie ignores this and includes what happened with Anja and Lucia in his book. He convinces Vladek that this is a good idea as it makes the whole story more human. This is because it will show the readers that the Jews had a life before the second world war and that it wasn’t defined by the Holocaust. It makes them seem less like wounded animals and more like humans worthy of respect.
    Overall, I think Artie included his fathers’ life before the Holocaust in the anecdote because it showed how much the Shoah changed innocent peoples’ ordinary lives, making them seem like inhuman beings when they were just the same as everyone.

    1. I totally agree because as you said Vladek doesn’t want to be the ‘main character’ and his petty love stories seem ridiculous compared to the victims of wars, the Holocaust.

    2. Hi Eleonor I totally agree with you Vladek asked Art not to write about Lucia because he didn’t have her permission and he wanted to be respectful. I don’t know if it was right for Art to break his promess, but I think that Art chose to write about her so that he could include an accurate portrayal of his father’s character. Vladek told his son that he did not want this part of the story in the book because it was too personal.

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