Maus and Night Comparison

Zach Gardner

The books Maus by Art Spiegelman and Night by Elie Wiesel both observe the tragic events of the Holocaust. They are very different stories in the way each story tells its line of events. Though they have the same main idea (the Holocaust), they differ in the way the characters explain the atrocity of the death of millions of innocent people. Maus doesn't even start with anything to do with the Holocaust, but more of a short prequel. It is all about how the main character's normal life is completely ordinary and it slowly eases in to the mishap. In contrast, Night starts off pretty much right to the point, and that being the beginning of it all when Jewish people start to disappear and more and more mouths continue to exchange frightful rumors. At first Night and Maus seem different, but they have a much more important similarity and that is both tell the story of events of what the Jews did just to stay alive and fight for each other.

The first important similarity I noticed was that of the sorting of the uninformed Jews.  In Night, Elie first gets to Auchwitz with his whole family and Elie and his father go left and and Elie's mother and sister go right, straight to the crematorium and death, completely uninformed of their fate. This also happens in Maus at the gates of Auchwitz beneath the sign 'Arbeit Macht Frei,' which means 'work makes freedom.' I think both authors did this as a form of foreshadowing to show that only the people able to WORK will be FREE from death, for some time at least. I think that the main relevancy this example has is that both stories talk about how people who were selected to go to the right ran back to the left to try to be reunited with their family members. The terrible thing is that they had no idea they would be condemned to die immediately.

Secondly, I think another important similarity is that in both stories, the Jews had places that they could hide to stay safe from the Nazis. In Maus, they have special places in attics and cellars before they were taken to Auchwitz, and also they have the tunnel of shoes while in Auchwitz. In Night however, it is a little different. In Maus, all of the hiding places were either built by them or planned ahead, while in Night it was a spur of the moment and after Elie and the other prisoners ran forty-two miles, Elie and his father found a shed and they slept in it for the night. I think that the authors wrote these stories with this specific theme of hiding as an example of fighting for freedom and showing how harsh and corrupt the Nazis were to the Jews. In my opinion, any human would go to such extreme standards and risk so much just to survive, as the Jews tried, even though the Nazis did everything to stop them.

Finally, besides the Jews helping themselves to stay alive and find their own family members, they also helped people they had never met before, because they were all in the same situation. In Maus, they are hiding in the attic before they are taken to Auchwitz and they open the chandelier and see another Jew. He says that he is just looking for his family, so Vladek and his family help him. But the problem is that he is working for the Nazis. In Night, it is the other way around, where a complete stranger helps Elie and his father. When in the sorting line, a man asks them their age, and tells them to lie about it so they will both be able to survive. Elie and his father have never met this man before, but the man knew it was the right thing to do, to help more people survive the sorting. I think that both authors depict the story this way to show that instead of each Jew being one individual person, they are all together as one body of people, to fight together. During the Holocaust, Jews didn't only help themselves, but they helped each other too.

I think that the main similarity between the books Maus and Night is that of all the fighting to stay alive and fighting for each other. I think that this similarity is really important because it shows how during the Holocaust, all of the Jews, family, friends or strangers, all fought to stay alive and stay together. In my opinion, this similarity between the stories exists because even though Elie Wiesel and Vladek Spiegelman never knew each other, they both wanted to keep their families together for as long as possible. The similarity plays into the point the authors are making by showing that no matter what happens, your family needs to stick together and they need to do that by fighting to stay alive and fighting for each other. Overall, I think that both stories have the same effect on the authors in shoing the way families fight to stay together.