Maus: A Survivor's Tale

Spiegelman, Art. (1973). Maus: A survivor's tale. New York: Pantheon, 161 pp.

Graphic novel, Memoir, Pulitzer Prize, 1992

Maus: A Survivor's Tale is the author's rendering of his family's Holocaust sufferings, as told through the eyes of his father, Vladek. The story is broken up into two volumes: I - "My Father Bleeds History" and II - "Here My Troubles Began." For the purpose of this project, I read Volume I, which begins with the circumstances surrounding the author's parents' meeting and ends as they enter Auschwitz, the last surviving members of their families. Along the way, they have lost their propserous factory, their wealth, their friends and loved ones--even their two-and-a-half year old son, Richieu. Interestingly, Vladek's narration is framed with the story of Spiegelman interviewing his father in preparation to write Maus, which reveals a humorous, sad, and overwhelmingly honest portrayal of a complicated father-son relationship.

I'm not really sure where to begin with this book, except to say that it is an extraordinary work. It is essentially nonfiction, but the plot reads as easily and engagingly as any tale invented by an author's imagination, and the scenes move seamlessly between Nazi Germany and Spiegelman's father's livingroom. The dynamic between the two men adds a great deal to the story, and I think the distanced relationsihp they have is something that older teens could easily relate to. There are obviously some sore spots in their past, and Spiegelman struggles to balance filial duty and the demands of his own life. One experience that often both unites and divides him and Vladek is his mother's suicide a little over a decade prior to the book's publication. Midway through the story, Vladek finds a comic Spiegelman had published about the event, and the readers get yet another frame of narration as that work is woven into the story. Throughout the book, the dialogue is relatively straightwork and unemotional; however, though all the characters are represented anthropomorphically (as the title suggests), it is incredible how much emotion Spiegelman is able to express through a simply-drawn mouse face. Finally, the book's biggest strength is probably Spiegelman's depiction of his father, which is tender but unsparingly authentic. Vladek's language is that of an eastern European immigrant, with its confused syntax and substitution of "what" for "that," and his attitudes are that of anybody's cranky, opinionated old grandfather. Keeping in mind what this man endured, it is almost hard to reconcile the character Spiegelman portrays with the man in his life story, but this complexity is part of what makes the story so rich. There is a lot to be said about this book, even though I am doing a poor job of saying it. The New York Times remarked when the book received a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1992 that "the Pulitzer board members found the artist's depiction of Nazi Germany hard to classify." Me too.

I definitely see this working as a whole class novel. It is so well done and is so easy to read that students could, and might even want to, read it in an evening. The Holocaust is an oft-visited topic in history and English classes, and this story tells the same tale in a way that students have yet to experience it. If I were to teach it, I would probably want to include bothe volumes in order to see how Vladek eventually makes it out of Auschwitz and to America. It could also work nicely when paried with any of a number of other Holocaust texts.

This is a high school book. The content is as tame as a story of mass genocide can be, but the structure would appeal to and be best understood by an older audience. The story gains something significant from the fact that the format of a cartoon seems initially incongruous with the tale being told, and it would be interesting to explore and discuss high schoolers' reactions to this. There is also a great deal to be mined concerning the symbolism of the animal characters, the effect of a mult-layered narrative, and the meta-fictional element involved in Spiegelman's representation of his own writing process.

I'm sure it's no surprise at this point that I was absolutely enchanted with Maus. I'm at a loss as to why this isn't already being incorporated into high school curriculums. Because it's a graphic novel? Oh, please. It's as serious and artful as any book on the topic, and I daresay, has an edge that teens might find more intriguing. AND it's got the awards to prove it. Treat yourself to it ASAP!