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Devin Berry

Cultural Themes

Prakasam

Graphic Images of Maus I

While many may think that the way in which Art Spiegelman decided to illustrate

his graphic novel, Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale, is crude and inappropriate I find that it may

in fact help the reader to better understand the story that is being narrated. He depicts the

Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats, and the Poles as pigs, and while this seems Orwellian and

out of context, it illustrates the story in a way that gives it a second layer of meaning. To

some the imagery may dull the emotional trauma caused by the Holocaust, which makes

it easier to focus on the words of the story being told. The images do not affect my

response to the Holocaust, however I do understand how it might affect some.

Spiegelman chose the voice that he felt was best suited to tell the story. "Whether

commentary [...] is built into a structure of a history or developed as a separate,

superimposed text is a matter of choice, but the voice of the commentator must be clearly

heard. The commentary should disrupt the facile linear progression of the narration,

introduce alternative interpretations, question any partial conclusion, withstand the need

for closure [...] Such commentary may introduce splintered or constantly recurring

refractions of a traumatic past by using any number of different vantage

points."(Friedländer) Every story that an author rights about the Holocaust (or any other

historical occurrence) has a voice that has been selected by the author. Some are told
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from the third person perspective, while others are told from the first person. Spiegelman

selects his perspective, and from the vantage point of his father he is able to tell the

traumatic past that is the Holocaust.

His voice as the commentator of his father’s history is clearly evident. As

Vladek, Art’s father, tells Art his story Art comments on the details of the story; “But

Pop…Mom’s name was Anna Zylberberger!…”(Spiegelman 14) It is through his images

that his voice is most clearly heard. It appears that Spiegelman does not care about

offending the audience because it is his story to tell. I believe this is evident when

examining the comic book within the comic book: Prisoner on the Hell Planet. While

some readers may not be able to handle the material presented in the graphic novel, the

story is made clear through the use of his graphic images.

Spiegelman wrote and illustrated this graphic novel about a story close to him,

that being the story of his father’s life through the Holocaust. Due to the fact that it is a

personal story and one close to his heart I believe that he in no way meant to have his

illustrations be interpreted as crude. Seeing as he went out of his way to collect his

father’s stories and spent many many years writing and illustrating the graphic novel I do

not think that he would diminish all of that effort by purposefully making his illustrations

inappropriate.

In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, all of the characters are animals, much

like the characters of this graphic novel. Orwell’s novel covers themes such as

communism whereas Maus focuses on the Holocaust. The two novels have many

similarities. One difference I find between Orwell’s Animal Farm and Spiegelman’s

Maus 1 is that by depicting the characters as animals within his graphic novel,
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Spiegelman adds an ease of understanding to the story. The images of cats and mice

make me think of the age-old metaphor of the cat and mouse game. The cats chase after

the mice, catch them, torture them, and ultimately kill them. As macabre as that may

seem, that is in essence exactly what happened to many Jews during the Holocaust. The

Nazis rounded up the Jews and kept them locked up in ghettos before shipping them off

to concentration camps where they would then be tortured, denied their basic human

needs, kept in inhumane conditions, and ultimately murdered. Mythology views cats as

guardians, which is what the Nazis were initially intended to be. The symbology behind

the choice of animals adds to the story.

Orwell’s Animal Farm is not the only book that Spiegelman’s story can be

compared to. “…but the interesting aspect I find with how I use Maus is in its ability to

compare to a traditional novel. I have had success in the past comparing Maus with

Animal Farm, but the best novel I find to compare with Maus is Night by Elie Wiesel.”

(Allin) The images that Spiegelman uses have been compared to Orwell based on the use

of animals instead of people. However, the topics that Spiegelman’s animals deal with

are more inline with the themes of Wiesel’s Night. Both Night and Maus: I deal with

intense themes like the meaning of family, war, torture, and survivng. Wiesel and

Spiegelman are both very direct about the topics that they cover and present their pain for

the reader to uncover. Spiegelman’s uses of a graphic novel format, however, in some

ways makes it easier for the reader to digest the intense and painful material.

As children in school we view videos about the atrocities of the Holocaust

in history classes. In the videos we see those in concentration camps being starved and

packed into bunks. Often the atrocities we seen in the videos make it difficult to actually
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process what is going on because we are simply overwhelmed by the graphic images we

see. Spiegelman uses his animal illustrations to demonstrate exactly what we would see

in a historical video. Because the reader is not seeing images of emaciated tortured

human beings it is easier to concentrate on the words that are being used to tell Vladek’s,

Art’s father, story.

While some may say that the images in this graphic novel are inappropriate and

that they diminish the severity of the atrocities of the Holocaust, I wholeheartedly

disagree. In no way do the images affect my response to the events of the Holocaust.

Before reading this graphic novel I knew about the atrocities of the Holocaust and after

reading the graphic novel my opinions of said atrocities has not changed. I still know that

the Holocaust was an awful thing and a momentous event in the world’s history. The

images that Art Spiegelman uses in his graphic novel Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale helped

me to concentrate on the words being used to depict the story of his father’s time during

the Holocaust.

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