MAUS

'''Maus: A Survivor's Tale''' is a memoir by Art Spiegelman, presented as a graphic novel. It recounts the struggle of Spiegelman's father to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew and draws largely on his father's recollections of his experiences. 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."^[1]

Contents

Overview

Themes

Animals used

Publication

Impact

Awards and nominations

Awards

Nominations

Editions

Notes

References

External links

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. The book recounts the struggle of Vladek Spiegelman living with his family in Radomsko, Częstochowa, Sosnowiec and Bielsko in the late 1930s and his tragic odyssey during the war which ultimately led him to Auschwitz as prisoner 175113.
The book has a satirical feel about it since the characters are all presented as various types of anthropomorphic animals, according to nationality or race. Jews, for example, are depicted as human-like mice, Germans as cats, Americans as dogs, and Poles as pigs.
Throughout the book, Art Spiegelman 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, including his first wife Anja (Art's mother, who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala, also a concentration camp survivor. The personality of the present day Vladek seems quite different from that of the man in the concentration camps, where he was resourceful and compassionate.

Themes

The author's articulation of the Holocaust is the main theme of the two graphic novels, giving the book a metabiographical aspect. Spiegelman often mentions the apprehension he feels in trying to express the inexpressible. The novel depicts the Holocaust through the perspectives both of a survivor and of those who did not experience it directly, but are deeply connected to it nonetheless.

Animals used

★ The Jews are represented by mice.

★ The Germans are represented by cats.

★ The Americans are represented by dogs.

★ The Poles are represented by pigs.

★ The Roma (Gypsies) are represented as gypsy moths.

★ The French are represented by frogs.

★ The Swedes are represented by reindeer.

★ The British are represented by fish.

★ The child of a Jew and a German is shown as a mouse with cat stripes.
they were chosen because:
[1]:

★ The Jews, as mice, can be seen as weak and helpless victims, as well as satirizing the Nazi portrayal of Jews as vermin. Also the German verb 'Mauscheln' (which visually if not etymologically includes the word 'Maus' - mouse) means originally 'to talk like a Jew'[2].

★ The Germans, as cats, suggest power over the Jews.

★ Dogs for the Americans suggest power, friendliness, loyalty and other positive values. Unlike other animals used, the dog faces Spiegelman uses vary from character to character. Perhaps this is to represent how Americans come from many different places (for example, the African-American hitchhiker is portrayed as a black dog). The stereotypical dog also dislikes cats and may attack them. The choice of dog may have been 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 reference to American Marines as ''Teufelshunde'' or "Devil Hounds" during World War I.

★ 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. However, there are many Polish characters who are portrayed sympathetically or positively such as the Spiegelmans' governess or Mrs. Motonawa who hides Vladek and Anja at great personal risk. 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 choice may also reflect the traditional agricultural Polish way of life.

★ The sole gypsy is represented by a Gypsy moth; she tells the fortune of Anja, Vladek's wife. It seems to represent an exotic, mysterious personality that was and still is the common perception of the Romani people.

★ 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 native reindeer. It also suggests the Swedish possibly being timid; a reference to Sweden's neutrality in World War II.

★ The British as fish suggests an aquatic creature, a metaphor of British naval supremacy or Britain's status as an island. 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 may refer to the antagonism between Germany and Britain at that time. It may also have something to do with a WWII speech made by Winston Churchill, which said the English are afraid of the prospect of war, but mockingly added "so are the fishes".

★ 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''.
With the exception of the Americans (dogs), the animal characters are all drawn alike. For instance, most of the Jewish mice resemble each other regardless of sex or age. Clothing and other details are used in order to tell them apart: Spiegelman himself, for instance, is always wearing a white shirt and a black sleeveless overshirt; his French wife, Françoise, wears a striped t-shirt. While wandering the streets of their Nazi-occupied town, the Jews wear pig masks in order to show the trouble they went through to pass off as non-Jewish Poles.
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.[3] 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,^[2] 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 '', 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.[4]
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…"[5]
''Maus'' has also been studied in schools, along with another memoir of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel's Night. [6]

Awards and nominations

Awards

★ 1988 Angoulême International Comics Festival Awards - Religious Award: Christian Testimony & Prize for Best Comic Book: Foreign Comic Award (''Maus: un survivant raconte'').

★ 1988 Urhunden Prize - Foreign Album (''Maus'').

★ 1990 Max & Moritz Prizes - Special Prize (''Maus'').

★ 1992 Pulitzer Prize - Special Awards and Citations - Letters (''Maus''). [7]

★ 1992 Eisner Award - Best Graphic Album: Reprint (''Maus II'').

★ 1992 Harvey Award - Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work (''Maus II''). [8]

★ 1993 ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize for Fiction (''Maus II, A Survivor's Tale''). [9]

★ 1993 Angoulême International Comics Festival Awards - Prize for Best Comic Book: Foreign comic (''Maus: un survivant raconte, part II'').

★ 1993 Urhunden Prize - Foreign Album (''Maus II'').

Nominations

★ 1986 National Book Critics Circle Award

★ 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award

Editions

★ ISBN 0-394-74723-2, Volume One (paperback)

★ ISBN 0-394-54155-3, Volume One (hardcover)

★ ISBN 0-679-72977-1, Volume Two (paperback)

★ ISBN 0-394-55655-0, Volume Two (hardcover)

★ ISBN 0-679-41038-4, Hardcover set (both volumes in two books)

★ ISBN 0-679-74840-7, Paperback boxed set

★ ISBN 0-14-101408-3, Paperback containing both volumes in one book

★ ISBN 0-679-40641-7, Hardcover containing both volumes in one book

Notes

1. 'Thousand Acres' Wins Fiction As 21 Pulitzer Prizes Are Given Alessandra Stanley
2. Art Spiegelman

References

★ Art Spiegelman

★ MAUS: A Narrative History of Family and Tragedy Allen, Sara

★ Witness and Legacy Feinstein, Stephen C.

★ Embodying Identity McQuade, Donald

★ Goebbels' Tradition in the Comic Book Masłoń, Krzysztof

★ Maus

★ The Unsinkable Denis Kitchen Dooley, Michael

External links

★ Teacher's guide at Random House

★ Reconstructivist Art: Maus

★ Questions and Resources for Art Spiegelman's Maus college study guide with archived articles

★ Art Spiegelman's MAUS: Working Through the Trauma of the Holocaust. In ''Responses to the Holocaust'', U. Virginia