Maus: Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Artie, now a grown man, is visiting his father in Rego Park. They greet each other warmly, though Artie writes that they are not very close. He confesses that it has been “a long time” since he last saw Vladek, and notices that Vladek has aged during that time. “My mother’s suicide and his two heart attacks had taken their toll,” Artie observes. Inside the house, Artie greets Mala, his father’s second wife. Like Artie’s parents and most of their friends, Mala is a Polish Jew and a survivor of the Holocaust (she has the head of a mouse). She takes Artie’s coat to hang in the closet, and Vladek berates her when she tries to use a wire hanger instead of a wood one.

After dinner, Vladek leads Artie into a bedroom, so he can pedal on a stationary bicycle while they talk – this is good for his heart, he says. Artie tells Vladek he has been thinking about drawing a comic book about Vladek’s life in Poland during World War II. Vladek tells Artie nobody wants to hear his stories. The serial number tattooed on Vladek’s left forearm, a remnant of his imprisonment in Auschwitz, is visible as he grips the handle of the stationary bike. Artie assures Vladek that he wants to hear the stories, and asks him to tell how he met Artie’s mother, Anja.

With some trepidation, Vladek begins to tell his story. When he met Anja, he says, he was living in a small city in Poland called Czestochowa, earning a modest living in the textile industry. He was young and very handsome, and many women were interested in him. Vladek remembers one, Lucia Greenberg, who asked their mutual friend, Yulek, to introduce them. Vladek takes Lucia dancing. One panel shows her flirting audaciously with him, clearly angling for an invitation to his apartment. After this date, Vladek says, Lucia seemed to appear wherever he went, and was always trying to convince him to invite her home.

Vladek tells Artie he had no particular interest in Lucia, but that she insisted on their being together. A panel shows Lucia stretched out on Vladek’s bed in a slip, while Vladek sits beside her adjusting his tie. They have clearly been having sex – Artie confirms whether this was the nature of their relationship, to his father’s embarrassment. She tells Vladek she wants them to get engaged. Vladek ignores her comment. Lucia’s family was “nice,” Vladek tells Artie, but they had no money for a dowry.

The next panel shows Vladek disembarking from a train, while a woman on the platform – his cousin – waves to him. He has come to spend a holiday with his family in Sosnowiec, a town about 40 miles from Czestochowa. It is 1935. The crowd on the platform includes Jews, with their characteristic mouse heads, and Polish Christians, who have the heads of pigs. His cousin tells Vladek that she wants him to meet her friend Anja, who she says is an intelligent girl from a rich family.

The next day, Vladek goes with his cousin to meet Anja in town. The two women talk in English, neither knowing Vladek understands them; Anja admits that she finds Vladek handsome and very nice. The cousin contrives to leave Vladek and Anja alone together, at which point Vladek teases Anja, revealing that he speaks English – he taught himself the language, despite having to leave school and begin working when he was 14 – and understood her comments about him. Anja is embarrassed, but she recovers quickly. The two soon sit down in a cafŽ, talking comfortably.

Anja and Vladek make plans to talk on the telephone after he returns to Czestochowa. Vladek tells Artie that they began to talk every day, and that Anja wrote him beautiful letters. When she sent him a photograph of herself – Artie imagines the picture in a sketch, with Anja posing in a fur coat and hat – he bought a nice frame for it. Soon after, Lucia sees the photograph and gets upset. She insults Anja’s looks. When Vladek tells her that he plans to marry Anja, Lucia throws herself at him and begs him to reconsider. Vladek admits (with some prompting from Artie) that Anja wasn’t as attractive as Lucia, but claims she had a wonderful mind and that it was easy to fall in love with her once he began talking to her.

Vladek remembers visiting Anja’s family for the first time. The Zylberbergs owned one of Poland’s biggest hosiery factories, and were extremely wealthy. Before dinner, he snoops in Anja’s closet to see whether she will be a tidy housekeeper. He finds several bottles of pills among her neatly folded clothes. Vladek does not want to marry Anja if she is sickly, and he writes down the names of the pills. He tells Artie that he later showed this list to a friend who worked in a pharmacy, and learned that the pills had only been prescribed because Anja was “skinny and nervous.”

At the end of 1936, Vladek and Anja are engaged. Vladek is preparing to move to Sosnowiec when, one night, Lucia appears at his door. She throws herself on the ground and clings to his leg, begging him to take her back. Vladek runs away and calls Yulek to take Lucia home. Shortly thereafter, Anja receives a letter from a “secret friend,” warning her that Vladek has a reputation in Czestochowa as a womanizer, and that he is only marrying Anja for her money. Vladek, who knows the letter must be from Lucia, visits Sosnowiec to sooth Anja’s worries. She is tearful when he arrives, but believes him when he says Lucia means nothing to him. Vladek tells Artie soberly that he “went too far” with Lucia. The damage corrected, he and Anja are married in February 1937. Vladek moves to Sosnowiec to live with her. In one panel, the family toasts the newlyweds with vodka.

Vladek pauses in his cycling. He tells Artie he does not want these stories included in Artie’s book. They have nothing to do with the Holocaust, he says. Artie protests that the stories are “great material” that make the war narrative “more human.” Vladek insists Artie should not mention these details of his private life – to do so wouldn’t be “proper” or “respectful,” he says. Finally, Artie promises to do as Vladek wishes.