Word & Image

A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry

ISSN: 0266-6286 (Print) 1943-2178 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/twim20

Of Maus and memory: the structure of Art

Spiegelman's graphic novel of the Holocaust

Stephen E. Tabachnick

To cite this article: Stephen E. Tabachnick (1993) Of Maus and memory: the structure
of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel of the Holocaust, Word & Image, 9:2, 154-162, DOI:
10.1080/02666286.1993.10435484

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Published online: 29 May 2012.

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Of Maus and memory: the structure of Art
Spiegelman's graphic novel of the Holocaust
STEPHEN E. TABACHNICK

I THE GRAPHIC NOVEL AND MAUS homogenizing comic book self-censorship code that
In 1986, Lawrence Abbott concluded that 'Comic art began in 1954 (and which was the industry's frightened
does possess the potential for the most serious and response to Frederic Wertham's anti-comics tract The
sophisticated literary and artistic expression, and we can Seduction of the Innocent and Senator Estes Kefauver's
only hope that future artists will bring the art form to full investigatory commission). The new form frequently
fruition' (p. 176). Even as he was writing that, the displays an anti-authoritarianism, ethnic expression,
movement toward a serious comic book art had already philosophical depth and serious aesthetic power that are
gained momentum. One of the most exciting develop- glimpsed but not fullly exploited in these precursors.
ments in all contemporary literature is the emergence Among his other endearing qualities (such as the
during the past ten years of the 'graphic novel' - the principled stance against censorship seen in his interview
comic book that has outgrown limited popular conven- with Stephen Riggenberg), William Gaines had a pen-
tions of size, format and content and become a vehicle for chant for hiring very talented international political
the subtle discussion of important issues. 1 Owing to the refugees of all kinds, as Maria Reidel bach points out. As a
graphic novel's freedom from the typically brief duration, result, he involved many Holocaust survivors in Mad
flat surfaces, standardized panels, constricted techniques, from its inception in 1952. Thus, through its influence on
stereotyped characters, and simplified plots and attitudes Mad, the Holocaust may in some sense be credited with
of the conventional comic book, the graphic novel 'reader' making the comic book a more important artistic form
experiences a richer sense of time and space and a deeper soon after the Second World War. Indeed, one of Mad's
involvement of the senses than is available from any other most notorious early parodies involved a concentration
novelistic or sequential art medium. 2 camp sequence, and Philologos, the linguistic writer for
Prime examples of this new art form are Alan Moore the English-language edition of the Yiddish newspaper
and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen ( 1987), which mingles long the New York Forward, recently devoted a long discussion
texts and flat comic book panels in an investigation of the to the Mad word 'furshlugginer,' coming to the tentative
psyches of superheroes; George Pratt's Enemy Ace: War conclusion that it was born ofYiddish and German in the
Idyll ( 1990), which sensitively explores the emotional concentration camps and means 'stinking.' Revealing the
aftermath of war; Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's Black influence that Mad had on his own work as well as his
Orchid ( 1991), which speculates on the possibility of a esteem for that publication, writer-cartoonist Art Spiegel-
human-botanical hybrid, possibly under the influence of man (in his interview with Jonathan Rosen of the
Hawthorne's 'Rappacini's Daughter'; Robert Crumb's Forward) comments that he hopes that his own children
anarchical oeuvre, including Fritz the Cat, which deliber- will be 'exposed to the great holy Jewish writings of
ately violates every public taboo; and Harvey Pekar's Harvey Kurtzman and Franz Kafka if nothing else.'
American Splendor (1986), an autobiographical account of Holocaust background becomes foreground in Spiegel-
Pekar's life as a proletarian gadfly in Cleveland, including man's Maus, the most exciting graphic novel of all, and
telephone wires and garbage cans drawn to life. the first and only one to have been awarded the Pulitzer
Behind these recent exemplars stands the influence of Prize. 'Spiegelman' (as Art must know) means mirror-
such pioneering popular comic strips as Lyonel Fein- maker or seller in German, and Maus, an autobiography,
inger's Wee Willie Winkie's World, Winsor McCay's Little holds the mirror up to the lives of Spiegelman's parents,
Nemo, AI Capp's L'il Abner, and Walt Kelly's Pogo. More Vladek and Anja, during the Holocaust, and to his own
direct influences on the graphic novel are the eventually spinoff problems as their son growing up in placid Rego
banned William M. Gaines E.C. Comics of the 1950s, the Park, Queens. By focussing intensely on his family's past
seminal success of Gaines's and Harvey Kurtzman's Mad and present, Spiegelman manages to encapsulate the
Magazine, and the 196os' radical underground 'comix.' history of the Holocaust as a whole, including its
The graphic novel has broken free from the oppressive, influence on survivors' children. I hope to explain how

1 54 WORD & IMAGE, VOL. 9, NO.2, APRIL-JUNE 1993

~286/93 $10 00 © 1993 Taylm & Frann• 1.1<1
and why Spiegelman, using an unexpected and hitherto use anthropomorphic characters. Fishing around for
despised medium, succeeds in uniting the public and something led me toward my center. A number of things
private aspects of the Holocaust so well that many helped. One of them was sitting in on Ken Jacobs' film
reviewers have found Maus the most compelling represen- classes at SUNY Binghamton where he was showing racist
cartoons and at the same time showing cat-and-mouse
tation of this subject ever devised in any literary or
chase cartoons. They conflated for me and originally
pictorial genre.
steered me toward possibly doing something about racism
against blacks in America. Shortly thereafter, [Kafka'sJ
II INFLUENCES ON MAUS
Josephine the Singer began humming to me and told me
How did Spiegelman develop the strikingly original idea that there was something closer to deal with and I began
of using a comic book as an autobiographical cri de coeur pursuing the logic and possibilities that that metaphoric
about the Holocaust? The most obvious answer is that he device opened up. (p. 1 1)
is a cartoonist by trade (and is presently the co-editor
That cinematic cartoons have influenced the creation of
with his wife, Francoise Mouly, of the avant-garde comics
Maus comes as no surprise; one has only to think of a Tom
journal Raw), and so naturally used the tools he had at
and Jerry chase, for instance. Franz Kafka is a perhaps
hand to exorcise his personal anguish. But he may also
more unexpected but at the same time very apt influence.
have felt that the other ways of dealing with the
An interesting speculation is that Kafka, in writing
Holocaust had already been exhausted. Novels, plays,
about beetle-man Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis as well
poems and films abound. But few of them any longer
as about josephine and the mouse folk, not to mention the
generate the interest that they deserve, even when they
clever mole in 'The Burrow,' was influenced by the
are by first-rate writers like Elie Wiesel, Aharon Appel-
comics and cartoons of his own time and earlier. Wilhelm
feld and Jerzy Kosinski. The documentary horror films
Busch, the innovative nineteenth-century German artist,
remain, but they are already half a century old and have
published in the magazine Bilderhogen a cartoon story
lost their immediacy for a later generation, especially
entitled 'The Transformation' in which a boy is trans-'
since they must compete with more recent horrors shown
formed into a pig before our eyes (Clark, p. 93). Could
in full color on the TV screen every night. Moreover, they
Kafka have run across a reprint of this, perhaps while a
lack the redeeming quality of art, namely, the attempt to
child? Lyonel Feininger, who went on to do Wee Willie
derive meaning from the atrocities depicted.
Winkie and to become a famous American artist, was the
Perhaps Spiegelman felt that Maus could succeed
cartoonist for several German-language magazines and
precisely because it would arouse readerly expectations
newspapers from 1895 onward. Could Kafka as a
completely dissimilar to those raised by other artistic
German speaker in Prague have seen some of his or other
treatments of the Holocaust on the one hand and by
European cartoonists' equally exciting work? If so,
Disney-style popular comics, with their focus on harmless
Kafka's influence on Maus and possibly on other Ameri-
talking animals, on the other. Paul Buble explains that
can comics would bring us full circle. We should take
'More than a few readers have described [Maus] as the
Spiegelman's words about Kafka's influence on him
most compelling of any [Holocaust] depiction, perhaps
seriously. Certainly we find in Spiegelman's work some of
because only the caricatured quality of comic art is equal
the same literary structures that we find in Kafka and in
to the seeming unreality of an experience beyond all sane
other fictionists.
reason' (p. 16). This explanation assumes that Maus
succeeds because it does what popular comics usually JJI NARRATIVE LAYERS IN MAUS
have done- portray unreal situations in an unreal way. As a narrative, Spiegelman's autobiographical graphic
Another explanation, which has the long tradition of the novel contains three separate genres usually found in
newspaper political cartoon behind it, is that Maus works fiction, which form distinct but interwoven narrative
because it depicts what was all too real, however layers: the kunstleroman; the hildungsroman; and the epic.
unbelievable, in a tightly controlled and brutally stark The kunstleroman layer tells the story of Art's develop-
manner. 3 The black-and-white quality of Maus's graphics ment as the angst-ridden artist making Maus. Spiegelman
reminds one of newsprint (as Norman Spinrad has meditates about his worries concerning the creation of
pointed out), and the story presented has a strong this graphic novel, and particularly about whether or not
political as well as moral dimension. he can make it authentic, since he has not witnessed the
All of these forces may have been operating on Holocaust himself. Although he refers more than once to
Spiegelman in the background, but he has cited other the problem of truth in autobiography, pointing out
immediate influences in his Forward interview: jocularly, for instance, that in real life his wife would not
The real origin of'Maus' was being invited, 20 years ago, to let him talk as much as he does in Maus (2, p. 16),
do a three-page comic strip for an underground comic book Spiegelman seems driven to prove that we are reading an
called 'Funny Animals,' the only requirement being that I authentic story: Mala, his father Vladek's second wife,

155
tells Art in Maus that Art's 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet' (a the child of survivors; and his heroic attempt to
Maus precursor employing human figures and telling the understand this imposed and perpetually inescapable
story of his mother Anja's suicide, which is included in role of his, and to present his parents as they really seem
volume I of Maus itself) is 'so personal! But very to be, is largely what the bildungsroman aspect of Maus is all
accurate ... objective. I spent a lot of time helping out about.
here after Anja's funeral. It was just as you said' (I, In the dialogue between Art and his psychiatrist (2,
p. 104). pp. 43-46), Vladek is portrayed as the father who knows
But this accuracy is hard-won, as Spiegelman admits in some dirty secret- not Sf."X but Auschwitz- beyond Art's
Maus itself: 'I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a ability to know; and as if to underline this point, Art
reality that was worse than my darkest dreams. And shrinks to child's size in this episode. In a real sense, the
trying to do it as a comic strip. I guess I bit off more than I middle-aged Art is always a child next to Vladek, because
can chew. Maybe I ought to forget the whole thing. any American growing up under usual circumstances is
There's so much I'll never be able to understand or perpetually like a child before the terrible knowledge of
visualize. I mean, reality is too complex for com- the Holocaust survivor!
ics ... So much has to be left out or distorted' (2, p. I6}. At the very end of volume 2, Vladek is tired and tells
To which his wife Francoise replies, 'Just keep it honest, Art, 'I'm tired from talking, Richieu, and it's enough
honey.' He shows himself agonizing over whether by stories for now' (p. I36). Calling Art by the name of his
showing his father's cheapness he might not be reinforc- dead two-year-old brother Richieu (poisoned by a
ing anti-Semitic stereotypes, and exposing his father to relative to save him from the Nazis long before Art was
ridicule. He responds, as Francoise advises, with the born), Vladek reduces Art to the status of child again. On
ruthless honesty of the artist, by portraying his father as one hand, Vladek is like any father telling a child a
he sees him, come what may. bedtime story. On the other, Vladek's tale has not been a
On the positive side, Spiegelman has said that the normal bedtime story and Art's life has been changed
process of interviewing his father for Maus 'gave me a forever by it, even before he heard it.
relationship with Vladek that I probably wouldn't be Even apart from the survivor aspect, Art's relationship
able to have otherwise' (Forward, I 7 January I992, p. g). with his father is problematic. The aging father retains his
This leads us to Spiegelman's second role, as Art the son prerogatives at the same time that he is increasingly
rather than the artist. dependent upon the middle-aged son's help. Art is
The bildungsroman layer centers on an Art who wrestles impatient with his father's cheapness, embarrassed by
with his relationship with his parents Vladek and Anja Vladek's quarrelsome relationship with his second wife,
and with what the Holocaust, through them, has done to Mala, and unable to bear living with him. He feels that
him. As he tells his wife Francoise, 'I know this is insane, both Vladek and Anja have imprisoned him with their
but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my Holocaust-derived behavior and obsessions. With an
parents so I could really know what they lived artist's ruthlessness, Spiegelman shows us not only his
through! ... I guess it's some kind of guilt about having own limitations as a son, but that Vladek is hard to live
had an easier life than they did' (2, p. I6). Rather than with, and that he was not an extraordinarily noble man
any son facing any father, Art is a son confronting a very before the war, either. There are no saints among the
powerful, epic, amazing, if cranky and alien father to main characters in Maus.
whose experience he can never rise; and who fills him This brings us to the third genre embedded in Maus-
with awe and guilt as a result. It is the Oedipal conflict the epic story ofVladek, the incredible Sinbad the Sailor
written large indeed. who has passed through the most perilous straits and
Achieving an objective view of one's own parents is lived to tell the tale, like a monstrous Odyssey, to his only
difficult in any case. This task is even harder for the surviving son. 5
children ofHolocaust survivors. In her book Children ofthe One of the recurring questions about the Holocaust is
Holocaust, Helen Epstein quotes psychiatrists who have how it could have transpired at all. Another is why the
studied the survivors. Survivors' post-traumatic symp- Jews did not escape before it was too late. No one can
toms include depression, nightmares, withdrawal and answer the first question, but Vladek's narrative answers
isolation, changes in identity, anxiety and genuine as well the second. Using the diagrammatic quality of sequential
as psychosomatic physical problems. Maus shows Vladek art, Maus shows in great detail the progression of one
experiencing nightmares, and Art comments to his wife Jewish family from disbelief to shocked belief to horror to
Francoise that he thought everyone's parents screamed numbness.
every night in their sleep. The children of survivors, it has At least as Vladek tells it (which is all we can know), he
been found, also frequently suffer from depression and an always kept his head and managed to help his friends and
inability to function well. Spiegelman will forever remain relatives throughout the Nazi trauma. Perhaps the reason

I56 STEPHEN E. TABACHNICK

 that he is ready to talk to Art is that, unlike many others, out nearly all verbal subtlety or complexity, while the
he does not appear to have done anything disreputable or need to fill each box with a drawing has a similar effect on
betrayed anyone. He tells us that he always tried to be in the illustrations' (p. 56).
touch with Anja, and reports that Mancie, a woman who In response to this clever but superficial comment, one
served as a go-between for them in the camps, said that wonders ifHalkin has considered the sonnet, which works
she had to do it however much she risked her own life, precisely because of the tension between its constricted
because of the depth of Vladek and Anja's love. form and its content? Or if he has pondered Robert
Vladek emerges as admirable, no less a lover than Frost's statement that writing poetry without rhyme and
Petrarch, no less resourceful a hero than Odysseus. But as meter is like playing tennis without a net? To a lesser
Art's wife Francoise comments when Vladek returns his artist and writer than Spiegelman, any kind of formal
opened but uneaten food to the supermarket, part of him restraint is a limitation and a disaster; to someone as good
did not survive. Unlike Odysseus's decisive reclamation of as Spiegelman, the very restraint imposed by the graphic
his patrimony following more or less honorable battles on panel format becomes a challenge and an opportunity to
the plains of Troy, Vladek's is a particularly ambiguous say a lot in a little.
kind ofheroism, born ofa complete lack of powerto defend Moreover, Halkin has not paid attention to the number
oneself and of survival in impossible conditions, and and complexity of devices that Spiegelman uses to expand
leaving a mixed and unpleasant aftermath, including the cliched, popular comic book format into something
humiliating memories. Suffering does not necessarily completely original and new. Abbott points out that the
ennoble, and so it is with Vladek. While we pay tribute to panel is the basic unit in sequential art, and that the panel
his courage and tenacity during the Holocaust, we also find usually has visual and verbal devices in it. Among the
much to question about his life in the present. Watching visual devices in sequential art are the control of the
Vladek develop from a rather usual young man engaged in viewer's eye movement, and the time duration shown in
love affairs and the textile business, into a smart survivor each panel. Among the verbal devices we have narration,
and great lover, and finally into a sick, tired, cranky, dialogue and sound effects. In addition to these consider-
unhappy old man with a second wife who doesn't love him, ations, there is the sequential aspect: how one panel leads
is an incredible journey for the reader. to another and how the panels function together through-
The aesthetic, personal and epic narrative layers out the work. I want to look at some visual devices in
interact to raise unanswerable questions ranging from the Maus, and to explore the ways in which Spiegelman uses
local to the cosmological: was Art's own stint in a mental them to support and sometimes to under~ut his text.
institution (referred to in 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet') Spiegelman's own unique visual devices include the
caused by his parents' experiences? How could anyone use of black-and-white drawing; the use of diagrams; the
have devised the Holocaust in the first place? Is there use of different animals for different nationalities; the
indeed a God who watched over Vladek and Anja at adroit manipulation of the reader's perspective via eye
Auschwitz and enabled them to survive while others movement and various sizes of panels; and the use of
perished? As Spiegelman tells the journalists asking what photographs interspersed with the drawings.
his 'message' is, 'I dunno' (2, p. 42). Unlike a political The thr~ad that unites all of these disparate techniques
cartoonist, he cannot tell us what to think because he is Spiegelman's brilliant exploitation of sequential art's
doesn't know himself. Not knowing, however, is a hell, capacity for juxtaposition, to which he himself calls
and Art will forever be a prisoner on the hell planet attention in his interview with Rosen:
precisely because he doesn't know if he himself, Vladek,
One of the themes important to the book has to do not only
or Hitler is responsible for his mother's suicide.
with the juxtaposition of personal and global history, but
the juxtaposition of past and present, and that info.:ms
IV VISUAL AND VERBAL DEVICES IN MAUS
'Maus,' quite literally, in that a comic strip is made up of
What is the nature of Maus's art and how does it influence units of time placed next to each other so that one sees past
the reader? In a negative review of Spiegelman's work, and present simultaneously, before decoding the moments
the usually perceptive Hillel Halkin writes that 'Lan- that are being depicted in any given box. So there is a kind
guage may indeed be tyrannically word-bound, but the of visual overlapping and interweaving of Vladek on an
visual arts are no less tyrannically space-bound, and Exercycle and a moment in Poland in the '40s. In one
yoking two tyrannies together in such a way that there is a panel, it's made even more condensed, where we're driving
minimum of room for maneuver within either is a poor through the Catskills and there's a forest with prisoners
strategy for overcoming them. All that happens in the hanging from the branches. That mixture is reflected
throughout the book in one way or another, and certainly
comic strip is that one ends up more bound and chained
in the dedications as well. (p. g)
than ever. The division into small boxes limits all
utterances to the shortest and pithiest statements, ruling On the back cover of both volumes, we see how effective

157
Spiegelman's visual devices, unaided by many words, can this book, the text supporting or undercutting the
be, owing to his use of the telling juxtaposition. On the reader's reaction to the pictures.
back cover of volume one, a small colored map of Rego One reason that we can bear the horror in Maus is that
Park is set into a larger colored map of Poland, alongside Spiegelman's use of talking animals distances us from the
a black-and-white drawing ofVladek talking to Art. We story to some degree. As Adam Gopnik comments,
have the old world, with its 'Mauswitzes' clearly marked Spiegelman's animals 'suggest not just the condition of
in skeletons, juxtaposed with the new, supposedly safe human beings forced to behave like animals, but also our
world - Vladek speaking from an armchair in Queens, sense that this story is too horrible to be presented
and Art, on the floor, like a child, trying to understand his unmasked.' Nonetheless, Hillel Halkin is a severe critic of
father's fantastic but all too true tale. Spiegelman's decision to use animals, claiming that it is
On the back cover of volume two, we see a neat, an evasion of the truth, because having cats chase mice
greenish diagram of Auschwitz and Birkenau in whose gives children the idea that such a pursuit is an entirely
foreground is a dark, ugly column of smoke, while off to natural function instead of a terrible, unnatural condition
the side there is a pretty, yellow map of the Catskills, inflicted by one group of human beings upon another.
where Vladek goes for the summer and where much of the Moreover, Spiegelman's decision to assign animals
action takes place. Once again, the whole point of the according to nationality has aroused controversy. His
book is summed up visually in one gestalt. The new Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Poles pigs and
American world of Ellenville and Monticello (repre- Americans dogs, and, in a witty touch, the Gypsies are
sented by a friendly AAA map) is literally overshadowed moths, the Swedes reindeer, and the French frogs. In
by the old dark tragedy of Auschwitz represented by a response to a query in Maus, Spiegelman replies that he
precise, neat khaki-colored diagram and threatening might draw Israelis as porcupines were they to figure in
smoke. We take in at a glance the irreconcilability of the the story. 7
old world and the new; and yet the superimposed black- But Spiegelman has already answered the objections to
and-white portrait of Vladek in a prison uniform set his use of animals. In his brilliant chapter on Maus,
over both worlds forces us to recognize that they have Joseph Witek quotes Spiegelman as an artist faced with
somehow been bridged, and that we cannot escape the practical problems saying that:
past. 6
If one draws this kind of stuff with people it comes out
Spiegelman's choice of black-and-white drawings for
wrong. And the way it comes out wrong is, first of all, I've
his whole work (apart from the covers) is very appropri- never lived through anything like that ... and it would be
ate, because it matches the concentration camp uniform counterfeit to try to pretend that the drawings are
of Vladek, because it resembles a stark newspaper or representations of something that's actually happening. I
medieval woodcut style, and because it recalls the black- don't know what a German looked like who was in a small
and-white films of the Second World War and the town doing a specific thing. My notions are born of a few
Holocaust, but even more because it does not allow the score of photographs and a couple of movies. I'm bound to
reader to evade the stark, salient import of Spiegelman's do something inauthentic.
story. Also I'm afraid that if I did it with people, it would be
The black-and-white format is also very appropriate very corny. It would come out as some kind of odd plea for
sympathy or 'Remember the Six Million,' and that wasn't
for Spiegelman's diagrams, as on page 6o of volume 2
my point exactly, either. To use these ciphers, the cats and
when Vladek explains how to sew a boot, or when on page
mice, is actually a way to allow you past the cipher at the
70 of that volume, he explains the layout of the people who are experiencing it. So it's really a much more
crematoria. The boot diagram prepares us for the direct way of dealing with the material (p. 102).
crematorium diagram; the first explains a technical
process that most people simply do not know about while So for Spiegelman, the use of animals, paradoxically,
the second describes a technical process that most people limits sentimentality and makes it possible for authenti-
cannot even imagine. The juxtaposition of the two city and realism to predominate.
diagrams ten pages apart reinforces the cold, technical Another answer to Halkin's objections to the use of
nature of what the Nazis did. But this icy, distanced talking animals is that the Holocaust turned the world
diagrammatic feeling is immediately undercut by the upside down, so that people became animals and showed
frames on page (2) 71 in which a man who worked their humanity only on exceptional occasions. Volume
clearing out the gas room explains its results to Vladek in one begins with a epigram quoted from Hitler, 'The Jews
graphic detil, so that even in his hardened state he shouts, are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human,' and
'Enough!' and comments, 'I didn't want more to hear, Maus literally shows us what happened when that dictum
but anyway he told me.' This is just one example of how was acted on. During the Holocaust, the Jews' Jewishness
pictures and words work together inseparably throughout rather than their humanity became foregrounded for

158 STEPHEN E. TABACHNICK

most Germans, who hunted men down only because of tally, one pig and one cat), and from a point slightly
that Jewishness. Each national and ethnic group, more- above them. The narration tells us that Anja is among the
over, acted like a separate species because of the Nazis' indistinguishable women prisoners on the other side of
racial laws. During the Holocaust, nationality and the electric fence in the panel, but we cannot see her
ethnicity became matters of life and death. because the women are too far away. Valdek himself is
Another justification for Spiegelman's use of animals is distinguishable from the other prisoners only because his
its subtlety. His drawings of cats emphasize their sharp head is turned to the left in order to look at the women.
teeth and hooded eyes, except when he shows a German His comment that 'It was the only time I was happy in
prisoner in the camps, as on page 50 of volume 2; here the Auschwitz' is lost in the bleak sameness and the wide-
cat becomes gentle and frightened, too. As Witek angle size of the panel; moreover, a fence separates him
comments, all of Spiegelman's main characters, whether from Anja as the window panes did in the first panel. In
cats, mice or other animals, have unique facial expres- the distant juxtaposition of first and last panels, Spiegel-
sions, clothing or other marks of individuality. Angst, man has moved us from an intense sense of Vladek's
terror, despair, sadism, all are clearly written in minia- individuality and personal pain to a view ofVIadek as one
ture on these faces. But Spiegelman is even more subtle of a grey, sad crowd whose idea of happiness is so minimal
than that: his wife Francoise, who converted to Judaism, as to be incomprehensible from a usual perspective. This
is shown as a mouse, but only after he gives us a final panel underlines the point Vladek makes to Art in
discussion (2, pp. 11-12) about how he arrived at that the panel immediately above it: 'About Auschwitz,
decision. When he shows an intermarried German- NOBODY can understand.'
Jewish family (2, p. 131), the children are shown as mice The use of perspective is never better rendered,
with cat stripes. however, than on page 32 of Maus, volume 1 (figure 1).
The fact that the animals can speak to one another Here we have three sizes of panel- a long one showing the
despite their different species- even the German cats talk
to the Jewish mice- shows that this is really a tale about
people, not animals. As Spiegelman himself has pointed
out, his use of talking animals is only a mask to be
shucked ofT immediately; no reader for a moment thinks
that he's reading about animals rather than about people,
perhaps because the mice wear recognizable human
clothing. While it will remain controversial, for Spiegel-
man the deployment of animals to represent human
groups probably had the virtue of graphically illustrating
his view of the relationships between these groups: the
Americans are shown to be friendly and generous like
dogs and chase the German cats; the Poles are portrayed
as pigs because their eating of pork was a major difTerence
between them and the Jews who lived among them, and
pigs do not hunt mice; the reindeer, the frog and the gypsy
moth are only clever strokes, since they do not figure
prominently in the story. 8
A final justification of Spiegelman's use of animals is
that il carries more than a hint of the degradation of all of
the people involved in the Holocaust; all reverted to
animal status and are denied human form by Spiegelman.
The manipulation of perspective, partially by means of
panel size, also allows Spiegelman to control the reader's
distance from the story. In the first panel on page 64 of
volume 2, we see Vladek's face from close up in a moment
of despair, circumscribed both by a window pane that
looks like bars, and by the narrow frame of the panel.
Vladek's narration tells us that he wanted Anja to be near
him, but the bars seem to prevent this outcome. In the
final, wide panel on the same page, we watch from in front
of a line of advancing male prisoners (including, inciden- Figure 1. Art Spiegelman, Maus, vol. t, p. 32.

159
train in which Vladek is riding into Czechoslovakia, two (p. 28). The priest goes on to interpret Vladek's camp
small ones showing the friends looking out of the train tattoo in a numerological way that 'proves' that Vladek
windows, and then a very large one in which they glimpse will survive. Art and Vladek both scrutinize the tattoo in
the Nazi flag for the first time. We first see the train from a the present to ascertain that it does indeed add up to the
comfortable, neutral point far from it, th~n witness the number 'I8,' which stands for 'life' in Hebrew, and that it
friends' shocked facial expressions from a much closer does contain other lucky numbers seen by the priest. The
perspective outside one train car, and only at last look out black humor here is not only contained in Vladek's
from inside the car containing them to see the Nazi flag, sarcastic remark about a carnival, but in the fact that the
experiencing the reason for their shock as well as that priest is performing, albeit for free, a carnival act, the
shock itself as we do so. interpretation of lucky numbers on Vladek's arm.
Finally, Spiegelman uses actual photographs of his This theme of numerological luck is raised to a higher
dead brother Richieu, himself and his mother, and a power a few pages later. Vladek, right after narrating his
photo of his father Vladek in concentration camp life at Auschwitz, jerks Art into the Pines Hotel, where
uniform, and intersperses them in the text with drawn Vladek frequently goes to act like a guest and to receive
photographs. The real photos give autobiographical guest services for free. Vladek recounts that once he won a
authenticity and even nostalgia to the narrative by bingo game but could not collect any winnings because
forcing us, with a mild sense of shock, to step outside of it they send the prize to one's room, and he didn't have one.
completely and to acknowledge the main characters' real, But 'Behind me sat a young lady what got so disap-
human (rather than mouse) faces. These genuine photo- pointed that she lost ... she had just one number
graphs say that this story, like the Holocaust itself, away .... So I gave to her my card and said: "I don't
actually happened; that this is autobiography, not fiction. care for such prizes. You go up to be the winner."
Moreover, like other family photographs, they add ... Was she happy.' As he speaks this mundane, broken
nostalgia to the story, particularly when (in 'Prisoner on but warm English, we see Vladek's tattoo, the number of
the Hell Planet,' I, p. 100) we juxtapose Art's timeless which the priest at Auschwitz called lucky (2, p. 37). The
photographic happiness as a boy next to Anja at Trojan lesson that seems to come through the juxtaposed and
Lake, New York, with the relentless sequence of black- jumbled words and pictures of this entire incident is that
and-white drawings depicting her suicide and its Vladek's life has been like bingo, with his salvation
aftermath. depending largely on chance.
The drawn photos of dead or dispersed family But was it? Earlier, as a Polish prisoner of war, he has
members on pages (2) I I4-I I6, fit the black-and-white been called a roeh hanoled, or seer, by a rabbi because in a
style of the usual Maus panels. But Spiegelman's device of dream he correctly saw the day of his release (I, p. 6o).
superimposing them on and interspersing them with During that incident, the Hebrew prayer 'How goodly are
usual panels showing Art and Vladek talking makes them your tents 0 Jacob, your dwelling, 0 Israel' is ironically
dominate these panels. Art and Vladek alike will be ruled set into a panel showing the praying mice in miserable
by these photos that flutter across the page and lie on the prisoner-of-war tents. Is there a God, and does that God
floor like dead leaves, finally burying the present (2, p. mock men or help them?
I 15). The survivors are buried under the weight of the If there is a God, was He present during the Holocaust?
past, and the suggestion of leaves implies that the While talking about Auschwitz, Vladek comments ter-
survivors will not, finally, survive, and will be reduced to sely, 'But here God didn't come. We were all on our own'
dead leaves and old, faded photos themselves in the end. (2, p. 29). Rendered in Vladek's usual matter of fact
In a subtle visual lead-in, Spiegelman hints that these manner, this comment is probably the starkest statement
photos, superimposed at odd angles on the usual square in all of Maus, recalling Dante's 'Abandon hope, all ye
panels, will follow when on page ( 2) 110 one panel seems who enter here.' Yet the fact is that Vladek has survived,
to shake loose because of the artillery explosion it depicts. and the message that there is something supernatural
Spiegelman's verbal devices are equally varied and about this has been delivered on two separate occasions
complex, and include the realistic use of dialogue and by a rabbi and a priest.
dialect, the combination of dialogue and Vladek's The seriousness of Spiegelman's material, including
commentary on the action, comic-book sound indica- Vladek's stark narration rendered in broken English, and
tions, 'black' humor, and terse, poetic comment. the sobering pictures of his tattoo and of the many
On pages (2) 28-34 of the Auschwitz episode, we see unspeakable brutalities in the book, is made even more
many of these verbal devices juxtaposed with the visuals striking by Spiegelman's use of comic-book sound effects.
to create subtle effects and implications. When a priest On page ( 2) 59, the use of such effects to render the mortal
incarcerated at Auschwitz asks him why he is crying, fear of a man awaiting death, 'AAWOOWWAH!,' brings out
Vladek answers 'Should I be happy? Am I at a carnival?' in one word the complete contrast between the brash

I60 STEPHEN E. TABACHNICK

American comic book and what Spiegelman is doing in juxtaposition inherent in sequential art, Spiegelman has
Maus. This sound comes back to haunt Vladek and conflated the past and present, modern America and
therefore the reader on page 74 of the same volume, when Second World War Europe, and has succeeded in making
Vladek moans in his sleep, possibly remembering this the Holocaust a permanent part of the contemporary
incident in his dreams. This is yet another juxtaposition, reader's historical memory.
pages apart, that has the effect of a discordant musical Maus is a masterpiece because, in it, highly significant
motif. content is being expressed in a new form. As Judith
Similarly, Spiegelman ends each section of volume 2 O'Sullivan writes, Maus 'was to forever transform the
with an understated but ironic and unpleasant verbal and nature of the comics' (p. I36). Spiegelman has destroyed
visual commentary on what has come before in that all assumptions about what can and cannot be done with
section. In 'Auschwitz: Time Flies' we are told that sequential art; indeed, because of his masterly use of his
Zyklon-B was a pesticide. At the end of the section, Art personal history and the visual and verbal devices that
unthinkingly kills a bug with a pesticide as Francoise comprise Maus, it may become one of the predominant
comments that 'It's so peaceful here at night. It's almost artistic (as opposed to archival) experiences through
impossible to believe Auschwitz ever happened' (2, which the Holocaust will be remembered. In the words of
p. 74). The implication is that Jews were killed as Wallace Stevens, 'Death is the mother of beauty,' and as
unthinkingly as Art kills bugs, but there is also the hint Yeats said of the Irish rebellion ofigi6, 'A terrible beauty
that Art himself is capable of unthinking extermination. is born.' In Spiegelman's Maus, the Holocaust has given
There are also verbal and visual puns involved here: the birth to a new form of art that will help insure that it is
chapter subheading 'Time Flies,' reminds us of death and never forgotten.
decay as we see flies buzzing on page (2) 4I around the
dead mouse bodies near Art's drawing table. The NOTES
presence of these imagined bodies from the past reveals 1 -As early as October 1941, the twenty-four-year-old creator of
that time never flies as long as memory functions. 'The Spirit,' Will Eisner, told a reporter that 'The comic strip is no
Also, Vladek calls Kellogg's Special K cereal 'poison' longer a comic strip, but, in reality, an illustr.tted novel. It is new
and raw just now, but material for limitless intelligent development.
(2, p. 78), setting up another juxtaposition between the
And eventually and inevitably, it will be a legitimate medium for the
present, in which even Vladek uses words unthinkingly, best of writers and artists' (quoted in Alan Edelstein, 'Will Eisner's
and the genuine Zyklon-B poison of the past. In another spirit,' Forward (1 January 1993), pp. 1, g. It is now commonly
section, Art unthinkingly uses the Americanism 'I'm agreed that Eisner's 1978 A Contract with God, about the occupants of
starving' to describe his hunger for one meal, and this is a New York tenement in the 1930s, is the first American graphic
novel. One problem with the term 'graphic novel' is that it is
juxtaposed with Vladek's taleofreal hunger. On page (2)
currently used to denote biographical, historical and
35, Vladek describes how guards would make prisoners autobiographical as well as fictional works. But if we accept the
chase their own hats and then shoot them for allegedly dictum that all autobiographies are fictional and all fictions
attempting to escape, and the panels show this happen- autobiographical to some degree, even this difficulty disappears, and
ing. On the same page, he describes himself as looking the term proves very serviceable; I will employ it throughout this
discussion, referring to Spiegelman's 'autobiographical graphic novel'
like a 'BIG SHOT' because of the protection offered him by a
when that seems necessary.
kapo. Perhaps Spiegelman's most effective visual/verbal 2 - The constraints on the conventional comic book occur primarily
juxtaposition is forcing these ironic double meanings out because of commerctal considerations. But the question of how words
of innocuous, everyday expressions, which forever lose and images work together to influence the reader's perceptions,
their innocence for the reader of Maus. whether in comic books or in graphic novels, is an interesting one.
Eisner believes that the image dominates, since even the words in a
panel are drawn by the artist and are seen as part of the picture.
V THE POTENTIAL INFLUENCE OF MAUS
Abbott, on the other hand, privileges words over images when he
There have been some important mice in comic book writes that 'The comic artist must be a story-teller in words and
history- Jerry ofTom and Jerry; Mighty Mouse; and of pictures, but a story-teller above all, because the medium is a
course Mickey. Then there are Kafka'sjosephine the Singer, narrative one, in which the pictorial is perhaps best thought of as the
para-literary' (p. 176). But in 'Deconstructive comics,' Journal of
or the Mouse Folk, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and the film
Popular Culture, 25/40 (Spring 1992), pp. 153-161, Ronald Schmiu
The Mouse that Roared. More recently, and possibly points out that in absorbing sequential art, the eye jumps from text
influenced by Maus itself, we have Steven Spielberg's A to picture and vice versa. According to him, in this new, more erratic
Mouse's Tale and Fievel Goes West. These mice always win version of the standard, linear reading experience, neither word nor
against the cats. Spiegelman's mice don't really win- but image predominates. I agree with Schmitt that it is not possible to
give precedence to either the verbal or the visual in the graphic novel
then they're not really mice, either.
or other sequential art media.
In two major ways, however, Art and Vladek, at least, It is, of course, possible to have brief comic or cartoon that is
have triumphed: Vladek has lived and Art has told entirely visual, but I cannot think of a single graphic novel without
Vladek's tale. By exploiting the magical power of words. Writing one might be an interesting experiment, like Georges
 Perec's writing of a novel without using the letter 'e' (La Disparation), 8 - See also Ethan Mordden's comment about animals in note 4,
but it would be an exceptional formal exercise rather than a above.
straightforward art:.;tic attempt to represent something about the
world. On the other hand, there is little point to a graphic novel
without pictures; it would simply become a novel. Once again, both ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
words and pictures are necessary to the form, and neither words nor Figure 1 is reproduced from MAUS by Art Spiegelman.
pictures can be clearly shown to be predominant in affecting the
reader.
Copyright© 1973, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 by
3- Interestingly enough, as a Forward article of to April 1992 states, Art Spiegelman. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon
the Pulitzer Prize committee decided that the catc:gory of newspaper Books, a division of Random House.
cartoon was not appropriate for Maus and that it needed a category
of its own. While one can scarcely complain about their decision, it
might be possible to argue that Maw is actually the most WORKS CITED
distinguished example ever of the political cartoon, although, as Abbott, Lawrence, 'Comic art: characteristics and potentialities of a
Joseph Witek points out, Spiegelman deliberately chose a vague style narrative medium',journal of Popular Culture, 19/4 (Spring 1g86),
of drawing in order to avoid telling the reader what to think, as PP· 155-176.
political cartoons do. Among purely literary fictions, Orwell's Animal Anon., 'Forward lauds Pulitzer for "Maus'", Forward, 10 April 1992,
Farm is a comparable masterpiece using the techniques of the p. 5·
political cartoon. Apropos of Animal Farm, Ethan Mordden notes that Buble, Paul, 'Of mice and menschen: Jewish comics come of age',
Spiegelman's inspiration for the use of anim.ds was the barnyard, in Tikkun 712 (March/April 1992), pp. g-16.
which mice as vermin are always eliminated, pigs are used and then Clark, Alan and Laurel, Comics: Anl//ustrated History (London: Green
killed, and dogs are mongrels - thus making dogs particularly Wood), 1991.
appropriate for the representation of Americans, who an• a very Eisner, Will, Comics and Sequmtial Art (Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press,
heterogeneous people. But there is no sign that Spiegelman was lg85).
influenced by Orwell. For Spiegelman's feelings about other media, Epstein, Helen, Childrm of the Holocaust (New York: Bantam, 1g81).
see Richard Pachter's interview with him in Comics 1o8 (1992), Gaiman, Neil and Dave McKean, Black Orchid (New York: DC
pp. 4- 1 3· Comics, 1991).
4- Art Spiegelman was born in Stockholm in 1948 but came to the Gopnik, Adam, 'Comics and catastrophe', New &public, 25 (22 June,
USA at an early age; in the opening section of Maus 1 we see him as a lg87). pp. 29-33·
regular American kid. Halkin, Hillel, 'Inhuman comedy', Commmlary (February 1992),
3 - Maw has sometimes been called a biography of Vladek, but I pp. 55-56.
believe that this is a mistaken identification of genre since Vladek Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons, Watchmm (New York: DC Comics,
tells his story in his own words, making it an autobiographical tg87).
narrative. Yet it is not only autobiography either because Vladek's Mordden, Ethan, 'Kat and Maus', New Yorker 68!7 (April 1992),
words and related pictures are filtered and reported through pp. 9o-g6.
Spiegelman's art. What we really have in Vladek's story in Maw, O'Sullivan, Judith, The Great American Comic Strip: One Hundred Years
then, is Vladek's spoken autobiography transformed into an epic of Cartoon Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 19go).
structure by Spiegelman. This story has the usual epic's structure of Pekar, Harvey, From OJ! the Streets~ Cln~eland Comes- American
the unwilling separation of the hero from normal society, his Splmdor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar (New York: Doubleday,
confrontation with the gredt evil, and his re-entry into society. Out of 1986).
the Holocaust, Spiegelman has created a modern Jewish epic, whose Pratt, George, Enemy Ace: War Idyll (New York: oc Comics, 19go).
primary theme is the family and its survival under impossible Reidelbach, Maria, Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and
conditions. Maga:!ine (Boston: Little Brown, 1991).
6- One of the undergraduates in my fall 1992 course on the graphic Riggenberg, Stephen, 'William M. Gaines interview', Gauntlet, 3
novel, Trang Nguyen, noticed a further refinement - a verbal pun (1992), PP· 81>--94.
embedded in volume two's back cover: 'Catskill [my italics] Rosen, Jonathan, 'Spiegelman: the man behind Maus', Forward (17
Mountains' conjures up cats killing mice. She went on to comment January 1992), pp. 1, 9, 11.
that the bungalows Spiegelman depicts in that resort area can also Spiegelman, Art, Maw, Vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon, tg86).
be seen as faintly reminiscent of the Auschwitz barracks - yet Spiegelman, Art, Maw, Vol. 2 (New York: Pantheon, 1991).
another chilling juxtaposition of past and present. Spinrad, Norman, Science Fiction in the Real World (Urbana-
7 - That might be very appropriate and might well reflect Israelis' Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1ggo).
own self-perceptions as well as Spiegelman's perceptions of them. Witek, Joseph, Comic Books as History: The Narratioe Art ~jack Jackson,
'Kipi HaKipod' ('Porky the Porcupine') is the equivalent of 'Big Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar Oackson: University Press of
Bird' in the Israeli version of Sesame Street. Mississippi, 1g8g).

162 STEPHEN E. TABACHNICK