Maus

From Infocentral

Maus: A Survivor's Tale is a memoir presented as a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. It recounts Spiegelman's father's struggle to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew and draws largely on his father's recollections of events he personally experienced. The book also follows the author's troubled relationship with his father and the way the effects of war reverberate through generations of a family. In 1992 it won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award. The New York Times described the selection of Maus for the honor: "The Pulitzer board members ... found the cartoonist's depiction of Nazi Germany hard to classify."

Contents

Overview

The book alternates the stories told by Spiegelman's father Vladek Spiegelman about life in Poland before and during the Second World War, with the contemporary life of Art, Vladek and their loved ones in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City and in Florida. The book recounts the struggle of Vladek Spiegelman living with his family in Radomsko, Czestochowa, Sosnowiec and Bielsko in the late 1930s and his tragic odyssey during the war which ultimately led him to Auschwitz as prisoner 175113. Throughout the book, Art Spiegelman also confronts his complex and often conflicted relationship with his father; for example, Vladek exhibits racial prejudice against blacks despite his own experiences of anti-semitism. He is also presented as stingy and a person who makes life very difficult for those around him, such as his first wife Anja (Art's mother, who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala, also a concentration camp survivor.

Themes

The author's articulation of the Holocaust is the central theme of the two graphic novels, giving the book a metabiographical aspect. Spiegelman often mentions the apprehension he feels related to trying to express the inexpressible.


The novel depicts the Holocaust through both the survivor's perspective and the point of view of those who did not live it, but are still deeply connected to it. The author makes a unique choice to depict the varying nationalities and races in the novel with animals.

Levels of Narrative in Maus

Maus is a text constructed with at least three levels of narrative. The innermost level is that of Vladek Spiegelman's story before, during and after the Holocaust, as told to and retold by Art Spiegelman. The level that contains that story is the narrative concerning Art and Vladek's present-day relationship (circa the creation of the text), set mostly in Rego Park, NY. The third and outermost level is the one that appears on page 41 of Maus II, with Art (and other characters) depicted as humans wearing animal masks, with Art drawing and writing Maus itself, and contemplating the task of finishing the book, the research process, and Maus I's publication. Rick Iadonisi, in his essay "Bleeding History and Owning His [Father's] Story: Maus and Collaborative Autobiography,"<ref>Iadonisi, Rick. "Bleeding History and Owning His [Father's] Story: Maus and Collaborative Autobiography." The CEA Critic 57(1994-1995): 41-56.</ref> referred to this outermost level as the "meta-meta-narrative," and Erin McGlothlin coined the system of "inner, middle, and outer" narrative in relation to this text<ref>McGlothlin, Erin. ""No Time Like the Present: Narrative and Time in Art Spiegelman's Maus." Narrative 11.2(2003): 177-198.</ref>.

Animals used

The animals are presumably chosen based on the characteristics of the nation/racial group chosen, and some obvious allegories can be seen[1]:

  • The Jews, as mice, can be seen as weak and helpless victims, as well as satirizing the Nazi portrayal of Jews.
  • The Germans, as cats, suggest power over the Jews, as well as malevolence (cats often play with mice before killing them).
  • Dogs for the Americans suggest power, as well as friendliness, loyalty and many other positive values. The stereotypical dog also dislikes cats and may attack them. The choice of dog was obviously inspired by the term "dogface," which was a common nickname for the American G.I. (especially infantry) during the WWII era. It may also be an allusion to some cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry, in which a dog (Spike) will protect a mouse from a cat, or it may also refer to a German referance to American Marines as Teufelhunden or "Devil Hounds" during WWI
  • The use of pigs as Polish suggests more negative views: as well as greed, the Poles/pigs are brutal (Spiegelman mentions a Jew who survived the war, only to be murdered by Poles when he returned home.) After the comic was released in Poland many Poles found it very offensive to be represented by pigs. Spiegelman explained that he chose pigs in good faith because of their resemblance to famous American cartoon characters like Miss Piggy and Porky Pig.
  • The only encounter with a gypsy is when she tells the fortune of Anja, Vladek's wife: She is represented by a Gypsy moth.
  • The French being frogs would appear to be a direct reference to an oft-used nickname, itself a lampoon of the fact that the French are supposedly renowned for eating frogs: it is also, however, suggested that Spiegelman wanted a certain amount of sliminess about the French, as he says to his (French) wife: "Bunnies are too innocent for the French... Think of the years of anti-Semitism."
  • The Swedish as deer suggests reindeer. It also suggests the Swedish possibly being timid; a reference to Sweden's neutrality in WWII.
  • The British as fish suggests an aquatic creature, a metaphor of British Naval supremacy. It might also be a reference to "Fish and chips", or 'Cold Fish'. Also, as the Germans are cats, and cats like to eat fish, but usually can't, this suggests the Germans' antagonization with the British at the time.
  • Vladek as a senior citizen mouse wears glasses. However, most of the time he is drawn as wearing pince-nez just like Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge's creator Carl Barks was an influence on Spiegelman, who was later chosen to write an obituary for Barks that was published in the New York Times.

The use of animals in the graphic novel may seem incongruous, but instead of creating social stereotypes, Spiegelman attempts to lampoon them and show how stupid it is to classify a human being based on nationality or ethnicity.[2] His images are not his: they were "borrowed from the Germans... Ultimately what the book is about is the commonality of human beings. It's crazy to divide things down along nationalistic or racial or religious lines... These metaphors, which are meant to self-destruct in my book - and I think they do self-destruct - still have a residual force and still get people worked up over them."

Publication

Maus was originally published as a three page strip for Funny Aminals, an underground comic published by Apex Novelties in 1972. In 1977, Spiegelman decided to lengthen the work,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> publishing most of the work serially in RAW magazine, a publication Spiegelman co-edited along with his wife Françoise Mouly. It was then published in its final form in two parts (Volume I: "My Father Bleeds History" and Volume II: "And Here My Troubles Began"), before eventually being integrated into a single volume. A CD-ROM edition also exists.

Impact

Since its publication, Maus has been the subject of numerous essays. Deborah R. Geis published a collection of essays involving Maus titled Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust, which received criticism in an Image & Narrative essay for, among other things, excluding several essays praising and even the rare essay critiquing the graphic novel.[3]

Alan Moore praised Maus in a recommendations list for the website http://www.readyourselfraw.com, saying "I have been convinced that Art Spiegelman is perhaps the single most important comic creator working within the field and in my opinion Maus represents his most accomplished work to date…"[4]

Maus has also become a subject of study in schools. [5]

Awards and nominations

Awards

Nominations

Editions

External links

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