Picture the Holocaust: His Father’s Story
Art Spiegelman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, shares the story of his father, Vladek
Spiegelman, in Maus I and Maus II. In its aftermath, the Holocaust has been retold using all
types of mediums, ranging from film to narrative. Art, however, narrates his father’s survivor
story using a graphic novel format in which various species of animals depict characters of
different ethnicities. One may think a comic book, a piece of literature that is geared towards
pleasure-reading featuring superheroes and villains, is an inappropriate way of describing a
tragedy like the Holocaust. However, Spiegelman’s visual approach to recounting a much told
story is necessary in encompassing the scope of the Holocaust, an event so tragic beyond words,
as well as the emotional aspect of the relationship between Art and Vladek, as both the stories of
father and son reveal themselves to be one and the same.
Spiegelman’s method of translating the Holocaust into a visual form may be viewed as a
light-hearted presentation of a grave event compared to memoirs of other Holocaust survivors,
such as Night by Eli Wiesel and The Diary of Anne Frank. Art expresses the lack of selfconfidence he has in accurately writing about the Holocaust, an event he did not have to suffer
through. “I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest
dreams. And trying to do it as a comic strip!” (Maus II 16) Art acknowledges the fact that the
magnitude of the Holocaust cannot be easily visualized and drawn onto paper and “so much has
to be left out or distorted.” (Maus II 16) During Art’s therapy session with his therapist, Pavel,
Pavel discusses with Art how stories of the Holocaust do not suffice since “the victims who
diedcan never tell THEIR side of the story, so maybe it’s better not to have any more stories.”
(Maus II 45) He means that only survivors get to tell their side of the story, which is only half of
the entirety. The other half of the stories belonging to victims who didn’t survive are omitted but
Art shows that there is another side belongs to non-survivors like him, who grew up with the
influence the Holocaust had on his life through his parents. This extra side of the story consists
of people who did not go through the Holocaust and what they can make sense out of the stories
told by survivors. Art includes in his therapy session a quote Samuel Beckett said, “every word is
like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.” He quotes Beckett to describe the irony of
how the Holocaust becomes more incomprehensible as survivors try explaining it. When Art
talks about how difficulty it is to visualizing the Holocaust so that he can continue drawing his
father’s story, Pavel gives a insufficient description. “What Auschwitz felt like? Hmmm...How
can I explain?...BOO!” (Maus II 46) This is an example of the “stain” Art referred to in Beckett’s
quote – stories of the Holocaust are stains that fall short of successfully portraying what living
through it felt like. Even Pavel, a Holocaust survivor, has trouble finding the words to describe
his experience so that he himself can understand and come to terms with it, let alone putting it
into words so that non-survivors like Art can fathom what it was like. Of the stories already
written about the Holocaust, the experiences of those survivors are watered down by nonsurvivors who are incapable of fully comprehending the event, much like the way Pavel sums up
his experience in Auschwitz in a simple “BOO!” After Art and Pavel pause for a moment to
reflect on Beckett’s quote that silence is better than a confusing onslaught of words, Art adds,
“On the other hand, [Beckett] SAID it.” (Maus II 45) Art points out that Beckett had to verbally
say that words are unnecessary as an analogy of why Art is writing Maus despite the fact that his
interpretation of an event he did not live through may not be an accurate portrayal.
Regardless, he attempts to tell his father’s story from his perspective, through the eyes of a nonsurvivor. Moreover, Art does this using a graphic medium, where pictures capture more than
words can.
Another aspect of the novel that may initially deem it as an unserious depiction of the
Holocaust is the author’s use of animals with human bodies as his characters. He draws the Jews
as mice, the Nazis as cats, Americans as dogs, the French as frogs, the Poles as pigs, and gypsies
as gypsy moths, representations that may be looked upon as childish cartoons. Nonetheless, these
animal representations contribute to a prevailing theme of the novel. Intolerance and racism were
two factors that fueled the Holocaust. By assigning different kinds of animals to people of
different ethnicities, Art asserts the impracticality of categorizing an individual under a certain
race. At the beginning of Maus II, Art expresses difficulty during the makings of Maus II in
drawing his wife, Francoise, who converted to Judaism after marrying Art but is of a French
descent. When Francoise recommends a bunny rabbit, Art rejects her suggestion, justifying that
such an animal is “too sweet and gentle. I mean the French in general. Let’s not forget the
centuries of anti-semitism...I mean, how about the Dreyfus affair? The Nazi collaborators!”
(Maus II 11) Art includes in his novel what seems to be a trivial obstacle regarding the
representation of his wife to show how nonsensical it is to classify people under one category. In
Francoise’s case, it is unreasonable to hold her accountable for the actions committed by the
French on the basis that she is French. Similarly in another scene after the war was over, Vladek
and his companion, Shivek, travel to Hannover to stay with Shivek’s brother who is married to a
gentile, a non-Jew. The children of this interracial couple are drawn to be in mice form to
represent their Jewish roots but are covered with cat stripes to represent their German ancestry.
Art incorporates this mixture of ethnicity in his illustrations to emphasize the irrationality of
confining an individual by defined lines of race and ethnicity because it neglects to represent his
or her own separate identity. By showing the reader the difficulty he faced in drawing Francoise
and the extra mile he took in representing the two ethnic groups the children belonged to, Art
shows that it is impossible to accurately represent people based solely on race.
Art’s use of animals in the portrayal of his characters also holds significance in the context
of his father’s Holocaust story. He chooses mice to represent the Jewish community, satirizing
Nazi propaganda of viewing the Jews as a vermin to be exterminated. When drawing the mice,
Art sticks to a simplistic sketch, leaving their faces a solid white color to represent their status as
innocent victims. The Nazis are drawn as cats, animals that are known to chase mice and toy
with them before killing them, akin to how the Nazis treated the Jews. When Vladek is released
from Auschwitz, Art uses dogs to portray the Americans who defeat the German army, playing
on the classic notion of mice being chased by cats being chased by dogs. This animal metaphor
gives a reader who may not have any prior knowledge of World War II a sense of the war
between the Allies and the Axis Powers that is simultaneously occurring beyond the barbed wire
fences of Auschwitz. This visual aspect contributes to the overall effect the novel has on the
reader that cannot be achieved as well with words.
The characters of the same ethnicity in the story are drawn to be identical. Aside from
wearing different attire so that the reader can distinguish between the characters, the characters
are all drawn the same. Throughout the entire novel, Artie always wears his classic white
buttoned up shirt with a black vest and Francoise wears a striped t-shirt with a scarf. However,
when Art’s parents and the other Jews were forced into the extermination camps, they were all
dressed in the same striped outfits, with the exception of females wearing long skirts instead of
pants, making it impossible to tell one from the other. These characters all look the same, yet
each individual has a different personality. Art draws the Holocaust prisoners identically to show
how the Nazis viewed the genocide of the Jews as a mass extermination of a group of
anonymous people. This element of Art’s drawings reinforces that it is unrealistic to classify
different individuals under one uniform group and this claim is communicated more effectively
to the reader through visual form.
Art includes significant details in his drawings and employs the use of animal masks to
address the problem of race being the attribute we use to define others. In a scene where Art,
Francoise, and Vladek are in a car, Francoise picks up an African-American hitchhiker, who is
drawn shaded black. Vladek ironically makes racist comments in Polish throughout the car ride,
keeping a careful eye on the hitchhiker in case he steals their groceries. Art shows the irony of
Vladek’s racism when Vladek himself was once a victim of racism by drawing his father shaded
black as well when they arrive back at his bungalow. By doing this, Art brings to light the
commonality we all share, that we are all internally the same color. On numerous occasions,
Art’s parents, Vladek and Anja, put on pig masks to pass off as Polish natives to avoid conflict
with the Nazis. In one drawing of his mother wearing a pig mask, her mouse tail is visible,
corresponding to the way the Nazis typecast Jews based on certain physical features. Use of
animal masks appears again in a different time setting. In the present, when Art is being
smothered by the garnering success of Maus I, the characters are drawn as actual humans with
faces covered by animal masks that correspond to their race. By drawing the people of the Art's
present this way, Art implies that race and ethnicity are unfortunately still principal factors we
use to define an individual. Much like the way the masks are man-made, race is a social
construct and, underneath those masks, we are fundamentally the same. Art debunks the false
notion that a person is defined by his or her race more effectively through illustrations compared
to a written argument. The reader is provided a visual aid that shows that the racial differences
seen in others are products of the mind, making the reader redefine what race really is.
By graphically retelling his father’s story, Art also opens a window for the reader to see the
emotional conflict he goes through while writing Maus. Survivor’s guilt is often mentioned
relating to Vladek, who survived the Holocaust, and to Art, who did not have to experience the
horror as his parents did. The guilt Vladek feels for surviving the Holocaust that took his family,
friends, and first-born son Richieu away, subconsciously rubs off on Art as both guilt of father
and son become intertwined. Thus, Vladek’s possession of his story slowly shifts to Art as he
digs deeper into his father’s past. Art acknowledges that his father’s story underwent many filters
because it was “not so much whether my father was telling the truth, but rather just what had he
actually lived through- what did he understand of what he experienced, what did he tell of what
he understood, what did I understand of what he told, and what do I tell?” (Witek 71) By
drawing his father’s story in comic book format, Art personalizes the tragedy, creating common
ground between him and Vladek. The survivor’s guilt Art feels is expressed in words. However,
the lingering effects of the past are apparent in his drawings. At the beginning of Chapter 2,
Time Flies, Art draws himself at his drawing desk. Flies surround him and the panels zoom out
to reveal Art sitting above a pile of bodies of the Jews who were killed, giving the reader a sense
that Art is also a survivor because he is the survivor of a Holocaust survivor. Art shows the
doubts he has in telling his father’s story as he walks over to Pavel’s house for another therapy
session. As he walks over, the dead bodies of the Jews from the Holocaust cover the sidewalk. In
his session with Pavel, they discuss Art’s difficulty in visualizing an event he never experienced
and Pavel gives him advice on how to draw the tin shop his father was sent to work at. After his
visit with Pavel, the sidewalk Art walks on are cleared of the dead bodies which represents how
his once clouded mind is now cleared of the mental obstacles that prevented him from continuing
his father’s story. Who owns Vladek’s story becomes questionable since it goes through the filter
of Art’s interpretation. By drawing the story, Art converts his father’s story into a medium Art is
familiar with, representing Vladek symbolically passing the torch, his story, to his son to carry.
The prevalent themes of the Holocaust, race, and the artist’s agonized relationship with his
father is presented more effectively in the medium of comics. The reader can see the various
animals he chose as the characters and the details he included which raise the question of
“Why?” similar to how a text poses an argument. However, it is more effective than a body of
text that directly states a point because the illustrations and the reasons behind them allow the
reader to arrive to the conclusion on his or her own. In the drawings, Art gives the reader a sense
of the ongoing trauma the Holocaust has on his state of mind and how the Holocaust guilt he
feels never ceases. It is debatable whether or not a comic book method is an appropriate method
for narrating such a serious event of history and if doing so captures the gravity that surrounds it.
However, with so many books already written on the subject, Art’s non-traditional method
leaves the reader with a new perspective of the Holocaust and how its effects continue to live on
in the survivors of the survivors, building on the idea that pictures do in fact speak volumes.
Works Cited
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: a Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon, 1986. Print. Witek, Joseph. Art
Spiegelman: Conversations. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2007. Print.