Maus

For other uses, see Maus (disambiguation).

Maus
Cover of Maus: A Survivor's Tale Part I: "My Father Bleeds History"
Created by	Art Spiegelman
Publication information
Publisher	Apex Novelties Pantheon Books
Formats	Original material for the series has been published as a strip in the comics anthology(s) Funny Aminals (cq) and RAW.
Genre	Autobiography, historical, World War II Anthropomorphic
Publication date	1972–1991
Creative team
Writer(s)	Art Spiegelman
Artist(s)	Art Spiegelman
Reprints
Collected editions
My Father Bleeds History	ISBN 0-394-54155-3
And Here My Troubles Began	ISBN 0-394-55655-0

Maus: A Survivor's Tale is an autobiography by Art Spiegelman, told using the comics form. Parts of the story were originally published in the magazine RAW between 1980 to 1991. The complete story was published in two volumes: the first in 1986 ("My Father Bleeds History") and the second in 1991 ("And Here My Troubles Began"). The graphic novel as a whole took thirteen years to complete. It recounts the struggle of Spiegelman's father to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew and draws largely on his recollections of his experiences. All people are presented as anthropomorphic animals. (For example, all Jews are depicted as mice; hence the title Maus, which is German for "mouse".)

The book includes one of Spiegelman's earlier comics that describes the events surrounding his mother's suicide. It also delves on his 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."

Publication history

Maus was originally published as a three-page strip for Funny Aminals (cq), an underground comic published by Apex Novelties in 1972. In 1977, Spiegelman decided to lengthen the work, 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" in 1986 and Volume II: "And Here My Troubles Began" in 1991), before eventually being integrated into a single volume. A CD-ROM edition also exists.

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. Vladek's embedded story, often framed as a dialogue with Art, 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.

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, themselves concentration camp survivors. 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 of a survivor and of those who did not experience it directly, but are deeply connected to it nonetheless.

Animals used

Throughout Maus, the author employs various animals to represent different nationalities and races.

• The Jews are represented by mice.
• The Germans are represented by cats.
• The Poles are represented by pigs.
• The Americans are represented by dogs.
• The Roma (Gypsies) are represented as gypsy moths (found on page 133 of Maus II, page 293 of The Complete Maus).
• The French are represented by frogs.
• The Swedes are represented by reindeer (found on page 125 of Maus II, page 284 of The Complete Maus).
• The British are represented by fish (found on page 131 of Maus II, page 291 of The Complete Maus).
• The child of a Jew and a German is shown as a mouse with cat stripes (found on page 131 of Maus II, page 291 of The Complete Maus).
• The background found on page 34 of Maus I (pages 36 and 171 of The Complete Maus) also depicts a rabbit, a moose, a horse, an elephant, a goat, and a llama, all of which are unspecified as a group.

The animals are symbolic of the different nationalities and races for a number of reasons:

• The Jews, as mice, satirizes the Nazi portrayal of Jews as vermin. Also, this may symbolize the resourcefulness many Jews exhibited during the Holocaust and the inability of the Nazis to completely wipe out such a species. At some point in the narrative, the author is questioned by an Israeli Jew, depicted as a rather stuffy mouse who has gained some weight. When asked what particular animal he would have chosen to represent the Israelis, Spiegelman answers: "I have no idea... porcupines?"
• After the comic was released in Poland many Poles found it 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. Motonowa 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 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."

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 (herself portrayed as a mouse, because she converted to Judaism), 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 themselves off as non-Jewish Poles.

The use of animals in the graphic novel may seem incongruous, but instead of creating social typecasts, Spiegelman lampoons them and shows how foolish it is to classify a human being based on nationality or ethnicity. 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."

The use of animals may also be used in order to detach the reader from real life. This may have been done to appeal to a younger generation of readers, yet still telling a story of survival and death during the Holocaust. But instead of fully detaching the reader from the book, Spiegelman shows a human aspect by illustrating how his father tells his story and by showing the emotions and relationships of the characters throughout.

Impact

Since its publication, Maus has been the subject of numerous essays. Deborah R. Geis published a collection of essays involving Maus titled Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust.

Alan Moore praised Maus, 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."

Maus has also been studied in schools. It is used both in courses dedicated to the study of modern English literature and Jewish culture. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed Maus as #7 on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to 2008, making it the highest ranking graphic novel on the list.

Collected editions

The series has been collected into a number of volumes published by companies like Pantheon Books:

• 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 0-14-101408-1, Paperback containing both volumes in one book
• ISBN 0-679-40641-7, Hardcover containing both volumes in one book

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). [1]
• 1992 Eisner Award - Best Graphic Album: Reprint (Maus II).
• 1992 Harvey Award - Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work (Maus II). [2]
• 1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (Maus II, A Survivor's Tale). [3]
• 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

References

• "Art Spiegelman" (http). Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the Holocaust:. Retrieved February 14, 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
• Allen, Sara (1997). "MAUS: A Narrative History of Family and Tragedy" (http). Retrieved July 27, 2006.
• Feinstein, Stephen C. "Witness and Legacy" (http). Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the Holocaust:. Retrieved February 14, 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
• McQuade, Donald (2003). "Embodying Identity" (pdf). Seeing & Writing 2. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
• Masłoń, Krzysztof. "Goebbels' Tradition in the Comic Book" (http). Retrieved February 14, 2006.
• "Maus" (http). National Museum of American Jewish History. 1996. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
• Dooley, Michael (2005). "The Unsinkable Denis Kitchen" (http). AIGA Journal of Design. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
• Spiegelman, Art (1986). Maus. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0394747232.

External links

• Editorial on Maus at Indian Comic Review
• 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