Art Spiegelman, Maus Art Spiegelman\'s Classic Graphic

Art Spiegelman, Maus

Art Spiegelman's classic graphic novel Maus -- published in two parts, in 1986 and with a sequel five years later in 1991 -- depicts not just a "survivor's tale" from Auschwitz as advertised in the subtitle, to a certain degree the "survivor" of the title is also Art Spiegelman himself, who seems to be wondering throughout the text how it is that he has made it thus far in life without asking all the crucial questions of his father (about his parents' survival in Auschwitz and escape afterward to the Rego Park of Spiegelman's youth). The somewhat difficult structure of the piece -- especially when viewing the two pieces as a whole, since Maus 2 seems written to deliberately complicate and problematize the reader's own sense of the first volume -- presents us with not so much a story about survival in Auschwitz done up in the format of a graphic novel (like a Classics Illustrated comic book version of Primo Levi's memoirs), as an overall postmodern narrative in which first-person testimony of survival in Auschwitz sits within the context of Spiegelman's own insistent questioning of his own motives, taste, and in the second volume even his own skepticism regarding the much-lauded success of the first volume. But I hope to demonstrate how Spiegelman's depiction of Vladek's survival in Auschwitz indicates some crucial points not merely about this own piece of testimony, recorded in a unique way in this work of art, also indicates some general facts about the reception of the Holocaust generally among Americans of Spiegelman's (and Vladek's) generation.

Spiegelman's original stand-alone first volume of Maus -- it is unclear whether he planned a sequel from the beginning, or if the structure of Maus itself indicates that Spiegelman despaired of completing the first half, hardly contemplating a second part during its composition -- is ironic in its handling of Auschwitz survival as it never really quite gets around to depicting the subject directly. Instead, Spiegelman seems to allow us to intuit the survival skills that Vladek self-evidently possessed from the slightly refracted account of his confinement, depicted in Maus' first part, in a Prisoner-of-War camp during actual hostilities and before the Nazi's Wannseee Conference had decided on liquidation of Jewish residential ghettos in favor of mass deportation to the death camps (described late in the volume). This account is preceded by an incident of Nazi Anti-Semitism directed against Vladek -- upon capture, "the Jews they made to stand separate" then a coarse feline SS lieutenant blames them for the war and eventually states, sardonically after examining Vladek's hands (those of a white-collar laborer) and snarls "Well, Jew, don't worry we'll find work for you!," to which Vladek curtly appends "And they did." (Spiegelman 1986, p.51). To a certain degree, this account in Maus' first volume stands in for a proper depiction of survival in Auschwitz: unlike an extermination camp, a prison camp ostensibly is designed to preserve the lives of its inmates. But the treatment in the prison camp prefigures Auschwitz, even after the merger with an "even bigger prisoner of war camp": here the treatment of Jews is segregated from that of other P.O.W.'s and Vladek notes that "other prisoners get two meals a day. We Jews get only a crust of bread and a little soup." (1986, p. 53). Vladek's description of the routine inside this camp, though, introduces us to the issue of his religious faith -- he is observant while confined