Maus I: My Father Bleeds History
I first read Maus back in high school (or college? I must have been
college, because I'd borrowed the books from a friend and ended up
having to mail them back to her) and I've been wanting to revisit it
ever since. It is, in some ways, yet another holocaust book. But there's
enough of a unique perspective here to make it an important addition to
that specific genre.
This is the story of Art Spiegelman coming to terms with his father's experienceas a Polish Jew during WWII, with the loss of his mother, and with the strained relationship between his father and his father's second wife. The framing of the story portrays a series of interviews between Art and his father, where he struggles to get the story chronologically, while also struggling with how to present the story. He's particularly concerned with the fact that his father embodies the stereotype of miserly Jew, and he doesn't want to give the fire any more fuel. By addressing it head on, he helps alleviate some of that and paint his father as a more complete person.
The main story follows Art's father, Vladek, through the German occupation of Poland. As rights and freedoms are slowly stripped away, Vladek falls from a wealthy factory owner, to a black market king, to an assembly line worker, to a man who can barely leave his house and must scrounge for food. He sends his son away to protect him, only to learn that this action led to his death. He sees family members slowly shipped away for being to old or not having useful skills or having too many children. What begins as a extended family of 12 slowly dwindles to just Vladek and his wife.
The book ends with their inevitable arrival at Aushwitz - the second volume covers their time there. The years leading up to it paint a harrowing picture of their disappearing humanity, emphasized by Art's decision to draw Nazis as cats and Jews as mice. The metaphor is a little on the nose, but it works. And there's some fun art when the Jewish mice impersonate Polish pigs to blend in with crowds or escape scrutiny.
The book is something of a tragedy in slow motion. You know the couple eventually ends up in Auschwitz, but watching the long, winding path they take to get there is painful. It's made worse by Vladek's constant interjections to tell you that this person died while that one miraculously survived. The frame story helps tie off all the loose ends by illuminating the fates of various people as soon as they exit the main narrative. Some of it is ironic; a lot is just painful.
This is the story of Art Spiegelman coming to terms with his father's experienceas a Polish Jew during WWII, with the loss of his mother, and with the strained relationship between his father and his father's second wife. The framing of the story portrays a series of interviews between Art and his father, where he struggles to get the story chronologically, while also struggling with how to present the story. He's particularly concerned with the fact that his father embodies the stereotype of miserly Jew, and he doesn't want to give the fire any more fuel. By addressing it head on, he helps alleviate some of that and paint his father as a more complete person.
The main story follows Art's father, Vladek, through the German occupation of Poland. As rights and freedoms are slowly stripped away, Vladek falls from a wealthy factory owner, to a black market king, to an assembly line worker, to a man who can barely leave his house and must scrounge for food. He sends his son away to protect him, only to learn that this action led to his death. He sees family members slowly shipped away for being to old or not having useful skills or having too many children. What begins as a extended family of 12 slowly dwindles to just Vladek and his wife.
The book ends with their inevitable arrival at Aushwitz - the second volume covers their time there. The years leading up to it paint a harrowing picture of their disappearing humanity, emphasized by Art's decision to draw Nazis as cats and Jews as mice. The metaphor is a little on the nose, but it works. And there's some fun art when the Jewish mice impersonate Polish pigs to blend in with crowds or escape scrutiny.
The book is something of a tragedy in slow motion. You know the couple eventually ends up in Auschwitz, but watching the long, winding path they take to get there is painful. It's made worse by Vladek's constant interjections to tell you that this person died while that one miraculously survived. The frame story helps tie off all the loose ends by illuminating the fates of various people as soon as they exit the main narrative. Some of it is ironic; a lot is just painful.
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