Maus, Art Spiegelman, 1991

Maus is a comic made by Art Spiegelman. Art Spiegelman is an American author and illustrator born in 1948 in Stockholm (he immigrated in the USA in 1951). His parents were Jewish Polish and Auschwitz survivors. This fact had a real impact on him. Notably because of his mother’s depression, he went to a psychiatric hospital in 1968. Soon after he came out, his mother Anja committed suicide. He felt guilty, so to not relapse into psychiatric problems, he worked a lot, writing and drawing a lot of stories about the WWII published in newspapers, and in 1991 he decided to write an entire comic, thanks to his father’s memories: Maus (the German word for mouse).

This comic was written in 1991. The characters are different animals: Jews are represented by mice, and Nazis are represented by cats. The author chose these animals because cats always want to catch mice. There are other characters: the Polish (not Jewish) are pigs (the author wanted a pejorative image because they were persecuted by the Nazis), the Americans are dogs (because they are seen as protectors), the French are frogs (because of the cliché about the French who eat frogs), the Swedish are elks, the British are fishes (because of the fish and chips) and the babies who have a Jewish parent and a German parent are mice with cat stripes. For this comic, Art Spiegelman asked his father Vladek to tell him his life during the WWII and his mother’s life Anja (who committed suicide four years before). He included some of these dialogs with his father in his comic. So he tells the invasion of Nazis in the city where they lived (in Poland), the life with the Jewish yellow star, how he became Germans’ prisoner and release, their decision to send their first son Richieu in a ghetto for more security (but he died when the ghetto was destroyed), their deportation in Auschwitz concentration camp where they had to work very hard in bad conditions, their release with the arrival of the Allied forces (here the American), how they flee in Sweden, where Art Spiegelman was born. Art Spiegelman wrote this comic in USA thanks to his father’s interviews but he also returned in Poland to see the places his father talked about and document himself about the WWII.

This comic has a historical accuracy because it tells the history of a real Auschwitz survivor. It is written at the first singular person because the author’s father tells his souvenirs and his memories of the war. Moreover, it was very difficult and painful for his father to remember all these horrible souvenirs, the death of many of his friends and his first son.

Maus had been greeted with success by people and critics. Indeed it received several literary awards, like the Pulitzer award in 1992, and many TV documentaries and exhibitions are made about his comic. There are a lot of books who tell the Shoah, but this one had a real success because it is about a real testimony and it is a comic with animals, so it is easier to read.

This comic is recent (1991) so it has a back from the facts. The memory of the Shoah were suppressed and forgotten during many years after the war, so Art Spiegelman puts in light this horrible but important part of the WWII. It permits to witnesses like his father to express themselves, to tell their hidden history. When people read it, it is like they returned in the past during the war thanks to the drawings, so they remember or they discover the horror of the war and its consequences on survivors’ lives. It is an homage for the author’s parents: it is dedicated to his mother Anja. But it is also an homage for all the people who were prisoners during the war, in concentration camps. This comic reminds the horror of the WWII, and the fact that people who survive are shocked for all their life. It takes an important part of the WWII and the Shoah memory.

So Maus is a comic which tells well the WWII and these memories. The author gives a very important place to his parents (they are main characters) and in the final vignette we can see his parents grave, so he honours them in his book.

Marie, Océane