Underlying Themes in the Creation of Maus by Art Spielgman - Essay Example

Underlying themes in the creation of Maus The first graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, ‘Maus’ was created and completed in 1991 by Art Spielgman, an American cartoonist. Inspired and based on the Holocaust, ‘Maus’ depicts the cartoonist interviewing his father on his experience as a holocaust survivor and a Polish Jew. The author employs postmodern techniques to depict the human races as different kinds of animals. Spielgman connects the story of the terrible historical occurrence of the Holocaust and a Jewish American struggle to spearhead his own understanding of the brutal persecution of the Jews by the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler during the Second World War. Writing as a second generation Holocaust survivor, Spielgman employs the themes of memory, racism, guilt, and familial relationship in his artistic processes that served up to his creation of ‘Maus’. Central to its plot, ‘Maus’ is the story of memories getting transferred from one generation to another and also the impact that such memories can have on the present. The novel grapples with the issue of whether it is truly possible to understand the horrors of the holocaust without having lived through it. The author thus employs contrast to document the historical past of the Holocaust against the story of his relationship with his father. Vladek’s survival story enables the reader to experience his past struggle under Nazi capture (Spielgman 67). Spielgman employs the use of eyewitness accounts, historical documentation, and photographs in his attempt to reconstruct the past. The theme of memory centers on the relation between the children of Holocaust survivors and their parents. While the children of holocaust survivors may not have had the real time experiences of their parents, they end up growing with their parent’s memories. In the novel, Spielgman tries to chronologically follow his father’s story because according to him, his father would never keep it straight (Witek 45). The memories of his mother, Anja, are also conspicuously absent from the novel provided her suicide and the destruction of her diaries by Vladek, Spielgman’s father. The creation of ‘Maus’ is an attempt by the author to recreate her mother’s memory. Art’s father tries to keep his wife’s memory alive by keeping pictures on his desk. The author’s documentation of his father’s past shows the reader why it is vital and what effects it can have on the present day world. Spielgman also employs the use of guilt in his artistic process to create ‘Maus’. The author tackles the question of guilt from the individual and collective level. On the individual level, the survivors of Holocaust must overcome survivor’s guilt. This was their guilt over surviving those who died in the concentration camps. In the novel, Art is told by his psychiatrist that his father suffers from the anguish of having survived and outlived his first son. The children of the survivors also suffer from guilt as not having shared their parents’ experience of the Holocaust. Spielgman suffers from guilt over his dead brother who died in the holocaust and is afraid he will never live up to him (Heer & Worcester 176). He also suffers from guilt over the success of ‘Maus’, which is built on retelling the horrible experience of the holocaust where over six million Jews perished. This is vividly captured in Chapter two of book II where Art is sitting at his drawing board over a sprawling pile of dead and emaciated Jewish mice. Art is consumed with so much guilt for receiving plenty acclaim over the suffering of his parents and their Jewish community under Nazi terror. Art also feels guilt over his inadequacy to portray the holocaust exhaustively as he did not live in the camps himself. He finds it difficult to visualize or contextualize what he terms as the “separate universe” that his father lived through (Witek 208). On a collective level, ‘Maus’ serves to question on whether the responsibility for the Holocaust should extend beyond the Nazi regime. What might have the international community done to avert the situation which saw the brutal extermination of Jews in concentration camps, and communities within German-controlled territories? Given the subject of the matter, Spielgman employs the theme of race heavily in the plot of his novel. At a basic level, the issue of race is displayed through the topic of the holocaust, which saw the brutal extermination of Jews by the Nazi regime. Vladek’s experience during the Second World War details the brutal persecution of his community by German soldiers and Polish citizens. Through Vladek’s experience, the reader is taken inside the Auschwitz concentration camp where they get an illustration of the daily horrors he faced during his imprisonment. The author also employs the use of different animal faces to portray different races. In the novel, Jews are portrayed as mice, while the Germans as cats. The symbolic portrayal of Jews as mice is borrowed directly from the Nazi propaganda, which held that Jews were a type of Vermin that had to be exterminated. Nazis (Heer & Worcester 112). The Nazi toyed with the Jews before brutally exterminating them. It is also interesting to note that Vladek, a holocaust survivor, is also a racist. When Francoise picks up a black hitchhiker on their way back from the store, Vladek is displeased. He castigates her for letting a ‘schvarster’ in the car (Spielgman 198). He spends his entire ride home watching over his groceries to prevent them from getting stolen. This episode is vital and serves to remind the reader that racism witnessed in the holocaust is present to this day in another form. The author also manages to create ‘Maus’ out of his portrayal of the family unit and relationships that got complicated by the Holocaust. The Holocaust saw family bonds get wiped out and others become tested. ‘Maus’ portrays the culture clash that exists between the Holocaust survivors and their children. Family relations are strained by the emotional, physical, and psychological trauma undergone by the Holocaust survivors. Art has a strained relationship with his father whom he feels dominates him. As a second generation Holocaust survivor, Art is directly affected by the secondary aftershocks of the Holocaust. His father’s parenting style and personality is visibly influenced by his Holocaust experience. Vladek’s obstinate, retentive and miserly traits greatly infuriate his family. He makes Mala feel like she could never match up to his first wife Anja. The novel also shows the Jews who are getting killed and imprisoned, valuing family above everything else. The Jews have no belongings and thus their relatives are the only thing that remains of their past lives. While art and his father have a strained relationship at first, they bond over his retelling of the Holocaust experience. Art becomes more sympathetic to his father’s experience as the narrative unfolds. He learns more about his father and what he went though. In his creation of ‘Maus’, Art Spielgman, employs a multitude of post-modern techniques to deliver a compounding graphic novel on the experience and effects of the tragedy that was the Holocaust. Seen through his father’s recount of his story about the Holocaust, Spielgman uses the themes of Guilt, Memory, Family relationship, and Race to reveal how the historical past impacts on the present. The story revolves mostly around Spielgman’s troubled relationship with his father, and the absenteeism of his mother who committed suicide. The book employs a minimalist drawing style to communicate its themes to the reader. Works Cited Jeet Heer, Kent Worcester. A Comics Studies Reader. Mississippi: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2009. Spiegelman, Art. MetaMaus. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivors Tale. New York: Pantheon, 2005. Witek, Joseph. Art Spiegelman: Conversations. Mississipi: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2007. Read More