''Maus'' is a
graphic novel
A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...
by American cartoonist
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade (comics maga ...
, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a
Polish Jew
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...
and
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
survivor. The work employs
postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
techniques, and represents Jews as mice and other Germans and Poles as cats and pigs. Critics have classified ''Maus'' as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992 it became the first graphic novel to win a
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
.
In the
frame-tale timeline in the narrative present that begins in 1978 in New York City, Spiegelman talks with his father Vladek about his Holocaust experiences, gathering material and information for the ''Maus'' project he is preparing. In the narrative past, Spiegelman depicts these experiences, from the years leading up to
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
to his parents' liberation from the
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father and the absence of his mother, who died by suicide when he was 20. Her grief-stricken husband destroyed her written accounts of
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
. The book uses a minimalist drawing style and displays innovation in its pacing, structure, and page layouts.
A three-page strip also called "Maus" that he made in 1972 gave Spiegelman an opportunity to interview his father about his life during World War II. The recorded interviews became the basis for the book, which Spiegelman began in 1978. He serialized ''Maus'' from 1980 until 1991 as an insert in ''
Raw
Raw is an adjective usually describing:
* Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made
* Raw food, uncooked food
Raw or RAW may also refer to:
Computing and electronics
* .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...
'', an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by Spiegelman and his wife,
Françoise Mouly
Françoise Mouly (; born 24 October 1955) is a Paris-born New York-based designer, editor, and publisher. She is best known as co-founder, co-editor, and publisher of the comics and graphics magazine ''Raw'' (1980–1991), as the publisher of ...
, who also appears in ''Maus''. A collected volume of the first six chapters that appeared in 1986 brought the book mainstream attention; a second volume collected the remaining chapters in 1991. ''Maus'' was one of the first books in graphic novel format to receive significant academic attention in the English-speaking world.
Synopsis
Most of the book weaves in and out of two timelines. In the
frame tale
A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent.
Frame and FRAME may also refer to:
Physical objects
In building construction
*Framing (con ...
of the narrative present, Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek in the
Rego Park
Rego Park is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City. Rego Park is bordered to the north by Elmhurst and Corona, to the east and south by Forest Hills, and to the west by Middle Village. Rego Park's boundaries include Queens ...
neighborhood of Queens in New York City in 1978–79. The story that Vladek tells unfolds in the narrative past, which begins in the mid-1930s, and continues until the end of
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
in 1945.
In Rego Park in 1958, a young Art Spiegelman is skating with his friends when he falls down and hurts himself, but his friends keep going. When he returns home, he finds his father Vladek, who asks him why he is upset, and Art proceeds to tell him that his friends left him behind. His father responds in broken English, "Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!"
As an adult, Art visits his father, from whom he has become estranged. Vladek has remarried to a woman called Mala since the suicide of Art's mother Anja in 1968. Art asks Vladek to recount his Holocaust experiences. Vladek tells of his time in the Polish city of
Częstochowa
Częstochowa ( , ; german: Tschenstochau, Czenstochau; la, Czanstochova) is a city in southern Poland on the Warta River with 214,342 inhabitants, making it the thirteenth-largest city in Poland. It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship (admin ...
and how he came to marry into Anja's wealthy family in 1937 and move to
Sosnowiec
Sosnowiec is an industrial city county in the Dąbrowa Basin of southern Poland, in the Silesian Voivodeship, which is also part of the Silesian Metropolis municipal association.—— Located in the eastern part of the Upper Silesian Industria ...
to become a manufacturer. Vladek begs Art not to include this in the book and Art reluctantly agrees. Anja suffers a breakdown due to
postpartum depression
Postpartum depression (PPD), also called postnatal depression, is a type of mood disorder associated with childbirth, which can affect both sexes. Symptoms may include extreme sadness, low energy, anxiety, crying episodes, irritability, and chan ...
after giving birth to their first son Richieu, and the couple go to a sanitarium in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for her to recover. After they return, political and
anti-Semitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
tensions build until Vladek is
drafted just before the
Nazi invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
. Vladek is captured at the front and forced to work as a
prisoner of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of wa ...
. After his release, he finds Germany has
annexed Sosnowiec, and he is dropped off on the other side of the border in the
German protectorate. He sneaks across the border and reunites with his family.
During one of Art's visits, he finds that a friend of Mala's has sent the couple one of the
underground comix
Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, ...
magazines Art contributed to. Mala had tried to hide it, but Vladek finds and reads it. In "Prisoner on the Hell Planet", Art is traumatized by his mother's suicide three months after his release from the
mental hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociati ...
, and in the end depicts himself behind bars saying, "You ''murdered'' me, Mommy, and left me here to take the rap!" Though it brings back painful memories, Vladek admits that dealing with the issue in such a way was for the best.
In 1943, the Nazis move the Jews of the
Sosnowiec Ghetto
The Sosnowiec Ghetto (german: Ghetto von Sosnowitz) was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews in the Środula district of Sosnowiec in the Province of Upper Silesia. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, mos ...
to Srodula and march them back to Sosnowiec to work. The family splits up—Vladek and Anja send Richieu to
Zawiercie
Zawiercie is a city in the south of Poland located in the Silesian Voivodeship with 49,334 inhabitants (2019). It is situated in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland near the source of the Warta River. The town lies near the historical region of Sile ...
to stay with an aunt for safety. As more Jews are sent from the ghettos to Auschwitz, the aunt poisons herself, her children and Richieu to death to escape the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
and not die in the gas chamber. In Srodula, many Jews build bunkers to hide from the Germans. Vladek's bunker is discovered and he is placed into a "ghetto inside the ghetto" surrounded by
barbed wire
A close-up view of a barbed wire
Roll of modern agricultural barbed wire
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire, is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strands. Its primary use is t ...
. The remnants of Vladek and Anja's family are taken away. Srodula is cleared of its Jews, except for a group Vladek hides with in another bunker. When the Germans depart, the group splits up and leaves the ghetto.
In Sosnowiec, Vladek and Anja move from one hiding place to the next, making occasional contact with other Jews in hiding. Vladek disguises himself as an ethnic Pole and hunts for provisions. The couple arrange with smugglers to escape to Hungary, but it is a trick—the Gestapo arrest them on the train (as Hungary is invaded) and take them to
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
, where they are separated until after the war.
Art asks after Anja's diaries, which Vladek tells him were her account of her Holocaust experiences and the only record of what happened to her after her separation from Vladek at Auschwitz and which Vladek says she had wanted Art to read. Vladek comes to admit that he burned them after she killed herself. Art is enraged and calls Vladek a "murderer".
The story jumps to 1986, after the first six chapters of ''Maus'' have appeared in a collected edition. Art is overcome with the unexpected attention the book receives and finds himself "totally blocked". Art talks about the book with his psychiatrist Paul Pavel, a Czech Holocaust survivor. Pavel suggests that, as those who perished in the camps can never tell their stories, "maybe it's better not to have any more stories". Art replies with a quote from
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
: "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness", but then realizes, "on the other hand, he ''said'' it".
Vladek tells of his hardship in the camps, of starvation and abuse, of his resourcefulness, of avoiding the —the process by which prisoners were selected for further labor or execution. Despite the danger, Anja and Vladek exchange occasional messages. As the war progresses and the German front is pushed back, the prisoners are marched from Auschwitz in occupied Poland to
Gross-Rosen
Gross-Rosen was a network of Nazi concentration camps built and operated by Nazi Germany during World War II. The main camp was located in the German village of Gross-Rosen, now the modern-day Rogoźnica, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Rogoźnica in ...
within the Reich and then to
Dachau
,
, commandant = List of commandants
, known for =
, location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany
, built by = Germany
, operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS)
, original use = Political prison
, construction ...
, where the hardships only increase and Vladek catches
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
.
The war ends, the camp survivors are freed and Vladek and Anja reunite. The book closes with Vladek turning over in his bed as he finishes his story and telling Art, "I'm tired from talking, Richieu, and it's enough stories for now." The final image is of Vladek and Anja's tombstone—Vladek died in 1982, before the book was completed.
Primary characters
Background
Art Spiegelman was born on February 15, 1948, in Sweden to
Polish Jew
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...
s and
Holocaust survivor
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...
s Vladek and Anja Spiegelman. An aunt poisoned his parents' first son Richieu to avoid capture by the Nazis, four years before Spiegelman's birth. He and his parents emigrated to the United States in 1951. During his youth his mother occasionally talked about Auschwitz, but his father did not want him to know about it.
Spiegelman developed an interest in comics early and began drawing professionally at 16. He spent a month in
Binghamton State Mental Hospital in 1968 after a
nervous breakdown
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
. Shortly after he got out, his mother died by suicide. Spiegelman's father was not happy with his son's involvement in the
hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
subculture. Spiegelman said that when he bought himself a German
Volkswagen
Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...
it damaged their already-strained relationship "beyond repair". Around this time, Spiegelman read in
fanzine
A fanzine (blend word, blend of ''fan (person), fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''-zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by fan (person), enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) ...
s about such graphic artists as
Frans Masereel
Frans Masereel (31 July 1889 – 3 January 1972) was a Flemish painter and graphic artist who worked mainly in France, known especially for his woodcuts focused on political and social issues, such as war and capitalism. He completed over ...
who had made
wordless novel
The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques, the terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are a ...
s. The discussions in those fanzines about making the
Great American Novel
The Great American Novel (sometimes abbreviated as GAN) is a canonical novel that is thought to embody the essence of America, generally written by an American and dealing in some way with the question of America's national character. The ter ...
in comics inspired him.
Spiegelman became a key figure in the underground comix movement of the 1970s, both as cartoonist and editor. In 1972
Justin Green produced the semi-autobiographical comic book ''
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
''Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary'' is an autobiographical comic by American cartoonist Justin Green, published in 1972. Green takes the persona of Binky Brown to tell of the " compulsive neurosis" with which he struggled in his youth a ...
'', which inspired other underground cartoonists to produce more personal and revealing work. The same year, Green asked Spiegelman to contribute a three-page strip for the first issue of ''
Funny '' , which Green edited. Spiegelman wanted to do a strip about racism, and at first considered focusing on African Americans, with cats as
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
members chasing African-American mice. Instead, he turned to the Holocaust and depicted Nazi cats persecuting Jewish mice in a strip he titled "Maus". The tale was narrated to a mouse named "
Mickey
Mickey is a given name and nickname, almost always masculine and often a short form (hypocorism) of Michael (given name), Michael, and occasionally a surname. Notable people and characters with the name include:
People Given name or nickname Men ...
". After finishing the strip, Spiegelman visited his father to show him the finished work, which he had based in part on an anecdote he had heard about his father's Auschwitz experience. His father gave him further background information, which piqued Spiegelman's interest. Spiegelman recorded a series of interviews over four days with his father, which was to provide the basis of the longer ''Maus''. Spiegelman followed up with extensive research, reading survivors' accounts and talking to friends and family who had also survived. He got detailed information about Sosnowiec from a series of Polish pamphlets published after the war which detailed what happened to the Jews by region.
![Auschwitz entrance](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Auschwitz_entrance.JPG)
In 1973, Spiegelman produced a strip for ''Short Order Comix'' #1 about his mother's suicide called "Prisoner on the Hell Planet". The same year, he edited a
pornographic
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of Human sexual activity, sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, ,
psychedelic
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips").Pollan, Michael (2018). ''How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of ...
book of quotations, and dedicated it to his mother. He spent the rest of the 1970s building his reputation making short
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
comics. He moved back to New York from San Francisco in 1975, which he admitted to his father only in 1977, by which time he had decided to work on a "very long comic book". He began another series of interviews with his father in 1978, and visited Auschwitz in 1979. He serialized the story in a comics and graphics magazine he and his wife Mouly began in 1980 called ''Raw''.
Comics medium
American comic book
An American comic book is a thin periodical originating in the United States, on average 32 pages, containing comics. While the form originated in 1933, American comic books first gained popularity after the 1938 publication of ''Action Comics'' ...
s were big business with a diversity of genres in the 1940s and 1950s, but had reached a low ebb by the late 1970s. By the time ''Maus'' began serialization, the "Big Two" comics publishers,
Marvel
Marvel may refer to:
Business
* Marvel Entertainment, an American entertainment company
** Marvel Comics, the primary imprint of Marvel Entertainment
** Marvel Universe, a fictional shared universe
** Marvel Music, an imprint of Marvel Comics
...
and
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.
DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...
, dominated the industry with mostly
superhero
A superhero or superheroine is a stock character that typically possesses ''superpowers'', abilities beyond those of ordinary people, and fits the role of the hero, typically using his or her powers to help the world become a better place, ...
titles. The
underground comix
Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, ...
movement that had flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s also seemed moribund. The public perception of comic books was as adolescent power fantasies, inherently incapable of mature artistic or literary expression. Most discussion focused on comics as a genre rather than as a medium.
''Maus'' came to prominence when the term "
graphic novel
A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...
" was beginning to gain currency.
Will Eisner
William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series ''The Spirit'' (1940–1952) was no ...
popularized the term with the publication in 1978 of ''
A Contract with God
''A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories'' is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Will Eisner published in 1978. The book's short story cycle revolves around poor Jewish characters who live in a tenement in New York City. Eisner pro ...
''. The term was used partly to rise above the low cultural status that comics had in the English-speaking world, and partly because the term "comic book" was being used to refer to short-form periodicals, leaving no accepted vocabulary with which to talk about book-form comics.
Publication history
The first chapter of ''Maus'' appeared in December 1980 in the second issue of ''Raw'' as a small insert; a new chapter appeared in each issue until the magazine came to an end in 1991. Every chapter but the last appeared in ''Raw''.
Spiegelman struggled to find a publisher for a book edition of ''Maus'', but after a rave ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' review of the serial in August 1986,
Pantheon Books
Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...
published the first six chapters in a volume called ''Maus: A Survivor's Tale'' and subtitled ''My Father Bleeds History''. Spiegelman was relieved that the book's publication preceded the theatrical release of the animated film ''
An American Tail
''An American Tail'' is a 1986 American Animated film, animated musical film, musical adventure film directed by Don Bluth from a screenplay by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss and a story by David Kirschner, Freudberg and Geiss. The film features t ...
'' by three months, as he believed that the film, produced by
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...
's
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment, Inc., formerly named Amblin Productions and Steven Spielberg Productions, is an American film production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg, and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshal ...
, was inspired by ''Maus'' and wished to avoid comparisons with it.
The book found a large audience, partly because of its distribution through bookstores rather than the
direct market
The direct market is the dominant distribution and retail network for American comic books. The concept of the direct market was created in the 1970s by Phil Seuling. The network currently consists of:
* four major comic distributors:
** Lunar ...
comic shops where comic books were normally sold. ''Maus'' was difficult for critics and reviewers to classify, and also for booksellers, who needed to know on which shelves to place it. Though Pantheon pushed for the term "graphic novel", Spiegelman was not comfortable with this, as many book-length comics were being referred to as "graphic novels" whether or not they had novelistic qualities. He suspected the term's use was an attempt to validate the comics form, rather than to describe the content of the books. Spiegelman later came to accept the term, and with
Drawn & Quarterly
Drawn & Quarterly is a publishing company based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, specializing in comics. It publishes primarily comic books, graphic novels and comic strip collections. The books it publishes are noted for their artistic content, ...
publisher Chris Oliveros successfully lobbied the
Book Industry Study Group
The Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG) is a U.S. trade association for policy, technical standards and research related to books and similar products. The mission of BISG is to simplify logistics for publishers, manufacturers, suppliers, whol ...
in the early 2000s to include "graphic novel" as a category in bookstores.
Pantheon collected the last five chapters in 1991 in a second volume subtitled ''And Here My Troubles Began''. Pantheon later collected the two volumes into soft- and hardcover two-volume boxed sets and single-volume editions. In 1994 the
Voyager Company
The Voyager Company was a pioneer in CD-ROM production in the 1980s and early 1990s. In partnership with Janus Films, the company published The Criterion Collection, a pioneering home video collection of classic and important contemporary films on ...
released ''The Complete Maus'' on
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...
, a collection which contained the original comics, Vladek's taped transcripts, filmed interviews, sketches, and other background material. The CD-ROM was based on
HyperCard
HyperCard is a software application and development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web.
HyperCard combines a flat-file database with a graphical, fl ...
, a Macintosh and Apple IIGS application that has since become obsolete. In 2011 Pantheon Books published a companion to ''The Complete Maus'' entitled ''
MetaMaus
''MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus'' is a book by Art Spiegelman, published by Random House/Pantheon Books in 2011. The centerpiece of the book is an interview with Art Spiegelman, the author of ''Maus'', conducted by Hillary Chute. ...
'', with further background material, including filmed footage of Vladek. The centerpiece of the book is a Spiegelman interview conducted by
Hillary Chute
Hillary Chute (born 1976 in Boston, MA) is an American literary scholar and an expert on comics and graphic narratives. She is Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design at Northeastern University. She was formerly Associate Professor in ...
. It also has interviews with Spiegelman's wife and children, sketches, photographs, family trees, assorted artwork, and a DVD with video, audio, photos, and an interactive version of ''Maus''.
Spiegelman dedicated ''Maus'' to his brother Richieu and his first daughter
Nadja. The book's
epigraph is a quote from
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human."
International publication
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[Commonwealth
A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...]
in 1986. In support of the
African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a Social democracy, social-democratic political party in Republic of South Africa, South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when ...
's cultural boycott in opposition to
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
, Spiegelman refused to "compromise with fascism" by allowing publication of his work in South Africa.
![Bikont i makłowicz](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Bikont_i_mak%C5%82owicz.JPG)
By 2011, ''Maus'' had been translated into about 30 languages. Three translations were particularly important to Spiegelman: French, as his wife was French, and because of his respect for the sophisticated
Franco-Belgian comics tradition; German, given the book's background; and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
. Poland was the setting for most of the book, and Polish was the language of his parents and his own
mother tongue
A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...
. The publishers of the German edition had to convince the German culture ministry of the work's serious intent to have the
swastika
The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. It ...
appear on the cover, per
laws prohibiting the display of Nazi symbolism. Reception in Germany was positive—''Maus'' was a best-seller and was taught in schools. The Polish translation encountered difficulties; as early as 1987, when Spiegelman planned a research visit to Poland, the Polish consulate official who approved his visa questioned him about the Poles' depiction as pigs, and pointed out how serious an insult it was. Publishers and commentators refused to deal with the book for fear of protests and boycotts.
Piotr Bikont, a journalist for , set up his own publishing house to publish ''Maus'' in Polish in 2001. Demonstrators protested ''Maus''s publication and burned the book in front of ''Gazeta''s offices. Bikont's response was to don a pig mask and wave to the protesters from the office windows. The magazine-sized Japanese translation was the only authorized edition with larger pages. Long-standing plans for an
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
translation have yet to come to fruition. A Russian law passed in December 2014 prohibiting the display of Nazi propaganda led to the removal of ''Maus'' from Russian bookstores leading up to
Victory Day
Victory Day is a commonly used name for public holidays in various countries, where it commemorates a nation's triumph over a hostile force in a war or the liberation of a country from hostile occupation. In many cases, multiple countries may ob ...
due to the swastika appearing on the book's cover.
A few panels were changed for the
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
edition of ''Maus''. Based on Vladek's memory, Spiegelman portrayed one of the minor characters as a member of the Nazi-installed
Jewish Police. An
Israeli
Israeli may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel
* Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel
* Modern Hebrew, a language
* ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008
* Guni Israeli ...
descendant objected and threatened to sue for
libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
. Spiegelman redrew the character with a
fedora
A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...
in place of his original police hat, but appended a note to the volume voicing his objection to this "intrusion". This version of the first volume appeared in 1990 from the publishing house
Zmora Bitan
Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir is one of Israel's largest book publishing companies.
History
The company's oldest imprint, Dvir, was founded in Odessa in 1919 by Hayim Nahman Bialik. . It had an indifferent or negative reception, and the publisher did not release the second volume. Another Israeli publisher put out both volumes, with a new translation by poet
Yehuda Vizan that included Vladek's broken language, which Zmora Bitan had refused to do. Marilyn Reizbaum saw this as highlighting a difference between the self-image of the Israeli Jew as a fearless defender of the homeland, and that of the American Jew as a feeble victim, something that one Israeli writer disparaged as "the diaspora sickness".
Themes
Presentation
Spiegelman, like many of his critics, has expressed concern that "
ality is too much for comics ... so much has to be left out or distorted", admitting that his presentation of the story may not be accurate. He takes a
postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
approach; ''Maus'' "feeds on itself", telling the story of how the story was made. It examines the choices Spiegelman made in the retelling of his father's memories, and the artistic choices he had to make—for example, when his French wife
converts to Judaism
Conversion to Judaism ( he, גיור, ''giyur'') is the process by which non-Jews adopt the Jewish religion and become members of the Jewish ethnoreligious community. It thus resembles both conversion to other religions and naturalization. "Th ...
, Spiegelman's character frets over whether to depict her as a frog, a mouse, or another animal.
The book portrays humans with the heads and tails of different species of animals; Jews are drawn as mice and other Germans and Poles as cats and pigs, among others. Spiegelman took advantage of the way
Nazi propaganda films
The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation of Nazi policie ...
depicted Jews as vermin, though he was first struck by the metaphor after attending a presentation where
Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs (born May 25, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American experimental filmmaker. His style often involves the use of found footage which he edits and manipulates. He has also directed films using his own footage.
Ken Jacobs directed ...
showed films of
minstrel show
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century.
Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spe ...
s along with early American animated films, abundant with racial caricatures. Spiegelman derived the mouse as symbol for the Jew from Nazi propaganda, emphasized in a quote from a German newspaper in the 1930s that prefaces the second volume: "Mickey Mouse is the most miserable idea ever revealed ... Healthy emotions tell every independent young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal ... Away with Jewish brutalization of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!"
Jewish characters try to
pass themselves off as ethnic Poles by tying pig masks to their faces, with the strings showing at the back. Vladek's disguise was more convincing than Anja's—"you could see she was more Jewish", Vladek says. Spiegelman shows this Jewishness by having her tail hang out of her disguise. This literalization of the genocidal stereotypes that drove the Nazis to their
Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
may risk reinforcing racist labels, but Spiegelman uses the idea to create anonymity for the characters. According to art historian Andrea Liss, this may paradoxically enable the reader to identify with the characters as human, preventing the reader from observing racial characteristics based on facial traits, while reminding readers that racist classification is ever present.
In making people of each ethnicity look alike, Spiegelman hoped to show the absurdity of dividing people along such lines. Spiegelman has stated that "these metaphors ... are meant to self-destruct" and "reveal the inanity of the notion itself". Animals signified the characters' roles in the story rather than their races—the
gentile
Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym for ...
Françoise is a mouse because of her identification with her husband, who identifies with the Holocaust victims. When asked what animal he would make
Israeli Jews
Israeli Jews or Jewish Israelis ( he, יהודים ישראלים, translit=Yehudim Yisraelim) are Israeli citizens and nationals who are Jewish through either their Jewish ethnicity and/or their adherence to Judaism. The term also includes ...
, Spiegelman suggests
porcupine
Porcupines are large rodents with coats of sharp spines, or quills, that protect them against predation. The term covers two families of animals: the Old World porcupines of family Hystricidae, and the New World porcupines of family, Erethizont ...
s. When Art visits his
psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
, the two wear mouse masks. Spiegelman's perceptions of the animal metaphor seem to have evolved over the book's making—in the original publication of the first volume, his self-portrait showed a mouse head on a human body, but by the time the second volume arrived, his self-portrait had become that of a man wearing a mouse mask. In ''Maus'', the characters seem to be mice and cats only in their predator/prey relationship. In every respect other than their heads and tails, they act and speak as ordinary humans. Further complicating the animal metaphor, Anja is ironically shown to be afraid of mice, while other characters appear with pet dogs and cats, and the Nazis with attack dogs.
Memory
To
Marianne Hirsch
Marianne Hirsch (born September 23, 1949) is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Biography
Born in Timiș ...
, Spiegelman's life is "dominated by memories that are not his own". His work is one not of memory but of ''postmemory''—a term she coined after encountering ''Maus''. This describes the relation of the children of survivors with the survivors themselves. While these children have not had their parents' experiences, they grow up with their parents' memories—the memory of another's memory—until the stories become so powerful that for these children they become memories in their own right. The children's proximity creates a "deep personal connection" with the memory, though separated from it by "generational distance". In the field of psychology, this is called
transgenerational trauma
Transgenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. The primary modes of transmission are the uterine environment during pregnancy causing epige ...
or
generational trauma
Transgenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. The primary modes of transmission are the uterine environment during pregnancy causing epigen ...
.
Art tried to keep his father's story chronological, because otherwise he would "never keep it straight". His mother Anja's memories are conspicuously absent from the narrative, given her suicide and Vladek's destruction of her diaries. Hirsch sees ''Maus'' in part as an attempt to reconstruct her memory. Vladek keeps her memory alive with the pictures on his desk, "like a shrine", according to Mala.
Guilt
Spiegelman displays his sense of guilt in many ways. He suffers anguish over his dead brother, Richieu, who perished in the Holocaust, and whom he feels he can never live up to. The eighth chapter, made after the publication and unexpected success of the first volume, opens with a guilt-ridden Spiegelman (now in human form, with a strapped-on mouse mask) atop a pile of corpses—the corpses of the six million Jews upon whom ''Maus'' success was built. He is told by his psychiatrist that his father feels guilt for having survived and for outliving his first son, and that some of Art's guilt may spring from painting his father in such an unflattering way. As he had not lived in the camps himself, he finds it difficult to understand or visualize this "separate universe", and feels inadequate in portraying it.
Racism
Spiegelman parodies the Nazis' vision of racial divisions; Vladek's racism is also put on display when he becomes upset that Françoise would pick up a black hitchhiker, a "
schwartser" as he says. When she berates him, a victim of antisemitism, for his attitude, he replies, "It's not even to compare, the schwartsers and the Jews!" Spiegelman gradually deconstructs the animal metaphor throughout the book, especially in the second volume, showing where the lines cannot be drawn between races of humans.
The Germans are depicted with little difference between them, but there is great variety among the Poles and Jews who dominate the story. Sometimes Jews and the Jewish councils are shown complying with the occupiers; some trick other Jews into capture, while others act as police for the Nazis.
Spiegelman shows numerous instances of Poles who risked themselves to aid Jews, and also shows antisemitism as being rife among them. The
kapo
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...
s who run the camps are Poles, and Anja and Vladek are tricked by Polish smugglers into the hands of the Nazis. Anja and Vladek hear stories that Poles continue to drive off and even kill returning Jews after the war.
Language
Vladek's English is broken in contrast with that of Art's more fluent therapist, Paul Pavel, who is also an immigrant and Holocaust survivor. Vladek's knowledge of the language helps him several times during the story, as when he uses it to meet Anja. He also uses it to befriend a Frenchman, and continues to correspond with him in English after the war. His recounting of the Holocaust, first to American soldiers, then to his son, is never in his mother tongue, and English becomes his daily language when he moves to America. His difficulty with his second language is revealed as Art writes his dialogue in broken English; when Vladek is imprisoned he tells Art, "
ery day we prayed ... I was very religious, and it wasn't else to do". Late in the book, Vladek talks of Dachau, saying, "And here ... my troubles began", though clearly his troubles had begun long before Dachau. This unidiomatic expression was used as the subtitle of the second volume.
The German word ''Maus'' is
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
to the English word "mouse", and also reminiscent of the German verb ''mauscheln'', which means "to speak like a Jew" and refers to the way Jews from
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
spoke German—a word
etymologically
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words an ...
related not to ''Maus'' but, distantly, to ''
Moses
Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu (Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pro ...
''.
Style
![Atomic Mouse issue 6 cover](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Atomic_Mouse_issue_6_cover.jpg)
Spiegelman's perceived audacity in using the Holocaust as his subject was compounded by his telling the story in comics. The prevailing view in the English-speaking world held comics as inherently trivial, thus degrading Spiegelman's subject matter, especially as he used animal heads in place of recognizably human ones.
Talking animal
A talking animal or speaking animal is any non-human animal that can produce sounds or gestures resembling those of a human language. Several species or groups of animals have developed forms of communication which superficially resemble verbal ...
s have been a staple of comics, and while they have a traditional reputation as children's fare, the underground had long made use of them in adult stories, for example in
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...
's
Fritz the Cat
''Fritz the Cat'' is a comic strip created by Robert Crumb. Set in a "supercity" of anthropomorphic animals, it focused on Fritz, a feline con artist who frequently went on wild adventures that sometimes involved sexual escapades. Crumb began d ...
, which comics critic Joseph Witek asserts shows that the genre could "open up the way to a paradoxical narrative realism" that ''Maus'' exploited.
Ostensibly about the Holocaust, the story entwines with the frame tale of Art interviewing and interacting with his father. Art's "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" is also encompassed by the frame, and stands in visual and thematic contrast with the rest of the book as the characters are in human form in a
surreal
Surreal may refer to:
*Anything related to or characteristic of Surrealism, a movement in philosophy and art
* "Surreal" (song), a 2000 song by Ayumi Hamasaki
* ''Surreal'' (album), an album by Man Raze
*Surreal humour, a common aspect of humor
...
,
German Expressionist
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
style inspired by
Lynd Ward
Lynd Kendall Ward (June 26, 1905 – June 28, 1985) was an American artist and novelist, known for his series of wordless novels using wood engraving, and his illustrations for juvenile and adult books. His wordless novels have influenced ...
.
Spiegelman blurs the line between the frame and the world, such as when neurotically trying to deal with what ''Maus'' is becoming for him, he says to his wife, "In real life you'd never have let me talk this long without interrupting." When a prisoner whom the Nazis believe to be a Jew claims to be German, Spiegelman has difficulty deciding whether to present this character as a cat or a mouse. Throughout the book, Spiegelman incorporates and highlights banal details from his father's tales, sometimes humorous or ironic, giving a lightness and humanity to the story which "helps carry the weight of the unbearable historical realities".
Spiegelman started taking down his interviews with Vladek on paper, but quickly switched to a tape recorder, face-to-face or over the phone. Spiegelman often condensed Vladek's words, and occasionally added to the dialogue or synthesized multiple retellings into a single portrayal.
Spiegelman worried about the effect that his organizing of Vladek's story would have on its authenticity. In the end, he eschewed a
Joycean A text is deemed Joycean when it is reminiscent of the writings of James Joyce, particularly '' Ulysses'' or ''Finnegans Wake''. Joycean fiction exhibits a high degree of verbal play, usually within the framework of stream of consciousness. Works ...
approach and settled on a linear narrative he thought would be better at "getting things across". He strove to present how the book was recorded and organized as an integral part of the book itself, expressing the "sense of an interview shaped by a relationship".
Artwork
The story is text-driven, with few wordless
panels among its 1,500 black-and-white panels. The art has high contrast, with heavy black areas and thick black borders balanced against areas of white and wide white margins. There is little gray in the shading. In the narrative present, the pages are arranged in eight-panel grids; in the narrative past, Spiegelman found himself "violating the grid constantly" with his page layouts.
Spiegelman rendered the original three-page "Maus" and "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" in highly detailed, expressive styles. Spiegelman planned to draw ''Maus'' in such a manner, but after initial sketches he decided to use a pared-down style, one little removed from his pencil sketches, which he found more direct and immediate. Characters are rendered in a minimalist way: animal heads with dots for eyes and slashes for eyebrows and mouths, sitting on humanoid bodies. Spiegelman wanted to get away from the rendering of the characters in the original "Maus", in which oversized cats towered over the Jewish mice, an approach which Spiegelman says, "tells you how to feel, tells you how to think". He preferred to let the reader make independent moral judgments. He drew the cat-Nazis the same size as the mouse-Jews, and dropped the stereotypical villainous expressions.
Spiegelman wanted the artwork to have a diary feel to it, and so drew the pages on
stationery
Stationery refers to commercially manufactured writing materials, including cut paper, envelopes, writing implements, continuous form paper, and other office supplies. Stationery includes materials to be written on by hand (e.g., letter paper) ...
with a fountain pen and typewriter
correction fluid
A correction fluid is an opaque, usually white fluid applied to paper to mask errors in text. Once dried, it can be handwritten or typed upon. It is typically packaged in small bottles, lids attached to brushes (or triangular pieces of foam) th ...
. It was reproduced at the same size it was drawn, unlike his other work, which was usually drawn larger and shrunk down, which hides defects in the art.
Influences
Spiegelman has published articles promoting a greater knowledge of his medium's history. Chief among his early influences were
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman (; October 3, 1924 – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and editor. His best-known work includes writing and editing the parodic comic book '' Mad'' from 1952 until 1956, and writing the ''Little Ann ...
,
Will Eisner
William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series ''The Spirit'' (1940–1952) was no ...
, and
Bernard Krigstein
Bernard Krigstein (; March 22, 1919 – January 8, 1990), was an American illustrator and gallery artist who received acclaim for his innovative and influential approach to comic book art, notably in EC Comics. His artwork usually displayed the s ...
's "
Master Race
The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific concept in Nazism, Nazi ideology in which the putative "Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of Race (classification of human beings), human racial hierarchy. Members wer ...
". Though he acknowledged Eisner's early work as an influence, he denied that Eisner's first graphic novel, ''
A Contract with God
''A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories'' is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Will Eisner published in 1978. The book's short story cycle revolves around poor Jewish characters who live in a tenement in New York City. Eisner pro ...
'' (1978), had any impact on ''Maus''. He cited
Harold Gray
Harold Lincoln Gray (January 20, 1894 – May 9, 1968) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the newspaper comic strip ''Little Orphan Annie''.
Early life
Harold Gray was born in Kankakee, Illinois on January 20, 1894, to Este ...
's comic strip ''
Little Orphan Annie
''Little Orphan Annie'' is a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by the Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and it made its debut on Aug ...
'' as having "influenced ''Maus'' fairly directly", and praised Gray's work for using a cartoon-based storytelling vocabulary, rather than an illustration-based one. Justin Green's ''
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
''Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary'' is an autobiographical comic by American cartoonist Justin Green, published in 1972. Green takes the persona of Binky Brown to tell of the " compulsive neurosis" with which he struggled in his youth a ...
'' (1972) inspired Spiegelman to include autobiographical elements in his comics. Spiegelman stated, "without ''Binky Brown'', there would be no ''Maus''". Among the graphic artists who influenced ''Maus'', Spiegelman cited
Frans Masereel
Frans Masereel (31 July 1889 – 3 January 1972) was a Flemish painter and graphic artist who worked mainly in France, known especially for his woodcuts focused on political and social issues, such as war and capitalism. He completed over ...
, who had made early
wordless novel
The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques, the terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are a ...
s in
woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
s such as ''
Passionate Journey
''Passionate Journey, or My Book of Hours'' (french: Mon livre d'heures), is a wordless novel of 1919 by Flemish artist Frans Masereel. The story is told in 167 captionless prints, and is the longest and best-selling of the wordless novels Ma ...
'' (1919).
Reception and legacy
Spiegelman's work as cartoonist and editor had long been known and respected in the comics community, but the media attention after the first volume's publication in 1986 was unexpected. Hundreds of overwhelmingly positive reviews appeared, and ''Maus'' became the center of new attention focused on comics. It was considered one of the "Big Three" book-form comics from around 1986–87, along with ''
Watchmen
''Watchmen'' is an American comic book Limited series (comics), maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins (comics), John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 a ...
'' and ''
The Dark Knight Returns
''The Dark Knight Returns'' (alternatively titled ''Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'') is a 1986 four-issue comic book miniseries starring Batman, written by Frank Miller, illustrated by Miller and Klaus Janson, with color by Lynn Varley, and pub ...
'', that are said to have brought the term "graphic novel" and the idea of comics for adults into mainstream consciousness. It was credited with changing the public's perception of what comics could be at a time when, in the English-speaking world, they were considered to be for children, and strongly associated with superheroes. Initially, critics of ''Maus'' showed a reluctance to include comics in literary discourse. ''The New York Times'' intended praise when saying of the book, "Art Spiegelman doesn't draw comic books". After its
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
win, it won greater acceptance and interest among academics. The
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
staged an exhibition on the making of ''Maus'' in 1991–92.
![Art Spiegelman (2007)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Art_Spiegelman_%282007%29.jpg)
''Maus'' proved difficult to classify to a genre, and has been called biography, fiction, autobiography, history, and memoir. Spiegelman petitioned ''The New York Times'' to move it from "fiction" to "non-fiction" on the newspaper's bestseller list, saying, "I shudder to think how
David Duke
David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, far-right politician, convicted felon, and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member ...
... would respond to seeing a carefully researched work based closely on my father's memories of life in Hitler's Europe and in the death camps classified as fiction". An editor responded, "Let's go out to Spiegelman's house and if a giant mouse answers the door, we'll move it to the nonfiction side of the list!" The ''Times'' eventually acquiesced. The Pulitzer committee sidestepped the issue by giving the completed ''Maus'' a Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards, Special Award in Letters in 1992.
''Maus'' ranked highly on comics and literature lists. ''The Comics Journal'' called it the fourth greatest comics work of the 20th century, and ''Wizard (magazine), Wizard'' placed it first on their list of 100 Greatest Graphic Novels. ''Entertainment Weekly'' listed ''Maus'' at seventh place on their list of "The New Classics: Books – The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008", and ''Time (magazine), Time'' put ''Maus'' at seventh place on their list of best non-fiction books from between 1923 and 2005, and fourth on their list of top graphic novels. Praise for the book also came from contemporaries such as Jules Feiffer and literary writers such as Umberto Eco. Spiegelman turned down numerous offers to have ''Maus'' adapted for film or television.
Early installments of ''Maus'' that appeared in ''Raw'' inspired the young Chris Ware to "try to do comics that had a 'serious' tone to them". ''Maus'' is cited as a primary influence on graphic novels such as Marjane Satrapi's ''Persepolis (comics), Persepolis'' and Alison Bechdel's ''Fun Home''.
In 1999, cartoonist Ted Rall had an article published in ''The Village Voice'' criticizing Spiegelman's prominence and influence in the New York cartooning community. Entitled "King ''Maus'': Art Spiegelman Rules the World of Comix With Favors and Fear", it accused the Pulitzer board of opportunism in selecting ''Maus'', which Rall deemed unworthy. Cartoonist Danny Hellman responded to the piece with a series of emails in which Hellman impersonated Rall to his editors and colleagues. Hellman followed up by posting fake responses from New York magazine editors and art directors. Rall launched a lawsuit seeking damages of $1.5 million for libel, breach of privacy, and causing emotional distress. To raise funds, in 2001 Hellman had the ''Legal Action Comics'' anthology published, which included a back cover by Spiegelman in which he endorsed Hellman's actions, depicting Rall as a urinal.
In 2022 the board of trustees for McMinn County Schools in east Tennessee voted unanimously to remove ''Maus'' from the curriculum over concerns including profanity, violence, and nudity.
The decision led to a backlash
and attracted attention the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day, and was covered by media in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Spiegelman called the decision baffling, "Orwellian", and "daffily myopic".
The ban led to Amazon (company), Amazon sales of ''Maus'' rising to No. 1.
On January 30, 2022, it was the No. 1 overall for books. On January 31, ''Maus'' held the No. 1 and No. 2 ranks on Amazon at different times during the day, and also appeared as a best seller on Barnes & Noble's top 100 list and Bookshop's index of best-selling books.
Critique
A cottage industry of academic research has built up around ''Maus'', and schools have frequently used it as course material in a range of fields, including history, dysfunctional family psychology, language arts, and social studies. The volume of academic work published on ''Maus'' far surpasses that of any other work of comics. One of the earliest such works was Joshua Brown (historian), Joshua Brown's 1988 "Of Mice and Memory" from the ''Oral History Association, Oral History Review'', which deals with the problems Spiegelman faced in presenting his father's story. Marianne Hirsch wrote an influential essay on post-memory entitled "Family Pictures: ''Maus'', Mourning, and Post-Memory", later expanded into a book called ''Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory''. Academics far outside the field of comics such as Dominick LaCapra, Linda Hutcheon, and Terrence Des Pres took part in the discourse. Few approached ''Maus'' who were familiar with comics, largely because of the lack of an academic comics tradition—''Maus'' tended to be approached as Holocaust history or from a film or literary perspective. In 2003, Deborah Geis edited a collection of essays on ''Maus'' called ''Considering ''Maus'': Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust''. ''Maus'' is considered an important work of Holocaust literature, and studies of it have made significant contributions to Holocaust studies.
![Pekar small](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Pekar_small.jpg)
According to writer Arie Kaplan, some Holocaust survivors objected to Spiegelman making a comic book out of their tragedy. Literary critics such as Hillel Halkin objected that the animal metaphor was "doubly dehumanizing", reinforcing the Nazi belief that the atrocities were perpetrated by one species on another, when they were actually done by humans against humans. Comics writer and critic Harvey Pekar and others saw Spiegelman's use of animals as potentially reinforcing stereotypes. Pekar was also disdainful of Spiegelman's overwhelmingly negative portrayal of his father, calling him disingenuous and hypocritical for such a portrayal in a book that presents itself as objective. Comics critic R. C. Harvey argued that Spiegelman's animal metaphor threatened "to erode moral underpinnings", and played "directly into racist vision".
Commentators such as Peter Obst and Lawrence Weschler expressed concern over the Poles' depiction as pigs, which reviewer Marek Kohn saw as an ethnic slur and ''The Norton Anthology of American Literature'' called "a calculated insult". Jewish culture views pigs and pork as non-Kashrut, kosher, or ''unclean''—a point of which the Jewish Spiegelman was unlikely to be ignorant. Critics such as Obst and Pekar have said that the portrayal of Poles is unbalanced—that, while some Poles are seen as helping Jews, they are often shown doing so for self-serving reasons. In the late 1990s, an objector to ''Maus''s depiction of Poles interrupted a presentation by Spiegelman at Montreal's McGill University with persistent abuse and was removed from the auditorium.
Literary critic Walter Ben Michaels found Spiegelman's racial divisions "counterfactual". Spiegelman depicts Europeans as different animal species based on Nazi conceptions of race, but all Americans, both black and white, as dogs—with the exception of the Jews, who remain unassimilated mice. To Michaels, ''Maus'' seems to gloss over the racial inequality that has plagued the history of the U.S.
Other critics, such as Bart Beaty, objected to what they saw as the work's fatalism.
Scholar Paul Buhle asserted, "More than a few readers have described as the most compelling of any depiction, perhaps because only the caricatured quality of comic art is equal to the seeming unreality of an experience beyond all reason." Michael Rothberg opined, "By situating a nonfictional story in a highly mediated, unreal, 'comic' space, Spiegelman captures the hyperintensity of Auschwitz."
Parody
Belgian publisher La Cinquième Couch anonymously produced a book entitled ''Katz'', a remix of Spiegelman's book but with all animal heads replaced with cat heads. The book reproduced every page and line of dialogue from the French translation of ''Maus''. The French publisher of the book, Groupe Flammarion, Flammarion, had the Belgian publisher destroy all copies under charges of Copyright infringement, copyright violation.
Awards and nominations
See also
* Anthropomorphism
* Aniconism in Judaism#The Halakha, Birds' Head Haggadah
* Ethnic stereotypes in comics
* ''Mickey au Camp de Gurs''
* Stereotypes of Jews in literature
Notes
References
Works cited
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Further reading
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External links
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Art Spiegelman and the Making of ''Maus''''(broken link)
Teacher's guideat Random House
Art Spiegelman's ''MAUS'': Working Through the Trauma of the Holocaust In ''Responses to the Holocaust'', University of Virginia
Spiegelman discusses ''Maus'' with Paul Gravett- a British Library sound recording
{{Authority control
1980 comics debuts
1991 graphic novels
Fiction set in 1978
Fiction set in 1979
Adult comics
American graphic novels
Angoulême International Comics Festival Best Foreign Album award winners
Autobiographical graphic novels
Biographical graphic novels
Comics by Art Spiegelman
Comics set in New York City
Comics set in Poland
Comics about Nazi Germany
Comics set in the 1930s
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Comics about animals
Comics about mice and rats
Comics about dogs
Comics about pigs
Eisner Award winners
Eisner Award winners for Best Graphic Album: Reprint
Fictional mice and rats
Harvey Award winners for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work
Books about the Holocaust
Jewish Polish history
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Non-fiction graphic novels
Pantheon Books graphic novels
Pulitzer Prize-winning works
Raw (magazine)
Comics set during World War II
American Book Award-winning works
Comics controversies
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McMinn County, Tennessee
Comics about the Holocaust