Maus: The Accessibility of Trauma

Maus by Art Spiegelman has been one of the major starting points for people to begin looking at graphic novels as literature and it is largely because of its subject matter. The Holocaust is serious subject and for so long, comics and graphic novels have been considered "low-art," a medium not to be taken seriously. So why the combination? What purpose, if any, does it serve to recount such a horrific historical event in simply drawn pictures of mice, cats, and pigs?

The fact that Maus is in comic book form has caused confusion in that many do not how to categorize it. But why categorize it at all? As Marianne Hirsch says in a 2005 interview with Indy Magazine, "I think it's an enormous advantage to have it be not solidly in a category because it's open to readers and writers from a number of different disciplines." Further in the interview Hirsch recounts a moment when a professor of history "felt that this was a very irresponsible way" to present history since it made it "too easily accessible to the students." Funny, but I think that's the point of the thing...to make it accessible. In Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech the author of Night says, "...if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices." So the book's accessibility is fundamental in not forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust. Is there a chance that like the crime and violence we see everyday on television we will become desensitized to events such as the Holocaust? Is the medium of the graphic novel responsible for that?

I feel that Maus has done its best work in paving the way for other authors to tell their stories in this medium. Look at Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Raymond Briggs' Ethel and Ernest. Both books have varying degrees of historical trauma but they both offer readers an unintimidating historical perspective.

In addition to the outright narration, there are other ways of telling the story beyond just text. The pictures tell a story in their own right and I think that is what is so great about Maus. You have these text bubbles and narration that is telling you the story of Vladek Spiegelman in Nazi occupied Poland, but you also have this understory expressed in moments like page 125 of book one. In this particular panel we see the Jews trying to leave the town but there were many paths to choose from. Art Spiegelman drew the paths in such a way that they appear to be a swastika. It is like saying that all roads lead to death. In another panel on page 136 of book one the Jews (represented by mice) were wearing Polish masks (represented by pigs). Yet even with the disguise Anja's tail was sticking out of her coat. It was as Vladek said, "It was nowhere we had to hide." (125) So no matter where they went, or what they tried to do to disguise themselves, Anja and Vladek knew that they would be found out sooner or later.

To wrap it up, I think ultimately the form of the graphic novel offers an accessible avenue to an otherwise difficult story to tell. I do not believe that the form does anything to make light of the subject, it merely brings it to us in a way that we can easily recognize and understand...more palatable perhaps.

Next up is Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602 in which we find an American Indian who is also Captain America. What can of worms might that open up for you?