Christina Reviews *Maus 1* and *Maus II* by Art Spiegelman

         There are many books, stories, poems, movies, etc. depicting the Holocaust.  So what sets Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels apart from them? 

        Both Maus I and Maus II are written in comic book form, using mice, cats, pigs and other animals to stand for various groups of people.  The Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis by cats.  At first glance, this appears to be a bit too clichéd to work.  However, the approach is more subtle, since most of the references to these animals are through pictures.  This also gives the books an eerie feeling, almost as if they were twisted storybooks.

       The main characters in the books are Artie (the author), his father Vladek and his stepmother Mala.  Vladek is telling his son about his days before and during the Holocaust.  Artie is a cartoonist whose goal it is to write a comic strip based on his father’s experiences during the Holocaust.  He wants it to be an honest potrayal of Vladek’s earlier life, free of bias.  This is a difficult task, and Vladek doesn’t make it any easier.  Vladek seems to be somewhat of a nuisance.  He's full of complaints.  He uses guilt to get others to do things for him.  For example, he’ll claim that he is about to have a heart attack anytime he wants to have some kind of control over his wife, or he’ll call up his son in the middle of the night and tell him to fix the roof, or else he’ll do it himself, in his poor condition.  This seems to parallel the ways in which the Nazis would use fear to gain control of others.  Later on in the first book, Vladek throws away his son’s coat and supplies him with another that doesn’t fit.  This is reminiscent of the way Nazis would take the Jews’ clothing and supply them with pathetic garments, including wooden shoes, that often times were too big or too small. 

          When Spiegelman was drawing the pictures, you could tell a person’s background just from their outward appearance.  And yet with human beings, nothing is so clear-cut. 

         Vladek certainly has some characteristics of his oppressors.  This is seen through the way in which he treats his son and Mala.   It is said that if we don't learn from history, it has a way of repeating itself.   In these books, history is repeating itself, in a more subtle and less extreme way.  Artie feels guilty that he didn’t have to suffer through the Holocaust and his father did.  Yet, throughout the books, the past seems to seep into the present, in a way that mystifies Artie.

          I liked these books.  I found them to have a new perspective to offer.  Not only was it interesting to read a Nazi comic book, but it was interesting to see the life that one particular survivor made for himself after the war had ended.