The Complete Maus

If you read one graphic novel then let it be The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. Theordor W. Adorno wrote that to "write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric" but later retracted it by stating that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as the tortured have to scream"; Maus is not poetry, it is a graphic novel (well, two graphic novels), and a novel approach to writing the Holocaust. Cynics say that to win Oscars all you have to do is direct or act in a Holocaust movie and the same can apply to literary prizes; Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize (Special Mention) for Maus but I don't think he appropriated his father's experiences in Auschwitz for success and acclaim but in an attempt to understand and record.

Chapters one to six of Maus Volume I: A Survivor's Tale (My Father Bleeds History) and chapters one to four of Maus Volume II: And Here My Trouble Began first appeared, in a somewhat different form, in Raw magazine between 1980 and 1991; Raw was an acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics of which Spiegelman was co-founder and editor. Maus Volume I contained a graphic novel within a graphic novel, the short 'Prisoner of the Hell Planet', which originally appeared in Short Order Comix #1, in 1973.

Spiegelman employs an extended metaphor throughout The Complete Maus of anthromorphisation with Jews as mice (hence the German word for mouse as the title) and Nazis as cats; other cutesy animals appear but the horrific scale of the game of cat and mouse is pronounced in Spiegelman's use of literary device. Furthermore, mice represent the Nazi notion of Jews as vermin and this metaphor becomes more detailed and complicated in the second volume, eventually breaking down (Spiegelman intentionally destroying the separation of humans along race-lines) when he depicts himself as human wearing a mouse mask and self-consciously referring to his metaphor. To say that the account of Vladek's, Spiegelman's father, experience as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust and his recollections of his time is harrowing is an understatement. However, to my mind, Holocaust literature is necessary and The Complete Maus is highly effective in its juxtaposition of the graphic novel form and the events it is recounting in art.



Due to previous Holocaust reading, Spiegelman didn't inform me of anything new in the core subject matter but I greatly appreciated what he had to say in regards to the nature of guilt as both a survivor and the offspring of survivors. Artie and Vladek did not have the best of relationships but how can you connect with your parents when they have experienced the unfathomable? I also admired how Spiegelman portrayed his father as someone you didn't necessarily sympathise with, emphasising that it was not the worthy who survived the Holocaust but the lucky. To strip back such dark, essential themes to literally black and white boxes had me in awe of Spiegelman.

To say much more would come across as trite but suffice to say that Spiegelman never trivialises Vladek's experiences but articulates them with brutal honesty and creativity that emphasises rather than detracts from the horror whilst also presenting it through an accessible medium. The Complete Maus isn't entirely harrowing but does have moments of humour especially in Vladek's later life when he is remarried to Mala and living in New York; Vladek is an often stingy and once shockingly racist elderly man whose metabiography makes thought-provoking and challenging reading.