Maus

Maus is a Holocaust narrative unlike any other. Art Spiegelman uses the graphic novel form to tell his father’s story, as well as showcase the problems that come with attempting to represent the Holocaust.

Maus I was first published by Pantheon Books in 1986, and Maus II was published in 1992, with The Complete Maus, a compilation of both, published in 1996.

There are three narrative levels to the story; the past (his father Vladek’s Holocaust story), the present (Artie and Vladek’s interactions), and the super-present (Artie’s reflections on the first part of Maus). These three narratives exist side by side, often overlapping and presenting a disordered view of history.

One of the most notable aspects of the novel is Spiegelman’s use of anthropomorphism; Jews are presented as mice, Germans as striped cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, and the French as frogs. This is done effectively to enforce racial barriers, and then deconstruct them. As The Times says, “They are all terrifyingly human.”

In the second half of Maus, “And Here My Troubles Began,” Artie is depicted sitting at a desk atop a mound of mouse corpses- clearly indicating his guilt at profiting off Vladek’s Holocaust experience and also indicating the ways in which the past influences the present. The distinguishing factor however is the use of mask- Artie is no longer represented as a mouse but a human man wearing a mouse mask. Race is revealed to be arbitrary, a social construct, something to take at face value.

In Jeanne C. Ewert’s “Reading Visual Narrative: Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’,” Spiegelman is also quoted as saying the animal metaphor indicates the inauthentic nature of the narrative: “I don't know exactly what a German looks like who was in a specific small town doing a specific thing. My notions are born of a few scores of photographs and a couple of movies. I'm bound to do something inauthentic.” This is an effective way to encourage the reader to question the truth value of what they’re being presented with- the written narrative comes from Vladek’s memory, while the visual narrative is constructed by Spiegelman.

There is also reflection on horizontal oppression. In one particular scene Vladek, Artie and Artie’s wife, Françoise pick up a hitchhiker. The hitchhiker is a black American and Vladek reveals himself to be racist against black people. Françoise berates Vladek for his racism, pointing out that he talks about black people in the same way the Nazis talked about Jewish people. This relates to the theory of horizontal oppression; people from oppressed groups are unable to direct their anger towards the oppressors, so it is instead directed horizontally to people of other oppressed groups. This also indicates that anyone is capable of discrimination, whether they themselves have been discriminated against or not.

Maus is an interesting combination of political cartoon, graphic novel, biography, and autobiography. When asked if he thought readers might be alienated by his portrayal of Vladek, Spiegelman replied: “If only admirable people were shown to have survived, then the implicit moral would have been that only admirable people deserved to survive, as opposed to the fact that people deserved to survive.”

Sources:

- Ewert, Jeanne C. “Reading Visual Narrative: Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus.’” Narrative, 8, 1 (2000), 87-103.
- McGlothlin, Erin. “Narrative and Time in Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus.’” Narrative, 11, 2 (2003), 177-198.
- Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. United States of America: Pantheon Books, 1996