Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

To speak of Spiegelman's depiction of the Shoah as 'simplistic' is like saying Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' is an easy read. This work is so stratified, offering a postmodern look at the holocaust and its ethical ramifications, that it is deserving of several reads. Honestly, if you read it just once, you won't catch the purpose of "Maus" - by portraying the characters as animals, the author distances himself enough to attempt an honest narrative. This is not for casual reading; if you take it as such, you will walk away inspired maybe, but lacking a true appreciation for the books.

When Spiegelman uses Hitler's metaphor of the jewery as 'vermin', he, in fact, is mocking the concept. At once, you are put in both the position of the racist nazi and sympathetic reader. When you hear the word 'holocaust' you relate it with atrocity, apathy, and ignorance - you don't actually envision the depravity and death it entailed. In Maus, Spiegelman proves his merit as a great artist by making us take a shockingly new look at what has sadly become so mundane in our culture. Ask yourself what the metaphor of animals to race really means, and then try to say Spiegelman over-simplifies.

Maus makes us take a hard look at our own prejudice, exposing the classification of humans into races for what it really is; a superficial front for our own agenda. I think it achieves what every writer on the Shoah has been aiming for over the past 50 years - to present the world with an honest look at human nature in hopes that nothing like the Shoah will ever happen again.

I was compelled to read this after finishing Art Spiegelman's astonishingly brilliant "Maus," a graphic novel retelling his father, Vladek's, experiences as a Jew in Poland during WWII. This sequel picks up right where the first left off, with Vladek's separation from wife, Anja, after arriving at Auschwitz. There Vladek must struggle to survive starvation and disease as well as the guards and the ovens, all while trying to get news of his wife from over in Auschwitz's second camp, Birkenau. His horrific time there is expertly rendered as Spiegelman manages to get across a complex range of emotions through his illustrations and words. Even after Auschwitz is abandoned and the Nazi soldiers go on the run, Vladek must still struggle to survive and make his way to safety. His journey home to his wife (from Auschwitz to an abandoned German landscape, through ruined cities and, finally, back to the now unrecognizable city he once called home) is utterly compelling, unforgettable stuff.

Equally compelling is the story of Vladek in later years that is mixed in with his history in both volumes of "Maus", after he has come to America with Anja, had another son (the first, Richieu, did not survive the war), lost Anja to suicide in 1968, remarried, developed a heart condition and a strained relationship with his surviving son, and begins telling his story to 'Artie', who is interested in adapting his father's tale into a comic book). In the WWII segments Spiegelman captures the horrors that took place during that tragic time, and in these father-son moments he explores how surviving an event like that leaves a mark on you forever, and can even pass on the burden of survivor's guilt to a new generation that wasn't even alive when the atrocities took place. Surprisingly, it is during these deeply personal moments that the "Maus" books really hit home the hardest. Spiegelman does a masterful job getting across the complex personalities of his characters and how the past has left a wide, seemingly impassable gulf between him and his father. Really, it is just a beautiful portrait of their relationship and I cannot recommend it enough. Spiegelman's delicate, earnest elegy to his father -- and to all survivors and victims of the Holocaust alike -- is a true triumph of literature and a heartbreaking look at one of history's greatest tragedies.

If literature is writing that changes us, then Maus I and II certainly qualify. Maus I brings us through the first act, leading us to the gates of Auschwitz before breaking for intermission. Here, now, is the terrifying second act, in which we enter those gates. Mr. Spiegelman continues his father's biography in the same high quality fashion, skillfully merging picture and text, often making his strongest statements in what he chooses not to say. Maus II is powerful, moving, final. With Maus I, it is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the Jewish experience under Hitler.

The second part of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus picks up where the first part left off. His father Vladek and mother Anja are captured and sent to Auschwitz. However, things aren't well at home. Mala, Vladek's second wife, exasparated at Vladek's tight-fisted controlling ways, leaves him. Artie and his wife Francoise rush over to help him out and during this time, Artie continues the interviews with his father and thence into Maus II.

The path of Artie understanding his father is smoother but at a cost. Following the success of Maus I, Spiegelman depicts a pile of dead Jewish bodies lying under the Artie's writing desk symbolizing how much the history his father has bled from that first volume has seeped into him. He is beginning to understand, but at the cost of emotionally and vicariously going through his father's experiences, for which he has sessions with Pavel, a Czech Jew psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.

Artie gets more perspective during these sessions with Pavel. He tells Pavel that as a child, he constantly argued with his father, who said that anything he did was nothing compared to surviving Auschwitz. Pavel refers to the psychological concept of transference: "Maybe your father needed to show that he was always right--that he could always SURVIVE-because he felt GUILTY about surviving. ... and he took his guilt on YOU, where it was safe... on the REAL survivor." The argument stands to reason. Vladek survived the death of so much family and friends, as well as the millions he never knew.

We learn more of how Vladek survived Auschwitz. He teaches English to the Polish kapo, who expecting the Germans to lose the war, wants to get in good graces with the Americans. Vladek is thus given better food, a better fitting uniform, and the tip to stand at the far left of the line of prisoners during the labour call. Improved health increased chances of survival and a better mental state.

Vladek has enough chutzpah in his tight-fisted but survivalist ways to exchange used groceries for new ones(!) While in the car waiting for him, Artie and Francoise discuss Vladek. Francoise says: "I'd rather kill myself than live through ... everything Vladek went through. It's a miracle he survived." Artie responds with "In some ways he didn't survive," which is key to the book's theme. Yet drastic saving is one way Vladek survived the war and camps. On the way back from the grocery store, we discover Vladek's racism towards blacks, an example of the victim becoming a victimizer.

Maus is a must-read for a personal instead of abstract, statistical look at the Holocaust. It also brings up post-war genocide. Pavel's contention that people haven't changed rings poignantly. Despite the vow of "never again," genocide has repeatedly happened "yet again": e.g. the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields in Cambodia, the massacre in Rwanda, and the ethnic bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps for racial harmony to become a human instinct, all people need to feel the same way, but the relativistic world of the twentieth and twenty-first century to makes that dream virtually impossible. Pavel's statement that a newer and bigger Holocaust is needed to change people grimly prophesizes World War III, meaning that unless we change, we will all die.

When I realized that the Pulitzer-prize winning book was a comic book, I nearly put it back on the shelf. Oh sure, I love comics, even "serious" ones like Asterix and Obelix.

But there seemed to be something sacrilegious about writing the story of Holocaust survivors in this genre. Like walking on a grave. Or touching a Torah scroll with bare hands.

So I read it once, and again. An onion, this book is an onion. You peel away one layer only to discover another, and another, and you try in vain to remember what it is that keeps you from crying when you peel an onion.

There is immense pain buried here, agony. The simplicity of Spiegelman's text reminds me a little of Isaac Babel, who wrote of the horrors of the Russian revolution in just as understated a tone. No exaggeration, no padding. After all, how can you pad such awful facts? How can you exaggerate evil?

MAUS is an adult book. Yet bravehearted parents could likely use it as a read-aloud with older children, if they are willing to tackle honest questions and not duck reality. It could be a family experience to remember. If the adults are well equipped with raw courage.

After all, Art Spiegelman was.