Maus is a cartoon story written by Art Spiegelman, it is broken up into two different books labeled, Maus I and Maus II. The story is about his father who is a Jewish mouse during Hitler’s reign in Germany. The story views Nazis as powerful cats and it views Jewish people as tiny weak mice. Art’s father, whose name is Vladek, is the main character of this story and in the beginning of Volume I, Art goes to visit his father. Vladek tells Art of his early years and we see he falls in love and gets married. Vladek finds out that his wife Anja is a communist and a traitor to her people.
He thinks of leaving her but stays, and later in the story she gets sick and Vladek is forced to take her to the hospital. There in the hospital, Vladek sees his first Nazi flag. Vladek gets drafted to fight for the Polish and winds up getting sent to the frontlines. There he is captured by Nazis and thrown into a work/slave camp. Since he is a mouse of Jewish faith he is treated worse than the other prisoners, although they all were treated quite terribly.
He was transferred to the work camp later on and forced to dig throughout the entire day. After some time in the work camp he is sent back to Poland but dropped off in a random location so he is forced to find his own way home. Finally he arrives home to find his family relieved but in shock to see his once beautiful factory that he owned was seized by the Nazis and he is no jobless. Vladek and Anja bounce from hiding spot to hiding spot before being caught by Nazis and sent to Autruwitz.