History through Comic

Maus, which means Mouse in Polish, is the harrowing tale of a young man trying to come to terms with whom his father’s past  and what has become of it.  The father, Vladek who is an aged and ailing man, survived both the Holocaust living in Poland as well as Auschwitz.  The son, Art Spiegelman, is an artist, who wants to capture his father’s tale through a comic strip. 

            This is a true story of a man and his son.  It is both a biography and an autobiography because the story tells the father’s narrative.  Maus also is about the son’s life (including his job, marriage, and the son of holocaust survivors) and trying to cope with his father.  Spiegelman portrays himself, his father, and all Jewish people as mice.  In fact, all the people in Maus are illustrated as some type of animal. Polish citizens, even the Jewish Poles, are pigs.  The Americans are dogs while the Nazis are cats.  Besides the Jewish, Americans, and Nazis  being depicted in the story, the French, British,  German-Jewish, Swedish, and gypsies are also shown as different animals.

            The story is brutally honest about the horrors of the Holocaust.  It also tells the frank truth of family and the complicated, and often trying, relationship of a father and son who grew up in two different eras.  This is not a story for a younger crowd.  It is suited for teenagers as well as adults.  Maus deals with the brutality of living in Auschwitz as well as in other concentration camps.  He shows the murders of the Jewish people, the sicknesses they suffered, the horrendous work they had to perform and the punishments the Jewish people received if they did not do the work properly, and, last, but not least, how some of the Jewish people went insane towards the end of the war. However, even though Maus shows the viciousness of the Holocaust, it promotes family values, resourcefulness, and survival. 

After he completed the comic strip, Spiegelman compiled all of them into a two volume graphic novel set.  It has won many awards and nominations.  Maus is the only graphic novel, as of June 28,2008, that has won a Pulitzer Prize.