MAUS, a Holocaust survivor story, written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman, explores many intriguing and engaging features of the comic book genre to express the themes of racism, survival and the ties between the past and the present. MAUS is a graphic novel, illustrated and written around the story of a Jewish Holocaust survivor called Vladek, whose experience followed many of the perils and devastation of the time. Art Spiegelman, the son of Vladek, uses Vladek’s story to portray the themes of the Holocaust, such as the racism the Jews received from the Nazis, the challenge of survival, and how still today those who were affected still feel the pain. All of these themes are then expressed through Spiegelman’s artistic gift, and pleasure…show more content… Like many in the Holocaust, Vladek's experiences represented a constant struggle to survive, his factory and income were taken away, then as the Jews are sent into the ghettos, and ultimately in the nightmare of Auschwitz. The Jews were all tested of their will to survive, only those who possessed the luck or the wit to survive had the best chances. To demonstrate this level of struggle Spigelman adds such things into the illustrations as finer detail to facial expressions, or creative ways of highlighting a certain item or event if it represented salvation for the characters. In doing so Spigelman is able to communicate to the reader in a level of which is closest to how it would have felt in reality if such an event or occurrence were to happen in such times. As these methods employed by Spigelman allow him to add value and emotion through points of salvations and redemption for the characters. Using this technique of expressing survival through giving such details to events an items further lifts the value of the story towards the