Perhaps the most obvious feature of Maus is its use of animals to represent different races and nationalities. In representing the Jews as mice, Spiegelman is playing off the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as vermin or pests, as less than human. Spiegel is also playing off a pun on the German verb mauscheln, which is derived from the Yiddish Mausche (Hebrew: Moscheh/Moses), on several levels. In German, the verb is a derogatory term that translates into “to talk like a Jew” or “to swindle like a Jew.” The verb mauscheln visually contains the word Maus. Interestingly, Vladek’s fluency in multiple languages – English, French, Polish, Yiddish, and German – gives him a key edge in many situations.