Maus by Art Spiegelman

 

Reviewed by Ben

I recently read Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a graphic novel published in two volumes from 1986-1992. This is a true, personal story about the painful odyssey the author’s father underwent to survive The Holocaust. While the senior Spiegelman’s Holocaust experience takes center stage, Maus is also a story about the relationship between Art and his father, Vladek.

As one would expect from a legendary, beloved work of literature, Maus is a great read. Its characters are relatable. It expands the story of The Holocaust to touch on how survivors and their children still felt the effect decades later.

First, the characters in Maus were very relatable. Sure, they are supposed to be real people. They should be. However, the author’s presentation felt very authentic, with everyone’s flaws showing. Vladek is miserly, anxious, arguably rude and at times unconcerned with the needs and wants of those close to him. He is also a stereotypical figure. Spiegelman even depicts himself grappling with the issue of writing the book and showing his dad as a Jewish stereotype. The author himself is shown to be impatient and short with his father, with little inclination to spend time with Vladek outside of gathering notes for the book. Finally, Vladek’s fellow Jews who suffered through the holocaust with him were not put on a pedestal. The elder Spiegelman told of greed and selfishness from other victims as everyone struggled for survival under the Nazis. Such honesty is always important when telling history, particularly with dark chapters like The Holocaust. Honest, relatable depictions put the subjects’ humanity on display, making it easier for the reader to imagine the horror of an attempted extermination that was carried out against people just like her or himself.

Second, Maus is more than the account of a Holocaust survivor’s time in Nazi-occupied Europe. This graphic novel situates itself firmly in modern times, among the backdrop of an ordinary existence that is geographically and temporally distant from The Holocaust, yet the Nazis’ attempt at a “final solution” still sticks with its survivors. For example, the reader sees Art arriving at his father’s house and engaging in small talk about household chores and old age complaints before Vladek gets down to the business of sharing his past. This proximity between the mundane aspects of normal life and the unimaginable horrors of genocide represent how these experiences are interwoven with the present, depriving survivors of normal lives and having immeasurable effects on their children. One striking example of this effect comes when Art, his wife and Vladek are driving through the countryside in New York state. The conversation having strayed off the topic of Vladek’s past, Art directs his father back to The Holocaust. Vladek resumes his account by describing a time the SS put on hanged bodies on display in the middle of town. The corresponding panel showed Art’s modern car driving down the New York highway with prison-stripe-wearing bodies hanging in the trees to the side of the road. This could symbolize several things: Vladek’s inability to escape the ghosts of mass murder and suffering, the need to keep the memory of genocidal events alive as we go about our comfortable lives in peace, or maybe the notion that holocausts can happen again if we are not careful.

In summary, Maus is a great graphic novel that I would recommend to anyone from the sixth grade and older.

In summary, Maus is a great graphic novel that I would recommend to anyone from the sixth grade and older.