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Hannah Ricketts
Mr.Salow
English 11
January 23 2017
Maus 5-Frame Analysis 1
Maus is a comic book about Art Spiegelman's father, Vladeks journey throughout
the holocaust and how it has changed his life. Vladek lives in Rego Park, New York now
with his second wife, Mala; They are both holocaust survivors. Mala and Vladek became
married a few years after his wife, Anja committed suicide. Mala had been friends with
them before the war in Poland. In this essay I will be discussing 5 different frames that I
find significantly important to the book as a whole.
The first frame I am going to discuss is pages 26, the beginning of the second
chapter. When the chapter begins you see Art sitting down to drink his coffee across from
Vladek. Valdek is counting out his pills for the day, when Art asks if his mother Anja had
ever had any boyfriends before him. When that question is asked, the page gets slightly
darker leading Vladek into a story about the only other man Anja had ever been interested
in, Who happened to be a communist; When the word communist is mentioned all of the
walls behind vladek turn black and he has an angry expression on his face.

The second frame I find important is page 35, Vladek has just taken Anja to a Get
Away after she becomes depressed after giving birth to their son, Richieu. In the
opening of this page you see a small photo of Anja and Vladek, in this photo Anja looks

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depressed and withdrawn while Vladek is fine and talking about how beautiful this place
looks. Everything in the background on this page is a very deep black, such as door
frames, flowers, and people. Anja seems to be very on edge and concerned about
everything, in the third box you can see how in distress she is concerning what the doctor
has to say about her mindset. In the fourth frame, you see Anja and Vladek outside but
everything's shaded black until Valdek pulls out a picture of their son then everything
becomes bright again.
The third frame that is significant is the first real moment of segregation of the
jews, Page 37. When Valdek returns to his apartment to greet his wife and child, he
informs his wife that there was a riot downtown again regarding the jews leaving the city.
Their maid, who is a polish woman becomes angry when Vladek makes a comment about
the polls not needing much stirring up when it comes to getting rid of the jews. Vladek
shuts Anja down when she recommends that they move very far away. This whole page
takes place on the front steps of Anja and Vladeks apartment, The background isnt any
darked than what is normally seen.
The fourth frame I find to be significant to this book is page 43, the first page of
chapter 3. When the page starts, you see Art, Mala, and Vladek sitting around the table
eating dinner. Mala offers Art more food, after he politely declines Vladek tells Art he has
to at least finish what is on his plate. Then Art starts to tell a story of how his father used
to force him to eat everything his mother served or it would be reserved until he would
eat it or starve. Mala expressed her dissatisfaction with Vladeks ways during this page.

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This whole page takes place at Vladeks dining room table, Where arts whole body is
black.
Frame five, page 69. The jews are being moved by the polls for release to the
american army. The first thing youll see is a large tent, where the jews are supposed to
wait to be moved through the woods to the american army. Once the jews start to be
moved through the woods to the lake where they will meet the americans some of the
jews started to catch on to what was really happening and attempted to bribe the guards.
Some of the guards pretended to be on with the idea and would let them walk out of the
line into the woods but would then shoot them instead of letting them go free, like they
agreed. Everything in this page is black, in my opinion for two reasons, 1 because it's a
dark and scary thing that's occurring and 2 because it's supposed to reflect nighttime.

Work cited
Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My father Bleeds History. New York:
Pantheon, 1992. Print.