Buckinghamshire New University The Holocaust and Nazi Germans Research Paper Spiegelman’s Maus I begins with a quote by Hitler: “The Jews are undoubtedly a | Course Hero

Buckinghamshire New University The Holocaust and Nazi Germans Research Paper Spiegelman’s Maus I begins with a quote by Hitler: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” Make a case for or against the animal imagery in Spiegelman’s Maus I-II reproducing the racial logic of the Nazi regime. To answer, consider the degree to which the text’s use of animals resembles or critiques the Nazi belief that particular populations have an essential, unchanging character, or can be ranked as higher or lower on the chain of being. On what basis does Spiegelman appear to choose the animals he does? How does his use of animal masks, and his depiction of “actual” animals—dogs, rats, flies, lice, and so on—fit in, and how do the different versions of animal representation play off one another? You are required to use a minimum of three peer-reviewed critical academic sources on the
authors/texts chosen for your final paper, so the best way to proceed is to choose an author and
topic, go to the library catalogue or databases such as JSTOR, ProjectMUSE, Academic Search
Premier, etc., and see how critics are engaging with the author. This will show you what general
consensus or debates are considered relevant, and if what approach your own argument might take.
In the limited amount of time and space we have, it is important that you be aware of available
critical material before committing yourself to a thesis for which no academic sources can be found.
Your argument must be original, but if it does not build on, refine, or engage with existing critical
work, you will be unable to use your academic sources in a meaningful fashion. You MUST have a
clear argumentative thesis, and not just answers to the various questions in the topic prompts. Give
your paper a real title! Topic Suggestions Maus: When you have selected your topic and formulated
your argumentative thesis, take note of all pages where you find relevant evidence. Plan to do close
readings of several significant or representative pages and panels (discussing both text and images)
in your essay. You may either include reproductions of the relevant panels or just reference them by
page and panel numbers. You are not required to include or discuss Part II, but all your critical
sources are likely to be considering the work as a whole, so reading the entire text would certainly
be an advantage in analyzing it. Here are some prompts (credit to Dr. J. Lovato, U. of Colorado):
1. Spiegelman’s Maus I begins with a quote by Hitler: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but
they are not human.” Make a case for or against the animal imagery in Spiegelman’s Maus I-II
reproducing the racial logic of the Nazi regime. To answer, consider the degree to which the text’s
use of animals resembles or critiques the Nazi belief that particular populations have an essential,
unchanging character, or can be ranked as higher or lower on the chain of being. On what basis does
Spiegelman appear to choose the animals he does? How does his use of animal masks, and his
depiction of “actual” animals—dogs, rats, flies, lice, and so on—fit in, and how do the different
versions of animal representation play off one another?
The Complete Maus
Study Notes
“But in some ways he didn’t
survive.”
– Art
Overview
In Maus, Vladek Spiegelman’s story of sur-
this challenging is the visual symbolism
viving the Holocaust is told in tandem with
that is most striking about Maus: The Na-
the story of his post-war relationship with
zis are cats and the Jews are mice. It
the author of the book, Artie. Although Art
would be easy because of this to reduce
Spiegelman emphasises the resourceful-
Maus to a cut and dried metaphor about
ness of Vladek to survive and his capacity
the evilness of Nazis and the innocence of
to overcome the dreadfulness of feeling
the Jews. While there is clearly a strong ele-
abandoned by God (“But here God didn’t
ment of this in the graphic novel, we need
come. We were all on our own. p. 189”),
to remember that writing this book for
Maus is just as much about surviving life
Spiegelman represents a struggle to create
after the Holocaust as it is about experienc-
meaning out of both the Holocaust and
ing the Holocaust itself. Art says to his
what happened to his father afterwards.
wife, Francoise towards the end to book,
Art says to Francoise at one point: “I can’t
“But in some ways he didn’t survive” (p.
even make any sense of out my relation-
250). Certainly, for Vladek, the Holocaust
ship with my father…How am I supposed
seems to have been an emotionally crip-
to make any sense out of Auschwitz?…of
pling experience, reducing him to what Art
the holocaust?” (p. 174).
says is a “caricature of the miserly old
jew” (p. 133) who is concerned more with
“things than people! (as Mala says). The
need to constantly be resourceful and pragmatic has apparently, for Vladek, overwhelmed other – less material – ap-
While seeing the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats is one to make “sense out
of…the Holocaust” – there isn’t really any
easy resolutions to the questions of why,
how and what in Maus. Yes, Vladek may
proaches to life.
have been emotionally deadened by the
But as readers we need to be careful
may be a reaction to guilt and grief, but he
about how we might seek to simply the
also clearly cares about his son. He also
message of Maus. One thing that makes
clearly loves Anja. And on this point, some
Holocaust and his interactions with his son
2
things from the novel remain deliberately
veiled. Why did Anja kill herself? Why was
Art being treated for mental illness just before her death? How can all of this be
Vladek’s fault?
What we can safely say about Maus is that
the images belie the complexity of the psychological pathology that was a result of
the Holocaust both for the survivors and
the generation that the survivors gave birth
to. What’s also true in Maus is that the
characters – at least Vladek and Art – are
burdened with feelings that they don’t always understand and are often in conflict
with each other. If there’s any message in
Maus it’s this: people are complex and
nothing is simple.
3
Graphic novel language
One of the things that’s important in writing about Maus, is to write about it as a
graphic novel. In otherwise, how does Art
Spiegelman use the elements of the
graphic novel to tell the story of Maus in a
way that’s distinct from the medium of the
novel or film?
On the next page is an illustration of some
of the basic terms used to describe di?erent elements of the graphic novel. Below is
a more detailed discussion about the effect with which Spiegelman uses some of
these elements.
The panel: Just as the paragraph and sentences within the paragraph are the basic
way of dividing up parts of the narrative in
a novel, so too is the panel (and the bubbles with the panel) the basic way of organising the story in a graphic novel. Spiegelman uses panels in a number of di?erent
designed to be read from left to right, top
ways throughout Maus. In the opposite col-
to bottom. This is a standard way of split-
umn is a picture of the typical way Spiegel-
ting panels on a page in order to develop
man employs panels through Maus. On
the narrative. However, not all panels are
this page we can see that all of the panels
boxed on this page – two of them are bor-
are the same, that most of the panels are
derless. When a panel is boxed within a
boxed with a black border and that they’re
border it conveys the sense that these
4
Maus as a graphic novel – some basic
vocabulary
Caption
A long shot
A text only panel
A close up
A panel
A gutter
A speech bubble
5
words, or actions or feelings are happening at this exact point and no other. When
there is no border a sense of space or freedom is created – that the words, actions or
feelings might link to more than just this
point in time. In the example page shown,
we could say that the panel where Vladek
says “we were happy only to be together”
has no border because it something he
feels is always true about he and Anja (and
certainly something he says later on: “We
were both very happy and live happy,
happy ever after” p. 296).
Spiegelman also changes the size of panels in order to emphasize the significance
or impact of the feelings, words or events
within the panel. He does this often at crisis points in the novel – such as in the example pictured in the next column which
shows the arrival of Vladek at Auschwitz.
Panels can also overlap with other panels
as it does in the example to the left. This
shows how the words, feelings or events in
that panel overlap, impact on or link to the
surrounding panels.
Gutters: The space in between panels known as the ‘gutter’ – might not initially
strike us as important. But it is. It’s in the
gutter space that we need to infer what’s
happened – to almost quite literally ‘read
between the lines’. In many cases, this
6
doesn’t require much e?ort, because
what’s depicted in one panel can come almost directly after what was in the previous panel (as occurs in the very first example shown at the start of this chapter).
However, sometimes there is a space between panels – either in terms of place or
time. In the example below, from the end
of Maus, there is a leap in time between
when Vladek goes to sleep and the final
panel of his tomb stone. We are left to wonder what happened in between. If we were
talking about film we would call this ‘editing’ – how scenes can be cut, or cut from
point to a next and create a particular effect. In Maus, Spiegelman can use his gut-
In the scene above, we don’t see Tosha administer the poison to the children – we’re
left to fill that blank in ourselves based on
the image of the small, innocent children
looking up.
ter editing to a very moving e?ect.
7
The characters
Vladek:
There are many qualities about Vladek
which are admirable. He is represented as
both courageous and resourceful in the
way he survives the Holocaust. While disguised as a Pole, for example, he rides in
the section of a tram reserved for Nazi o?cials – put himself as close as possible to
the Nazis in order to avoid detection. In
Auschwitz, when he comes under the patronage of a powerful Kapo, he remembers
his friend with the one shoe and the baggy
pants and ensures this friend gets clothes
that fit. On other occasions he gets fellow
prisoners things – such as lice free shirts
and spoons – that help them survive. During his time in Auschwitz he scrapes together rations for bribes to get Anja an easier job in the women’s concentration
camp. Clearly Art Spiegelman is proud of
this selfless, practical and heroic part of
his father.
But there are also many aspects of Art
Spiegelman’s presentation of his father
that leave us thinking about Vladek in a
less than positive light. As great as his love
for Anja might be, there was a calculating
side to it for Vladek. When Vladek is first
dating Anja he shows the pills Anja takes
to a friend to ascertain her health: “If she
was sick, then what did I need it [her] for?”
(p. 21). He can also be dictatorial in his relationship with her: “I told her Anja, if you
want me you have to go my way…” (p. 31).
The resourcefulness that helped him survive during the Holocaust, is no longer
such a positive quality outside of it. Both
Mala and Art himself repeatedly complain
about how “cheap” Vladek is and how he
values material things above people. Mala
comments acidically at one point that it’s
this attitude of Vladek’s that probably
drove Anja to her suicide. We don’t know
why Anja committed suicide (we’re told
several times that she left “no note”), but
what we do know is that Vladek’s version
of their life after the war – “We were both
very happy and live happy, happy ever after” (p. 296) – can’t possibly be true. So we
can probably add self deception to
Vladek’s roll call of failings.
Ulimately, as long as the list of complaints
about Vladek might be, Maus is an empa-
8
thetic story about him. As bitter as Art
about having had an easier life than they
Spiegelman might be about some of the
did” (p. 176). It’s instances like the one Art
attitudes Vladek has, it’s impossible to
Spiegelman begins Maus with that leave
judgmentally dismiss someone who has ex-
his character in the graphic novel feeling
perienced what Vladek has. Vladek’s final
“guilt” about a life that doesn’t involve
words in the story are addressed not to Art
starving and watching everyone around
– who he has spent the last few years tell-
you die.
ing his stories to his, but his other son who
died in the Holocaust – Richieu. The only
thing we can feel at this – as Art Spiegel-
Art sees his childhood as characterised
not only with guilt, but also with inferiority.
man must – is sorrow.
He feels that “No matter what I accom-
Art:
to surviving Auschwitz” (p. 204). Further,
Art Spiegelman is a character who has
been profoundly emotionally impacted by
the Holocaust – not because he lived
through it, but because his parents did.
This much is clear from the panels Spiegelman opens Maus with. They recount a typical childhood experience of falling over
and friends not being overly sensitive
about it. “I fell and my friends skated away
w-without me,” Art complains to his father.
Vladek’s response to his child’s sorrows is
this: “Friends? …If you lock them together
in a room with no food for a week…Then
you could see what it is, friends!” (p. 6).
plish, it doesn’t seem like much compared
he feels that Vladek made it clear as he
grew up that “I couldn’t do anything as
well as he could” (p. 204). Art’s pyschologist says that Vladek’s need to be “always
right” may be a reaction to feeling “guilty
about surviving” (p. 204). Characters need
to find a way to endure after the Holocaust. Being right is Vladek’s. So too does
Art need to find a way to survive Vladek,
which is why he chose to be an artist:
“One reason I became an artist was that
he thought it was impractical…it was an
area where I wouldn’t have to compete
with him” (p. 99).
Later on in the book Art says to Francoise
What is it that Maus, in the end, is about
that, “I know this is insane, but I somehow
for Spiegelman? He says to Vladek that he
wish I had been in Auschwitz with my par-
wants to tell his “story.” But later on, talk-
ents so I could really know what they lived
ing to his psychologist, he says “I tried to
through!…I guess it’s some kind of guilt
be fair and still show how angry I was” (p.
9
205). This second quote is getting closer
get to feel that he’s been “fair” in telling
to it. Maus isn’t just about Vladek’s story
their story.
but about how Spiegelman feels about
Vladek’s story. The visual medium of the
graphic novel becomes the perfect foundation for exploring the complex nature of
Speigelman’s feelings towards his father and to counter (because Vladek has destroyed Anja’s diaries) the fact that Vladek
is the only voice in the narrative of how he
and Anja survived the Holocaust. The medium of the graphic novel means that instead of just words to represent his feel-
Mala:
Sometime after Anja’s suicide Vladek remarries to Mala. Their relationship is a combative one. Vladek complains that she is
constantly badgering him to change his
will to make it more beneficial for her,
Mala’s riposte is that he is cheap and miserly. “He’s more attached to things than
people!” (p. 95), she says.
ings, Spiegelman can manipulate pictures.
Mala shows us that Vladek’s particular
So in the scene with the pscyhologist,
emotional pathology impacts more than
Spiegelman’s feelings of inferiority are visu-
just Art. Talking to Art about one of her ar-
ally reinforced through his illustration of
guments with Vladek about money, she
himself as a child. The surreal, exagger-
says, “I feel like I’m in prison” (p. 132). She
ated style of Prisoner On The Hell Planet,
feels as if Vladek manipulates her, every
captures in pictures what Spiegelman felt
time she argues with him, “he moans like
to be the emotional grotesqueness of the
he’s going to have another heart attack”
events surrounding Anja’s suicide – the
(p. 132). What’s interesting about this is
fact that it’s in a completely di?erent style
how Vladek’s dependency towards Mala
to the rest of the book highlighting how it
(the sicker he gets, the more he wants her
stands out on its own in Spiegelman’s per-
to look after him) – and the emotional ma-
sonal narrative.
nipulation he uses to get what he wants
Maus isn’t a book in which the character of
Art finally comes closer to his father or
gets closure about the suicide of his
mother. He doesn’t stop feeling guilty or inferior or blaming his father. But he does
(and the consequent feeling for Mala that
she is a “prisoner”), mirrors Art’s feeling of
being a prisoner because of his mother’s
emotional dependency-manipulation towards him. There’s a further link provided
between Mala and Anja when Mala says at
10
one point that she can see why Anja com-
threw tantrums or got in any kind of
mitted suicide.
trouble…It was an ideal kid, and I was a
Like Vladek, Mala is a survivor of the
camps, but however she has been impacted by that experience, it manifests itself in a di?erent way to Vladek’s response
(“All our friends went through the camps.
Nobody is like him!” p. 133 she says). Mala
is a character in the graphic novel that corroborates Art’s representation of his father
and provides a parallel for Art’s own experi-
pain in the ass. I couldn’t compete” (p.
175).
Anja:
It’s clear that Anja is an emotionally fragile
character that experiences depression. After giving birth to Richieu she has what appears to be post-notal depression and she
goes with Vladek to a sanitarium. Through-
ences with his mother.
out the war she remains a character who is
Francoise:
left alone. At least that is how her story is
Art needs characters in the novel that can
both help him explore how he feels about
his father and provide context for those
feelings. Art’s conversations with Mala offer points of comparison in how she feels
and how Art feels about Vladek. Francoise,
Art’s wife (a Frenchwoman who has converted to Judaism so is consequently represented as a mouse in the graphic novel),
operates chiefly as a character that Art can
reveal his most problematic (and what he
might feel are shameful) emotions to. He
says to her, for example: “When I was a
kid I used to think about which of my parents I’d let the Nazis take to the ovens if I
could only save one of them…” (p. 174)
and that “The photo [of Richieu] never
dependent on Vladek and terrified of being
presented in the eyes of Vladek. We know
that Anja kept diaries after the war – and
Art is desperate to read these diaries to
hear the story from her perspective. But
Vladek destroyed her diaries after her suicide, claiming “I had too many memories.
So I burned them” (p. 161). Art is incredibly
angry at this and calls Vladek a “murderer!” (p. 161). What he means by this is
unclear. Does he mean that Vladek drove
Anja to her suicide so was a murderer? Or
does he mean it more metaphorically – that
he destroyed her story when he burned
her diaries, so figuratively has murdered
her? It’s this second possible use of murder that is most likely to be true – because
Art uses ‘murder’ figuratively elsewhere.
The only reflection we get about Anja from
11
Art’s own perspective is the chapter Prisoner On The Hell Planet. In this section of
the graphic novel, where people are represented in caricatured and grotesque form,
Anja is represented as a “bitch” who “tightened the umbilical cord” around Art.
Through her suicide she “murdered” him,
because he is imprisoned with guilt: “the
guilt was overwhelming…They think it’s my
fault” (pgs. 104-105). This guilt and bitterness is compounded by the absence of a
suicide note – something that is commented on several times throughout the
graphic novel.
12
Themes
Resourcefulness and surviving:
Vladek Spiegelman is a resourceful man
whose endurance of the Holocaust stems
from his philosophy that, “you have to
struggle for life” (p. 124). Art Spiegelman
clearly shows us that he admires his father’s pragmatism to survive the war.
Vladek’s actions are presented as a mixture of caution, risk taking, endurance and
aptitude. But there’s also a calculating and
cold quality to Vladek…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment