Jan: 5 Maus Insight

Jan C. Navarro

Prof. Cynthia Pittmann

Engl 3104-134

24 May 2018

Five Insights on MAUS by Art Spiegelman

These are my five insights on the graphic novel, Maus, by Art Spiegelman.

1.      The title – The title, as well as subtitles, of this graphic novel, have a symbolic meaning attached to them. The main title, Maus, is German for the word mouse or mice. This meaning goes on par with both the symbolism of the Jews being drawn as mice and that during this time, the Jews across Europe were, “trapped as mice”, from the Germans. The other two subtitles, these being, “A survivor’s tale” and “My father bleeds history”, go more into the story of Vladek Spiegelman, the character who the graphic novel focus on, after all it’s his tale that Vladek is telling his son, Art, and his father “bleeds history” since he lived through that time and survived.

2.      The use of anthropomorphic animals – Throughout the events that transpire across the comic not one human is shown, rather every single character has the head of an animal, this head usually being linked to the nationality of said character. The most notable one is the one of the cat, which was used to indicate the Germans, and the one of the mouse, which was used to indicate the Jews. This imagery helps spread the message on the relationship between a German officer and a Jewish prisoner, this being how the Germans saw the Jews as something that had to be eliminated, or even a pest, since cats usually hunt mice down, not just for “sport” but for their own amusement.

3.      The dialogue of Vladek Spiegelman – Throughout the visual novel whenever Vladek talks he usually speaks in a broken English, even though he’s lived a huge chunk of his life in the US, this is done to show that Vladek is an immigrant and not from America.

4.      The use of no color – By there being a lack of color, there’s a lack of vision. Everything just being a shade, that being either black or white. This also helps set the tone of the visual comic that it’s something quite series. You can also say that it’s based in the past and all pictures were black and white back then.

5.      Anja’s Diaries – The diaries are a very important item in the visual novel since it represents the history and the story of Anja, Art’s mother, inside the concentration camps. Around the end of visual novel Vladek burns the journals all of Anja’s journals, making Art angry and as a result Art calls his dad a murderer. The reason for this statement is that by Vladek destroying these diaries his “murdering her history” as well as the history of both their people and the suffering that they went through.