The Complete Maus//Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Fallout for a Survivor of the Shoah
Critical and Creative Exploration of Art Spiegelman’s, The Complete Maus//Maus: A Survivor’s Tale Vol. I-II
The Complete Maus// Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (Vol. I and II) is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman that chronicles his father’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor. The historic storyline runs both behind and parallel to a contemporary narrative, which features the relationship between Vladek, Spiegelman’s father, and himself. The Holocaust is an historical event of human depravity and suffering but it was also a critical moment for the human spirit. Everything was literally stripped from the inmates at the camps; only their humanity remained. As a subject, the Holocaust continues to inspire both literary works and art works. It is important to remember the past, but it is equally important to recognize the lessons taught to us, vicariously, through the victims, in contemporary times. Viktor Frankl referred to the concentration camps as a “living laboratory” and “testing ground.” Many survivors, like Frankl, endured and transcended their surroundings. In Maus: a survivors tale, Vladek Spiegelman endured only to become a permanent psychological prisoner of the death camp experience. The features in the novel that will be discussed include character design and convention as well as identity, relationship, survival, and loss.
One important feature of the novel is the way in which Spiegelman renders his characters according to ethnicity but also according to religious affliliation. Goebels, who was the minister of propaganda for the Nazis, often referred to the Jews as vermin, which may have influenced Spiegelman’s design decision in the novel. Spiegelman uses the convention of depicting the Jews as mice, which are often referred to as vermin. It follows, then, that the Nazis would be cats, which are natural predators of mice. Poles are depicted as swine, the French as frogs and Black people as dogs. On the surface this convention would normally be whimsical and childish, but the juxtaposition of the sections of brutal narrative against the anthropomorphic animals heightens the reader’s sense of horror. At the beginning of Volume I, there is a quotation from Adolf Hitler: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” Spiegelman’s design is, in part, his response to this quotation, and to the denunciation of Mickey Mouse. By giving the animals human-like qualities, he is making a link to the instinctual basic needs of all animals, including human ones. It is the same basic need that forces Vladek to play out his camp experience later on in life. Spiegelman uses a system of classification for his characters but there are no stereotypes. Some, like the German guard who greets Vladek with “Guten morgan!” is regarded as having “even a little heart.” Spiegelman also uses animal ‘masks’ as a means of representing the idea of disguise. He depicts Vladek using a pig mask in order to conceal his Jewish identity. We are told that Anja cannot easily disguise her Jewishness, and in this case Spiegelman draws her with a tail. Later in the narrative, Vladek offers racist comments when Anja picks up a hitchhiker, who is depicted as a Black dog. This incident demonstrates that Vladek has not been able to reflect on or learn from the Holocaust experience when he was the target of racism.
Vladek’s identity as a Jew is subverted by his personality as a businessman. During his incarceration in the camps, he comes to rely on his practical intelligence as a means of survival. At one point in the novel, Art, in exasperation, says to Mala, his second wife, “In some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew.” Miserliness is his heuristic. There are indications that Vladek may not have always placed so much emphasis on his own abilities alone. He has a religious background. When he returns to his parents’ home, his father is depicted in the novel as wearing a yarmulke. Vladek notes that his father is not wearing a beard: “Your beard! What happened? You shaved it off? At the beginning of the novel, when he is a prisoner of war he tells his son that “everyday we prayed. I was very religious and it wasn’t else to do.” Until the end of the narrative there is no evidence of a religious identity when Vladek tells Spiegelman “It was crying and praying.” His praying seems to be more of fetish than a sincere desire to relate to God or ask for deliverance. Vladek’s own success at navigating the inhuman system in which he finds himself, helps to preserve and reinforce his hope. It gives him the illusion that he is in control. Vladek likes order and admires the Germans for that. He tells his son that “This the Germans did very good…Always they did everything systematic.” Unlike Job, there is no spiritual transformation for Vladek. He endures suffering but this never seems to break him and he never gives up control. He continues to negotiate even as he is being carried to the trains for deliverance. Vladek is a victim who somehow, through the world he constructs around himself, never completely accepts his plight. He builds a “hedge” around himself that is never really challenged, only reinforced by his own natural abilities and luck. The trauma he experiences fortifies this barrier, making Vladek distrustful of others, including those who are closest to him.
It is necessary to address the identity of Art in this discussion, as well. Art Spiegelman, whose lens we rely on for this story, is a “‘memorial candle’ to those who did not survive.” As a child of survivors of the Holocaust, he was expected to live for those who were deprived of education and whose lives were cut short in the Nazi death camps. He does not meet those expectations. Spiegelman sometimes depicts himself as a child, even as he anticipates fatherhood. It is only through the interaction with his psychiatrist that he graphically grows into an adult within three separate frames. Spiegelman is struggling with his own sense of failure, of not living up to his parents’ expectations. He is confronted with the photograph of his dead brother, Richieu, of whom his parents never speak. He admits that the photograph “was a kind of reproach.” As a ‘memorial candle,’ Spiegelman appears to have rebelled against the expectations placed upon him by becoming an artist. It is an area that he does not need to compete with his father.16 On the surface, Spiegelman seems to be so different from his father, but one cannot help but wonder about the purity of his motives for interviewing Vladek. Similar to Vladek, Speigelman is an opportunist. His motives may be as much for psychological reasons as monetary, but they are still about self-interest. He engages with his father only insomuch as it benefits him directly. Two years have lapsed before the interviews begin. Spiegelman is not above lying to his father regarding material that will be included in the graphic novel. Later, when Mala abandons Vladek, Spiegelman visits reluctantly, motivated by his need to learn more about the Auschwitz experience. This is not to suggest that he is a bad person, anymore than his father is. They are dealing with trauma in the best way they know how.
Vladek is introduced as someone who puts his own needs first. Spiegelman begins his graphic novel with a section devoted to Vladek’s love relationships. Lucia Greenberg, who is involved for four years with Vladek, satisfies his emotional and sexual needs; however he remains uncommitted: “her family was nice, but had no money, even for a dowry.” Anja Zylberberg, on the other hand, is educated and comes from a wealthy family. This satisfies Vladek’s need for social status and financial security. Spiegelman includes this material because it sets a tone for the way his father survives the Holocaust and thereafter, continues to live his life. In contrast to Viktor Frankl, Vladek dispassionately watches as Anja’s parents are taken by the Nazis, and reflects that his father-in-law “was a millionaire, but even this didn’t save his life.”While Frankl could have avoided the camps, he chose to remain with his aging parents to fulfil his duty of honouring his father and mother. This is not to suggest that Vladek is unfeeling. There are moments in this narrative when he shows compassion for others. The most striking example is his concern for Mandelbaum. He risks a business relationship with the Kapo by making a request for Mandelbaum, for an “extra pair of shoe, a belt and a spoon.” Mandelbaum recognizes that Vladek is God’s instrument in this situation. Juxtaposed to this story, Vladek says that “Newcomers were afraid of me. I looked like a big shot and the Kapo kept me close.” Vladek shows concern for Mandelbaum but he is also motivated by his own sense of power within the concentration camp. Vladek has the power to bestow gifts on Mandelbaum. It is important to maintain this power, since Vladek does not trust anyone. His relationship with his wife is one of power and control. Even before they are married, he thinks nothing of invading her privacy by going to her closet and recording the types of pills she is taking. In the camp, he counsels Anja, “Don’t worry about your friends. Believe me they don’t worry about you.” Anja’s friends prove Vladek wrong; they do worry about her and protect her when her life is at stake. Their concern for her is inconsistent with the way Vladek views his own relationships. This does not change Vladek’s own moral outlook as he is depicted in the contemporary timeline with Spiegelman. Throughout the narrative, one never gets a sense of suffering from Vladek. The camp experience is a challenge to his intellect and business acumen. He comes out of this experience of extreme privation with an over inflated confidence in his own abilities and a reinforced belief that he is in control.
Vladek Spiegelman believed that his survival was based on his ability to use his knowledge and skills to satisfy the need for food and personal security. When he entered the camp “the necessary protective shell,” that Viktor Frankl writes about, was already being formed. There is no evidence in this graphic novel that Vladek wrestles with an understanding of God in the way that Elie Wiesel, who was an observant Jew, does when he writes in Night, “Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent.” Moments of transcendence are not possible for Vladek as his religious beliefs seem rooted in magical thinking and superstition. In Maus: a survivor’s tale, there is no evidence of spiritual depth. When Vladek first arrives at the camp, a Polish Catholic priest comforts him by telling him that the number he has been tattooed with is 18 or “‘Chai,” the Hebrew number of Life.” This encounter gives him reason to believe that he will live. His dreams just happen to come true, so he comes to believe in them, as well. Frankl writes about a block warden who confided to him a dream that the war would be over by March 30th and as this did not come to pass, he was dead from typhus by March 31st Vladek gave external control to signs and dreams but this was never a guarantee of survival. It gave him hope but precluded any possibility of transcendence.
The loss of Anja looms large over this narrative. She is the one who survives to eventually take her own life. Frankl writes that “the thought of suicide was entertained by nearly everyone.” This is also true of Anja when she writes to Vladek “Each day I think to run into the electric wires and finish everything.” One gets a sense that Anja’s life was a difficult one after the concentration camp experience. Primarily, there is the loss of her first son, Richieu during the war. Spiegelman tells Mala that when he needed school supplies “his mother would have to plead and argue for weeks before he’d cough up any dough.” Vladek was paralyzed by the trauma of the camps. This behaviour became normative for him and “the threat of annihilation that defined the traumatic experience” continued to pursue him long after the danger was past. Vladek had acompulsive need that went beyond thrift and modest living. It is shocking, therefore, when we learn that he has burned Anja’s notebooks and has thrown away his son’s coat. The burning of Anja’s books is not depicted in the novel, but the incident with the coat occurs during Spiegelman’s first interview with his father. The burning of Anja’s books is reminiscent of the camp experience, where the Jews were gassed and then burned in the crematorium. In fact when Spiegelman learns what his father has done, he calls him a “murderer.” The incident with the coat is similar to the story that Vladek relates about receiving a new uniform with leather shoes. Incredibly, he is a prisoner in a concentration camp and what he remembers is looking “like a million!”Vladek is compelled to gain control and create external order to compensate for loss and for an existential feeling of emptiness. It is the only way that the universe makes sense to him.
It is fitting that Art Spiegelman’s design convention reflects the type of activity his father engaged in. For Vladek, it really was a cat and mouse game. He is depicted in the graphic novel as very human and therefore, very flawed. Victims of the Holocaust, like Vladek, deserved life, not because of moral superiority but because of their basic humanity. This terrible experience was Vladek’s primer for life and reflected an attempt to master, however unsuccessfully, a traumatic and horrifying event.
Resources
Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959.
Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus//Maus: a survivor’s tale (Vol. I-II). New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.
Stoeber, Michael. “Spirituality and Suffering: The Book of Job.” Lecture. Regis College, Toronto, January 30, 2019.
The Holocaust Chronicle. Editor: David Aretha. Illinois: Legacy Publishing, 2009.
Wiesel, Elie. Night, trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.
Zaphir-Chasman, Edit. “Art Therapy from a Jewish Perspective” in Mimi Farelly-Hansen, Spirituality and Art Therapy. Philidelphia: Jessica Kingley Publishers, 2001.