"Maus II" by Art Spiegelman

BOOK TITLE: Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

AUTHOR: Art Spiegelman

YEAR: 1991

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Holocaust Memoir

GRADE: A

Under no circumstances should this memoir be banned from school libraries, or anywhere else for that matter. Yes, it is an insanely uncomfortable read. It shows Jewish mice being burned in ovens, beaten, starved, traumatized, shot, all in the name of blind bigotry by the Nazi regime. This book is disturbing, disgusting, and horrifying all at once. You know why that is? Because the Holocaust was disturbing, disgusting, and horrifying all at once. This is probably the most honest portrayal of history’s worst behavior you’ll ever see. It’s honest because the author’s father experienced it all. There are no punches pulled. There is no sugar-coating or whitewashing. Just brutal honesty, because the subject matter will always be brutal no matter which angle you look at it from. A sanitized version wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact. When I read up to page 75, I was so disturbed by the Nazis’ violence that I got dizzy afterwards. I’ve been disturbed lots of times, but this is the first time it has ever made me light-headed. To all the people wanting to ban this book for “naked mice” and “swearing”, it was never about those things. The book bans have more to do with suppressing important messages and keeping the masses ignorant so that they’ll be more likely to vote for people who care only about making themselves richer.

Equally heartbreaking was watching Art Spiegelman’s mental process throughout creating this comic in his father’s honor. He had over twenty hours of tape-recorded conversations with his father and it wore on him after a while. Impostor Syndrome crept up on him for not being “realistic” enough or “doing him justice”. The secondhand trauma also sent him into a depressive spiral. The constant questions and prying from the media made him want to bawl his eyes out like a child crying out for his mommy, a Holocaust-surviving mommy who killed herself because of overwhelming PTSD. It’s a lot to take in all at once, not just for the reader, but also for the author. If Art was a fictional character, he would be instantly praised as being three-dimensional. His father would receive such praise as a character as well, doing what he had to do to survive the concentration camps while starving to death and being sick with Typhus. It doesn’t matter what page you turn to in this graphic novel, because there will never not be a heartbreaking moment to read about.

Let’s talk for a little bit about Art Spiegelman’s choice to use anthropomorphic animals to depict various ethnicities. It is called Maus, after all. He chose mice to represent Jewish people, because rodents were a common slur for Nazis to use. The Germans soldiers, of course, were depicted as cats, notorious hunters of rodents. Americans were depicted as dogs, playing into that old trope of dogs and cats not getting along. These aren’t the only examples, but using animals is a genius move on the author’s part. It’s not just an attempt at being cute; these animals have symbolic meanings. Every choice Spiegelman made in this novel had a purpose of some kind; nothing was left to chance. As pressured as he was to get his father’s story out there, no one can accuse the author of not knowing what he was doing. That is the mark of any good author: when everything has a reason for being there.

Maus II is easily the most frightening book I’ve ever read. I’ve read plenty of fictional horror stories and bloody fantasy novels over the years, but this is nonfiction in its rawest state. This isn’t a 140-page edge-fest; this topic was handled with great sensitivity despite its horrifying nature. I would advise anybody reading this review or either of the Maus books to handle the Holocaust with sensitivity as well. Edgy alt-right jokes are not funny and I don’t want them anywhere near me. The ones who punch down like that have never had a single hardship in their lives, let alone anything equivalent to living in a concentration camp. Maybe the Maus series will make SJW’s out of us all and I’d be very much onboard with that. Five stars out of five is what this graphic novel gets.

"Maus I" by Art Spiegelman

It’s never been a huge secret that what went on in Nazi Europe during World War II was disgusting on Hitler’s part. With “Maus I” by Art Spiegelman, you get a closer look as to how brutal the dictatorship really was, as told by Art’s father Vladek Spiegelman. Getting a hold of this information didn’t come without verbal sparring between the father and son, not to mention with Mala as well, Vladek’s new wife. Vladek lived his life appreciative of what little he had since that’s how he was forced to live during his time in Nazi Europe. He pinched his pennies and stashed his food, because he knew that any moment, he could be shoved into a concentration camp or killed on the spot like a lot of his relatives and close friends were. All of this senseless violence simply because he was Jewish. Art Spiegelman could have told his father’s story anyway he wanted to. He could have written it in novel form if he so desired, but instead, he chose the route of a graphic novelist. He chose to represent the Jewish people as mice and the Nazi soldiers as cats. I probably don’t have to tell you what that kind of symbolism is supposed to represent. It would be like contrasting dragons to people or spiders to flies. It could be that the reason Art Spiegelman chose to draw Jewish people as mice is because of the harsh way in which they were depicted by Nazi propaganda films. Art would never suggest that his own people were comparable to rats or mice, but he drew them that way to depict a deadly reality that took place in those desolate times. The few happy moments this graphic novel has are far between each other. There is no happiness in a place like Nazi Europe. Just death, destruction, starvation, and hard labor. You know that Vladek Spiegelman survived this ordeal because there are frames of him telling his story to his son Art. You wouldn’t believe that this was a survivor’s tale otherwise. It was that torturous. If this doesn’t depress the hell out of you, you’re probably being poked in the belly like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Buy a copy for yourself and see why Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for his hard work.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“She sees him laying in the bed alone tonight. The only thing touching him is a crack of light. Pieces of her hair are wrapped around and ‘round his fingers. And he reaches for her side for any sign of her that lingers. And she says, ‘You are not alone laying in the light. Put out the fire in your head and lay with me tonight.’”

-Patty Griffin singing “Not Alone”-