Maus: A Survivor's Tale (1973-1991)

When I was a kid, I was somewhat of a comic book reader. I can't say that I was a comic book collector because I never went searching for rare, priceless issues of Spiderman or The X-Men or put my comic books in plastic laminate. Rather, I just wanted to read good stories coupled with pictures.

And good stories I did read. It's amazing that compelling, complex plot lines appear in the comic book medium, but both Marvel and DC have tackled some pretty weighty issues. For example, my favorite comic series was The X-Men, in which the heroes were not only busy saving the world, but were also dealing with and battling racial prejudice.

While I read plenty of comic books, I never got around to reading a graphic novel. This is probably because the graphic novel phenomenon didn't take hold until the mid- to late 1980's, when I began to cop an attitude about comic books and had decided that they weren't worth my time any longer.

In retrospect, that was an unfortunate and misguided decision because I just finished one of the best books I've read in the last several years, and that book happens to be a graphic novel: Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale.

Spiegelman was a pioneer in the alternative comic genre and began writing Maus as a comic strip serial that appeared in the alternative comic magazine RAW, which he co-edited with his wife. In Maus, Spiegelman tells the story of his father, Vladek, who was a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor. Those involved in Vladek's story are depicted by Spiegelman as anthropomorphic animals. Jews are mice; Germans are cats; Poles are pigs (a depiction which drew some ire); the French are frogs; the British are fish; and Americans are dogs. At first blush, these depictions might seem to trivialize the events of the Holocaust. But they actually serve a metaphorical purpose, particularly in the case of the Jews being depicted as mice and the Germans as cats. Indeed, at the beginning of the second half of the novel, Spiegelman quotes from a German newspaper article from the mid-1930's that drives home the metaphor:

Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed. . . . Healthy emotions tell every independent young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal . . . . Away with Jewish brutalization of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!

Vladek's story is like the story of so many other Holocaust survivors. We see the Nazi's seizure of the businesses and homes of Vladek and his family. We see the terror that gripped Europe's Jewish communities as they were herded into ghettos. We see the eventual deportation of the Jews to the death camps in Eastern Europe. And, we see the combination of resourcefulness and luck that Vladek used to survive the Holocaust.

But Spiegelman makes his father's tale unique and engaging in several ways. First, there is the obvious difference from other Holocaust stories: the medium through which it is told. By telling Vladek's tale in words and pictures, Spiegelman permits the reader to take in a story that is more palpable than it would have been had it been told merely in prose. Second, Spiegelman tells us not only about Vladek's harrowing experiences in Nazi-ruled Europe; he also tells us about his strained but loving relationship with Vladek. Finally, and probably most effectively, Spiegelman does not portray Vladek as a saintly figure. Instead, we get to see Vladek's good traits--his resourcefulness and intelligence--as well as his flaws--his mistreatment of his second wife, his overly miserly nature, and his prejudice against African-Americans. By showing us his father's drawbacks, Spiegelman humanizes Vladek in a way that allows the reader to closely identify with Vladek.

Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the book, and deservedly so. Maus is a powerful book that will have you thinking about it long after you have finished it.