Maus

Much attention has been given to Maus, created by Art Spiegelman, who chose a controversial topic to be discussed within the form of a graphic novel. There are many questions about the role of art within literature in modern society, and how an artist can confront such difficult topics as the Holocaust. Although, through the story of Maus, it can be clearly investigated that the ways in which the story is told, can uncover more about the Holocaust than a regular novel could. With such advantages as the figurative narrative, the metaphors and hidden means within the novel, Maus has greater possibility to explain the many different sides and stories behind the Holocaust. How suffering can be given a voice in art, is a main concern when developing the narrative within a graphic novel. With having illustrations and small amounts of explanation one might think you could lose or destroy the real meaning of the story. Many authors of graphic novels do not pay much attention to narrative, but to the specific readings graphically, as crucial units of the novels language. Contributing to this thinking, of a well known global crisis such as the Holocaust (in the works of Art Spiegelman), in ways of representation is how the medium of a comic can approach and express seriousness with history itself. "I'm literally giving a form to my father's words and narrative," Spiegelman observes about Maus, "and that form has to do with panel size, panel rhythms, and visual structures of the page"( Hillary Chute 200) In the form of a comic the two narrative tracks never fully explain each other. You have different boxes and panels explaining a specific moment of time and you are able to see them all at once; in comic’s you’re being made aware of different times in the same space. (Hillary Chute 201) If we recognize how Maus is able to effectively approach history through these panels, that one can appreciate the form’s grasp on the variations of political expression. Someone first reading Maus might assume that the comic merely reads as a textual narrative, and on that hand will only read the captions and the speech balloons than actually read the cartoons themselves. This would lead to missing the specific contribution to the story that the images provided (Jeanne C. Ewert 87). For example, through Figure I, where Vladek Spiegelman, the artist’s father, is shown eating dinner with his wife and her family. Vladek has returned form his forced military service in the Polish army. In the textual narrative of these panels, Vladek is seeing the strict rationing of food, and the efforts his family has to go through to get enough to eat (through the black market). Although another story is being played out in the images in the four panels, without the conversation of the adults (Jeanne C. Ewert 88). The illustrations show little Richieu, Vladek’s first born son who died during the war, getting into trouble for his bad table manners. This is a crucial part to the understanding of one of the book’s themes, Spiegelman’s anger over his parents for “idolizing” dead Richieu. Who never threw tantrums or got into any kind of trouble, since he was a still memory in the photograph that hung in his parents’ bedroom. This scene seems to comment on Speigelman’s own problematic relationship with his parents. SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT Figure I (Volume I, page 75) A second example to show the value of looking closely at Maus’s visual narrative can be shown halfway through the second volume (Figure II) and directly relates to the power of the illustration and artistic license. In the narrative Vladek is explaining about how they marched out of Auschwitz every morning. Art Spiegelman recalls that the orchestra’s that played during that time were a very well documented subject. Although, Vladek does not agree that there was an orchestra playing in Auschwitz, Spiegelman still includes it as a question of his fathers memory. The first panel show the orchestra playing as the prisoners are about to march by, and in the second the prisoners are blocking the view of the orchestra but you are still able to see the tops of there instruments so you are aware he did not erase them completely. The visual narrative created contradicts Vladek’s narrative, and gives the reader an important clue to how the son assesses the relative quality of his father’s historical record (Jeanne C. Ewert 90). SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT Figure II (Volume II page 54) Spiegelman uses other concepts such as metaphors and hidden meaning within his work to help create a dynamic understanding of the characters and his story. For instance probably the biggest metaphor within Spiegelmans's novel was the way he created his character, by representing them as mice. However, appropriate this choice in its context, Spiegelman has still had to confront the problems that his audience will find a cartoon Holocaust to be of poorer taste. Although, he has justified this mouse metaphor arguing that a less metaphoric approach would be less authentic. “The reason was, if one draws this kind of stuff with people, it comes out wrong. And the way it comes out wrong is, first of all, I've never lived through anything like that. .. and it would be counterfeit to try to pretend that the drawings are representations of something that's actually happening. I don't know exactly what a German looks like who was in a specific small town doing a specific thing. My notions are born of a few scores of photographs and a couple of movies. I'm bound to do something inauthentic”. Art Spiegelman (Jeanne C. Ewert 92). The mouse metaphor serves to remind us of a reality outside of the world of mice and cats. Even though we might not be able to identify ourselves with small rodents in real life, in Maus we will cheer for the mice against the cruel feline enemies. He forces the reader to read the metaphor in only one direction by identifying mice as people, rather than Jews as mice (Jeanne C. Ewert 95). Spiegelman’s choice of drawing styles for Maus support this theory. His work in the comic draws from less detail and depiction of the characters, which leaves a more universal identification, and more room for the reader to fill the character with their own version of their ideal character (Jeanne C. Ewert 97). Spiegelman knew the difficulties behind his ideas of creating Maus, but he also new the great things that could come from it. He took a difficult topic to interpret with forms of art and literature, and managed to create a tail that has described different sides of a universal narrative by using figurative description, metaphors and hidden meanings. With the question of the role of art in modern society and trying to confront a topic with such power and politics, Art Spiegelman has been able to create a dynamic representation of the Holocaust though the form of art. Work Cited Hillary Chute. HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.eciad.ca:2048/action/showPublication'journalCode=twencentlite" Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 52, No. 2.(2006): 199-230 Jeanne C. Ewert. HYPERLINK "http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.eciad.ca:2048/action/showPublication'journalCode=narrative" Narrative. Vol. 8, No. 1. (2000): 87-103