VOLUME 1: My Father Bleeds History
I have finally picked up this graphic novel duology after hearing so many great things about it. Since it is my Nonfiction November, I had to include it and I have been really into graphic novels lately. This is a true story about a Polish Jew who was taken to Auschwitz and how he and his wife had to hide in barns and cellars. This is no ordinary visualization. The illustrator decided to use animals to tell the story. The Germans- Nazis, are represented by cats. The Poles are represented by pigs, and the Jews are represented by Mice.
The story starts off with a little boy playing with his friends and who ever is last is the rotten egg. The little boy falls and is ultimately the rotten egg. He goes home crying and his father reprimands him for crying about friends. You can immediately tell that the son and father relationship is going to be hard.
The son is a comic book artist and wants to tell his father's story because it needs to be told. He tells of his time owning a business in Poland. Having a girlfriend and then falling for another woman and the said girlfriend being clingy and delusional. The father gets drafted and gets sent to a POW camp. A lot more happens in the first that I will not spoil.
My opinions on the art style is that it is way to cluttered and it is very difficult to keep straight. The font is hard because I can't figure out the town names and the story is being told by a person who's language is definitely not English and it is written to be read like someone who mixes up there English speaking.
VOLUME 2: And Here My Troubles Began
The second volume starts off with the author Art Spiegelman wearing a mouse mask. He is doing all these interviews for the book and he is feeling burnt out and it just over the whole thing. He also learns more about his father's time in Auschwitz and how he worked in the tin shop and shoe shop and the march from Auschwitz when the Russians were closing in.
We also get a more closer look of how Vladek is a tight wad and how he is a racist towards black people. Art confronts him about it when they pick up a black hitch hiker and Vladek is fuming. he says his racism does not compare to Hitler and his hatred and crimes against the Jews. Which made me infuriated. Vladek was just a hard pill to swallow and I can feel bad for him but how he acted towards another race, it is unforgiveable.
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