| 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 Comics series featuring anthropomorphism |
| Publication date | 1972 – 1991 |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Art Spiegelman |
| Artist(s) | Art Spiegelman |
| Creator(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 a biography by Art Spiegelman, presented in the form of a graphic novel. 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").[1] 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."[2]
Contents |
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,[3] 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.
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.
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.
Throughout Maus, the author employs various animals to represent different nationalities and races.
The animals are symbolic of the different nationalities and races for a number of reasons:[4]
The choice may also reflect the traditional agricultural Polish way of life.[5][6]
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.[7] 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."[8]
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.[7]
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."[9]
Maus has also been studied in schools.[10] 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.[11]
The series has been collected into a number of volumes published by companies like Pantheon Books:
Maus f. (genitive Maus, plural Mäuse)
   | Art Spiegelman's MAUS: Working Through the Trauma of the Holocaust - Art Spiegelman's MAUS |
| | 'Thousand Acres' Wins Fiction As 21 Pulitzer Prizes Are Given - The New York Times > Log In |
| | Art Spiegelman - Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the Holocaust |
| | Witness and Legacy - Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the Holocaust |
| | On Spiegelman's Maus I and II - New Page 2 |
| | Review of Considering MAUS - Review of Considering MAUS by Ole Frahm |
| | RAW: "recommended by Alan Moore" - read yourself RAW - Recommended By... ALAN MOORE |
| | Teaching Resources for Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale - Maus in the Classroom - Unit 2 Student Edition |
| | MAUS: A Narrative History of Family and Tragedy - MAUS: A Narrative History of Family and Tragedy |
| | Questions and Resources for Art Spiegelman's Maus - Maus Questions and Resources Page, Prof. Marcuse, UCSB |
| | Reconstructivist Art - Art Essays: Reconstructivist Art |
| | Reconstructivist Art - Art Essays: Reconstructivist Art |
| | Reconstructivist Art - Art Essays: Reconstructivist Art |
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