Braddy Reads Maus

I've long held up Art Spiegelman's Maus as an example of art-in-comics. I cited Spiegelman's use of cartoonish imagery juxtaposed with the horrors of the Holocaust as proof that comics, a medium usually associated with children's entertainment, can and should be used to discuss weightier, "adult" matters.

Only problem? I'd never actually read Maus.

Well, now I have, and I can say with a great deal of confidence that I was ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ABOUT ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.

Maus is indeed a chilling account of the Holocaust, but it's actually more than that. Art Spiegelman also gives a lot of personal information about his own strained relationship with his father. Now, I think Spiegelman actually does hold some affection for his father, but he doesn't hesitate to show how difficult his father is to live with.



It's the honesty in Spiegelman's writing that makes the whole thing work. He's not portraying ANYONE sympathetically - least of all himself. He tries to stay true to reality as it actually is. It's a philosophy that serves him well, whether the scenes he draws take place in Auschwitz or his father's living room.

Spiegelman pulls a couple of other neat comic tricks, too. The Jews in his story, portrayed as anthropomorphized mice, have to somehow pass themselves off as non-Jewish Poles. In the comic, Spiegelman draws the mice wearing pig masks, so they don't look like Jews. It's a nice effect.



I don't quite understand, though, why Spiegelman decides to draw himself so often as a man wearing a mouse mask. To me, it says that Spiegelman himself is struggling with his heritage, as a Jew and as his father's son. Alternatively, it could just add an extra level of "reality" to the story.

If the latter is the effect he's going for, Spiegelman has effectively created three levels of "reality" - the narrative past, or his father's stories of the war; the narrative present, or the interviews between Spiegelman and his father; and the literal present, or Spiegelman's activities during the actual writing of the book.

Anyone else having flashbacks to Inception?

However you look at it, Maus will make you think. And that, to me, makes it a success.