Chapter 3 Summary- Maus

Chapter 3:

Art returns again to Rego Park to visit his father. Vladek begins to tell Art about how he joined the army at 21, in 1939, and Vladek was sent to the German front. Vladek is captured by the Nazi Army and made POW's. The Jewish prisoners are forced to live outside in tents in the bitter autumn cold and are fed only crusts of bread, while the Polish prisoners stay inside in heated cabins and receive two meals a day.  He volunteers, and when he arrives at the camp, he is given his own bed and a full day to rest. The labor is hard work, literally moving mountains to flatten the terrain, and some men are too weak or old to do it. Vladek dreams of his grandfather, who tells him that he will be released from the camp on the day of Parshas Truma, a special event in the Jewish calendar. Three months later it is Parshas Truma, and the prisoners are released. He boards a train, which takes him through occupied Poland towards Sosnowiec, but the train travels past Sosnowiec. He is finally let off in Lublin, in the heart of the Reich Protectorate, where Vladek finds that the Jewish POW's where only released so that they weren't protected by the Polish Laws that protect prisoners so now the Jewish prisoners could be shot on site. In Lublin, Vladek is led to a camp of large tents and hears stories about the last train of prisoners that arrived at the camp, from which six hundred Jews were marched into the forest and killed. Jewish authorities in the camp have bribed the guards to release prisoners into the homes of nearby Jews, and Vladek tells them that he has a cousin in Lublin. Vladek runs immediately back into his tent. The next morning the cousin arrives, and Vladek is set free. A few days later, he boards a train for Sosnowiec. He does not have the proper traveling papers, but by pretending to be Polish, he enlists the help of a Polish train conductor, who hides him from the German soldiers. He arrives first at his parents' house. His father, a very religious man, has been forced by the Nazis to shave off his beard. Vladek then is reunited with Anja and his son, Richieu. In this chapter you also see the controlling nature of Vladek and the tension between father and son when Vladek throws out Art's coat. 

There are four main themes in chapter three of Maus. They are family, love, survival and war. 

In this chapter it shown the beginning of Vladek's hardships and the start of his involvement in the holocaust and WW2 it also shows the alterations to his personality as of his experiences in the war, such as his slight OCD and his interference with Art's life. The reader learns about how Art acts towards his father in this chapter is shows his frustration with his fathers compulsive tendencies and how he tends to get side tract. But it also shown Art being very dismissive of his father worries about Mala which leaves the reader questioning whether he cares a lot about his father. Mala is shown to the reader to be a bit sadistic because of the way Vladek talks to Art about her trying to steal his money. 

Vladek throws away his son's coat at the end of the chapter, behavior that stands in sharp contrast to his overwhelming compulsion to save. The best explanation for this seemingly uncharacteristic behaviour lies in Vladek's reasons for saving. It becomes clear that Vladek wishes all of his money to be left to his son. His compulsive saving, then, reflects his desire for his son to live a good and prosperous life. Vladek is therefore offended by the sight of his son wearing an old and shabby coat, and he conspires to replace it with one that he thinks is better.Chapter 3 also elaborates on the book's discussions of race and class. When Vladek boards a train from Lublin back to Sosnowiec, he is drawn wearing the mask of a pig, signifying that he is hiding his Jewish identity by pretending to be Polish. So the author is suggesting that race and nationality are only man-made classifications and that underneath these masks, we are all more alike than we are different.

Spiegelman uses flashbacks and the animal categories he puts different religions and nationalities into. This flashbacks helps the reader to understand the themes more by letting the reader see Vladek in the war and after the war so that the reader is able to see the change in his personality. The flashbacks also help with showing the perspectives of Art and Mala. The masks that categorise the characters in Maus are helpful for the reader as they show the discrimination of the people during the war and also to make it clear to the reader who is who.