So, the immediate first question of Maus is the usage of animal metaphors. Though the cat/mouse dynamic—which, conspicuously, was also used in the animated film of the same year, An American Tail—is fairly obvious, what about Polish gentile as swine? Also, is Spiegelman playing with the precedent of the animal cartoon within the comics medium? What effect does subverting this typical 'light-hearted talking animal' achieve?
Another interesting theme throughout the first assignment is the protective relationship of fathers to their sons, which seems to be rooted in the hopes of preventing the son's repetition of the father's past. Vladek describes his father's drastic efforts to prevent his sons from entering the army "...because when HE was young, he had then to go into the Russian Army" (47 in my copy, which i realize is a little off from the assignment). A similar pattern is later found in Vladek himself, starting with Richieu's reaction to the returning father's cold, military buttons—a loaded symbol in itself (68). Cut to the 'present' and Vladek is throwing away his second son's coat in exchange for something "warmer" (71).
What can we make of this, and how does it alter the reading of the father's advice in the preface of the comic?
I had to do a little bit of reading outside of the book to get a better understanding of why Spiegelman chose the animals he did, and it actually blew my mind a bit with just how clever and informed he was in choosing his animals. There was a reason behind everything, especially his choice for depicting the Jews as mice (the anti-semitic view that Jews are vermin, as well as having chosen them for the German word, "mauscheln," which means "to swindle or talk like a Jew.") Which makes the choice of cats representing the Germans pretty obvious, as they're generally seen to be predators and superior to mice.
ReplyDeleteAs for the pigs representing the Polish, the best I could find was the while the Polish were helping the Jews, there seems to be some controversy/upset on their portrayal as such. The Germans were apparently known to call the Poles "swine," which would make sense, just like how they called the Jews "vermin," but Spiegelman noted that he purposefully chose an animal outside of the cat/mouse food chain that was ambivalent towards both parties because that's really how he felt about the Poles' involvement. Super interesting.
And I thought the choice to depict such a serious story was actually really good. By using the "light-hearted talking animal" genre, he managed to take such a serious and painful story for many and tell it in a way that could be presented to and accessible for people of any age, and managed to not dumb it down or lessen the importance/impact of what happened during that time. Absolutely brilliant, and quite a feat.
Sources for the animal choices info...
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111005205335AAlRGaJ
http://www.shmoop.com/maus/what-animal-allegory-symbol.html
I also knew prior to reading Maus about and understood the message of Polish being swine and Jews being vermin.
ReplyDeleteHowever I think that it only re-enforced the message and the seriousness of the message for the reader. The beginning of the story appears very light hearted at first, just a son spending more time with his father in order to learn his story. Then as you read about their interactions together the reader is slowly shown this father/son complex relationship. For me, even though the discriminations and cruelty towards Jewish people was very serious, it felt like the story was slowing becoming more about the relationship between a father and a son. Vladex's father tried to protect him from forced military service, even though the way he went about it seemed cruel and unwanted by his own son's. Then later Vladex trying to do what is best for his own sons. First he excepted money from his father in-law in order to ensure a better and secure future for his first born son. Then again much later we see a more simple example of Vladex wanting to ensure his grown son is warm by throwing out his old coat and giving him another.
Vladex is trying to do for his children what his father tried to do for him but in his own way. Vladex's father wanted to protect his son's from the military (which leaves us with the thought that it was a very bad experience for him and he didn't want to lose his boys to war.)
Vladex wanted to protect his first born from having to be raised and live a life like his which was lower income. Vladex had to drop out of school to work so he didn't want that for his son. Then with his second son he didn't want him to be cold because Vladax understood the pains and horror of not being warm due to his experience during the war.
We are given as a reader more than just the theme of war and the killing of Jewish people and the use of animals to represent people. We are given the theme of fathers wanting to protect their sons from the horrors that they themselves knew existed in the world. Fathers did not want their sons to suffer in the same ways that they suffered.
Vladex also wanted his son to know and understand that he still loved his son's mother and missed her everyday by complaining about his second wife. He also possibly wanted to comfort his son by showing him that his previous wife had issues with depression since the birth the of the first born son, so her suicide was not a random act of depression, but she has had issues for a long time prior to her killing herself. Vladax wanted his son to understand "him" and not just what he went through as a soldier in the war that killed many Jewish people.
I think Spiegalman uses animal representations to represent and exaggerate some of the stereotypes which contributed to nationalist and racial tensions that exploded into WWII. None of the representations are particularly flattering to any nationality and his continual use of them reminds me of the prejudices that still exist.
ReplyDeleteThe reader is also able to relate to the animal figures perhaps easier than a human drawing. Animals are a large part of stories we are told as children, so empathy may come a little easier than if Spiegalman had used realistic drawings of his father and mother.
Using different animals definitely brings up the notion of races. In my copy of Maus I, the opening line is a quote from Adolf Hitler: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human." The cat and mouse metaphor is fairly obvious, but it is, nonetheless, effective in bringing the topic of inhumane treatment of people groups to an easily accessible level. We can clearly understand the way Nazi's thought of the Jews, and we can understand deeper insights of the political goings-on at that time without any trouble. We don't have to spend hour researching the political temperature of the time. We can immediately identify it in some capacity as we read the story of a survivor. And though it is very simplified, it is effective. Spiegelman was making a difficult narrative accessible through metaphor and art style.
ReplyDeleteI think that the use of mice to represent the Jews, the cats to represent the Germans demonstrates the just how brutal the entire ordeal was. I agree with Randomattser, Spiegelman did an amazing job at making the subject accessible to all ages without losing the seriousness of the issue. I feel that if you think about how cats kill mice in nature it makes the associations with these animals have even more impact.
ReplyDeleteI think that the father/son relationship could be interpreted as one of protection. In the beginning Artie's father gave him advice on what it means to be friends. I think we all have our own idea as to what a friend is, so I think that this advice fall right in line with Vladek's protective nature. I guess, he was trying to protect Art from feeling any more hurt by his "friends", so he wanted to protect his son from the elements as well.
I love the use of the animals in this novel because it adds the effect of the circle of life. Taking a form targeted mostly at children and using animals (easily could be mistaken to a child as characters like Tom, Jerry, and Porky Pig), then twisting it into a very real story about the tragedies of WWII speaks of both the potential of comics itself and the effect of "the hunt" of the Holocaust. Cats are the domestic animals, living in houses and being fed special canned food, while the mice are the unwanted rodents in the sewers; pigs can be a kind of combination of these, living on farms and being fed by humans, but also being seen as these gross animals that will not be loved and cuddled as a cat would be. This is all very Animal Farm.
ReplyDeleteThere is something special about the father-son relationship that I don't think anyone could understand unless part of one. The expectation for strength and the upholding of the family name give them an interesting dynamic. For example, they're close enough for the son to ask his father if Lucia was his "first..." and get an honest response; later, of course, the father nags his son and complains about his wife with no hard feelings. It is an odd form of friendship, fatherhood, and protection, but being a female, I could never understand it anyway.
So far we've all touched on the fact that Spiegelman used animals to signify different races and why he chose which animals to represent them, so I'd like to take the discussion a step further at this point and ask why he chose to use animals in the first place? Would the effect of Maus be the same if he had drawn human images as McCloud did? I think that by depicting animals instead of humans for his work, Spiegelman is touching on McCloud's idea that turning a picture into an iconic form makes it much more relatable to a larger audience. McCloud uses the iconic examples of Mickey Mouse and the smiley face, which are both stripped down versions of the human face, and in doing so, a character is created that everyone can relate to. I think this was a brilliant touch on Spiegelman's part. In doing so, he created a comic that can be enjoyed by all ages and races.
ReplyDeleteThe scenes between father and son were often hard for me to read because of their constant bickering. I think that Vladek loved Artie very much though and tried to protect him from enduring any pain. The reference to the friends is interesting because when the Nazis invaded Germany, no one knew who their friends were. Later in the book we see the tremendous struggle his family went through in determining who they could trust and who they couldn't. Artie's father was just pointing out to him that you may never actually know who your friends are until they are put to the ultimate test of loyalty.
First, I find it interesting that you brought up An American Tail (one of my favorite animated films) because Spiegelman felt that the movie plagiarized his work. He decided to publish Maus as two volumes in order to get it out before the movie came out. But the use of anthropomorphic animals is a critical component to both, thought it seems to work more effectively in Maus.
ReplyDeleteHaving read the first book before, I have had a lot of time to think (and discuss in a classroom) the depiction of the Polish as pigs. The depiction of other ethnicities is self-explanatory, but the pigs at first seem to defy explanation. However, I think the Spiegelman is using pigs to show that because of everything happening at the time, the Polish were willing to do nearly anything to avoid incurring the wrath of the Nazis. He shows them as a kind and jovial people, but as things get worse, it becomes every man for himself. Using a pig to depict this brings to mind farmers bringing pigs to slaughter. Although cats are not a natural enemy to pigs, they are often seen as being keen hunters, so it is plausible to suggest that the Polish pigs were fearful of being hunted down by the Nazi cats, especially if they were hiding Jews.
The use of anthropomorphic animals manifests in another clever and more subtle manner and that is through the use of literal masks. In several scenes, Vladek is shown roaming the streets with a pig mask on his head, trying to pass for Polish. This is one of the most clever plays on hiding one's appearance I have ever seen because it shows so clearly that he fears being found out. His body is that of a mouse, meaning that if someone looked close enough, they could easily discover his identity (he plays with this even more later on, but I won't spoil it).
As for the father-son relationship, I actually find myself thinking about this dynamic frequently as I grow older. It is natural for a parent to want to protect their child, to keep them safe. It is also, therefore, natural for a father to want make sure his son doesn't suffer the same way he did. We all make mistakes, but we can learn a great deal from them. As such, we want to use those lessons to teach our children as well. However, children are often rebellious towards their parents, believing that they know better. Vladek didn't particularly want to go in the military, and was forced to avoid it initially by his father, but he decided that the military was preferable to virtually starving to death. He felt more equipped to choose his own path than his father, which is ironic considering how he tried to control his own son's life later on. But this is the other interesting part of the father-son relationship, the fact that, no matter how we fight it, we all eventually become our parents in some way. I can't tell you the amount of times I've said something, only to realize I sounded exactly like my father. Vladek, in so many ways, became his father, and Art acted much like Vladek when he was a young man.
Jennifer D got really close to touching on my thoughts about the animal thing, but I’ll take it the rest of the way there. While the use of animals as an allegorical device is pretty obvious, I think there’s also a very practical reason for it: so you can tell who’s who in the book. Spiegelman’s style is…not very detailed to say the least. So by using the shorthand of the animals, it’s easy for the reader to tell: ‘Oh okay that person is Jewish, that person is a Nazi’ etc.
ReplyDeleteNow this brings up a really interesting question: by using this method is Spiegelman perpetuating stereotypes and trying to fit everyone into three different boxes? Is there a trade off happening here between accessibility and depth? I would argue that there is.
In regard to the idea that An American Tale stole this language from Spiegelman: I’m not buying it. Spiegelman didn’t invent this idea. Most directly, has anyone heard of a book called Animal Farm? More generally you can follow the trail of using animal allegory back pretty much as far as literature has existed (Trickster Stories, Aesop’s Fables, The Book of Genesis etc. etc.).
So while it’s tough to argue that Spiegelman’s animal allegory is used with purpose, I think it may be limiting in its reinforcing of stereotypes, and it’s certainly not a novel concept.
I see what’s being asked about the father-son relationship aspect, but for me it’s a little too-soon-to-tell, mostly because the character of Art hasn’t even been born yet in the story. Because of this, it’s difficult for me to start drawing parallels between the events happening in the framing device and the events happening in the flashback. I’ll let you know once we get a little bit further…
Going with Randomattster on the idea that using anthropomorphic animals makes the material more accessible, I feel like all we have to do is take a look at children's books. The majority of children's books and television are based on talking animals, such as the Bernstein Bears, anything by Eric Carle, all of Kevin Henkes books feature mice, and Franklin the Turtle. It's very common place that parents will teach their children colors, numbers, and animals early on. Thus, using animals is a very easy way to connect the story to all of us, as we already have been surrounded by animal characters throughout our lives. I also agree with Max Winters, in that it helps distinguish the characters, as the overarching story deals a lot with race, more so than what's going on with Vladek specifically.
ReplyDeleteThe father-son relationship so far appears to be one of an over-protective father, and a son who feels that he is too old to be protected. Constantly Vladek is giving his son advice, or trying to talk about things that Art asks to talk about another time. Vladek says he is trying to protect his will from Mala just for Art. On the same page Vladek says "But I haven't with whom else to talk!", showing us that Vladek feels like he must protect his son, because he has no one else.
The use of animals over human is obviously a strong one. Not only does it separate race without extra shading or small facial characteristics, but it also simmered down much of the graphic imagery within the comic, that normally causes people to put down books of this nature. Spiegelman was very smart within his choice, I don't think he could have such a success if he decided to use humans rather than animals. The story would become much to real and horrific with its imagery.
ReplyDeleteThe Father-son relationship is an interesting one, more for the fact its more of a grandson- grandpa relationship. Art and Vladek act much like how I would around a distant relative rather than my father. I enjoy how Spiegelman through his present time interactions, it allows for me to believe someone like him could really make it through such a terrible time.
I believe that Spiegalman is using the representations of animals to represent the stereotypical racism that ignited during World War II. During that time, there have been many types of propaganda that were used to persuade the public towards their views. That's a type of medium that people can use as a method of persuasion. And using a 'light-hearted talking animal' achieves this successful persuasion.
ReplyDeleteSince we were children, we have often read stories involving animals doing various things. The propagandists are using a sense of appeal from our childhood to persuade us better. A brilliant technique if not devious.
I was already familiar with Nazi propaganda depicting Jews as vermin (especially rats). Spiegelman takes this and turns it on it's head. We simultaneously see the Jews as both the vermin of Nazi propaganda and as the anthropomorphic mice of our childhood (think Mickey Mouse). By depicting the Nazi's as felines, Spiegelman instantly sets up a cat-and-mouse motif. As readers, we know who belongs to what faction. In a way, I think by using animal icons (as opposed to humans) goes along the lines of McCloud's argument that the less detailed a face the more we can relate and place ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist.
ReplyDeleteI find the Father-Son dynamic to contrast with the horrors of the past. This functions to break up the atrocities of the Holocaust and present a lighter, yet intrinsically complex side of Vladek. The horrors of World War II - which tore the globe apart - now have the effect of bringing father and son closer together. I think Vladek, who has lost so much in life, wants to do everything he can (rational or otherwise) to protect Art. In the flashbacks we see Vladek survive harrowing event after event. He loses nearly everything and yet we Spiegelman keeps bringing us back to the safety of the present centered on the father and son relationship.
Like most have already pointed out, the play on cat and mouse is obvious. Similar to what Traci said, I definitely feel the Animal Farm vibe due to the usage of animals. As well as the overt separation of what animals are what race. Allowing the reader to easily identify and follow who is who.
ReplyDeleteAs some were stating, thinking of Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry, as a way to open this serious issue to broad spectrum is relevant and definitely waters down the disturbing realities conveyed within Maus.
Yet I feel the natural animalistic features combined with Spiegelman's artistic style creates a easy to read feel for each race. The cats have this very fearful and antagonistic look. While the mice seem small and scared. The pigs give off an indifferent feel, similar to their neutral position within the plot.
Lastly, with the interaction between father and son felt and the caring/protective aspects of the relationship seemed quite cold. Both caring and trying to help raise their sons in a positive way. Yet with Vladek there was a more hardened feel or atmosphere in his father role. Directly related to his past during the war, an example being when he spoke of cleaning the stables and how important it was immediately followed by commenting on Artie dropping ashes on the floor and having it be like a stable (54).
As some others have mentioned, it is a nice change of pace. A peaceful tone to offset the harsh aura of the past. Allowing time to digest and internalize the dark subject matter preceding and following the gaps of the present conversation between Artie and Vladek.
Like Max said earlier, I thought Spiegelman made the charcters animals because it was easier to identify their ethnicity that way. When Vladek put on pig mask, it was easier to grasp that he is pretending to be a gentile Pole than if he were drawn as a human. They were all given human characteristics so I barely noticed the difference, and could empathize with the characters just as easily.
ReplyDeleteThe father-son relationship hasn't been something I've paid much attention to. Instead what stuck out to me is the difference between Vladek's character in the flashbacks and present. I guess it's because the flashbacks are so action based and being told by Vladek himself, but what we see of him he doesn't seem anything like the person he is in the present. I'll be interested to see how that plays out in the second volume.
The use of animals in the place of human beings in a historical account serves a dual purpose. The first, as others have already mentioned, is to provide a symbolic context for the relationship between the Jews/Nazis/Poles. The Jews are represented as being mice, while the Nazis are cats (the Polish people are represented as being pigs). Some have suggested that by presenting the Jews as vermin, Spiegelman is offering some sort of commentary on some popular stereotypes about the Jewish people. While that might certainly be true, I also feel that the metaphor is stretched a little further here. The idiom of "trapped like mice in a maze" is a very old one, and I feel like part of that idea is in play here. Not only in the literal context of being trapped, but also in terms of social confinement. Cats are extremely predatory, and likewise, pop culture has often presented them as being synonymous with chasing mice.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it must be noted that there is likely additional purpose to presenting this story in this manner. Maus is a story about trying to find a way to make sense of the senseless violence of the past. It's an exploratory story about a defining moment in human history. In that light, I think that Spiegelman uses the animal representations as a means to disarm the out-front tragedy of the Holocaust. That's not to say that he is trying to reduce the overall impact (obviously), but trying to allow access into this dark period of history through a new method. It's so easy to see the events of the Holocaust on a macro level. Anyone who has taken any high school history classes, or has access to the History Channel is likely vividly aware of the circumstances surrounding it. The images, oral accounts, grainy video. It's all horrifying (and rightly so). However, when looking at it from a macro level, it's often easy to forget the individual element in the greater historical context. By setting our main characters as non-human, cute mice, Spiegelman is allowing us to be distanced from the photographs that instantly spring to mind when this subject is broached. Some of that is taken off of the table, and instead of instantly forming a chain of synapse-jumps to our own assumptions, he enter the story on a character basis. We see the characters as their own entity within the constellation of the greater tragedy, and that makes the story more immediately emotional.
We see that in play with the father-son dynamic. To me, it feels like Spiegelman is trying to set up the idea of the importance of legacy, or at least what it means in a familial setting. Vladek doesn't want his children to repeat the sins of his own past, but rather wants them to live happier, more fulfilling lives. It is heart-wrenching to put this in the context of the overall story, as the looming historical tragedy of the Holocaust often ripped the very chance of legacy away from so many families.
Spiegelman's usage of animals to represent the different races in "Maus" is perhaps one of the most amazing techniques he uses in his legendary comic book. Not only does it help the reader to clearly see which characters belong to which race, but it provides an interesting allegory to the real life events of the holocaust. For example, the persecuted Jews and Poles being depicted as mice allows the reader to see the vulnerability and weakness of those persecuted by the Nazis, represented as cats to depict their predatory relationship with the Jews. This use of the light-hearted talking animal motif stirs up a level of vulnerability in the reader. Because modern society associates the mouse with innocence, vulnerability, and helplessness, the reader feels great distress and despair at seeing the innocent mice being devoured by the vicious cats.
ReplyDeleteI agree that "Maus" has an interesting play on the father/son dynamic, most likely to help the son avoid the sins of the father, so to speak. The sequence involving the coat-swapping between Art and his father is a perfect example of this. Yet perhaps another representation can be found in the grander scheme of things. The Nazi government of Germany committed the greatest crime a government can by systematically killing its own citizens. The relationship between government/governed can be seen as a father/son relationship. This makes Vladek Spiegelman's attempts to act lovingly towards his son carry through the symbol of a father who acts like a governor looking out only for what is best for his son in his own opinion. Ironically, Vladek is something of a tyrannical, authoritarian father as he takes the term over-protective to the extreme. This can be seen in Vladek's advice to Art in the preface because while Art is seeking consolation from his father, his father merely reminds him that true friends do not leave each other behind, not even in the face of extreme suffering. Vladek wants to show Art that there are harsh realities in life, but that while some friends may sometimes betray you, true friends and comrades stick with you until the end, even in the face of great suffering and brutal death.
I can relate to Art Spiegelman sometimes as my own grandfather is rather overprotective. Growing up in 1930s Peru, my papa was abandoned by his mother at a young age and was forced to raise his younger brother while his father worked tirelessly to support them, even when this meant that he rarely saw his children. This abandonment of my papa by his mother had a profound impact on my grandfather as he grew up a poor and lonely child who was forced to grow up too soon and with too few friends. Eventually, my papa had to leave everything behind to come to America, a strange and foreign nature, in order to work to support his wife and future children. Yet in doing so, my papa was, once again, alone. Combining this with the fact that my grandfather was a doctor, it can be easy to see why my papa is so overprotective of me: he is terrified of losing me, one of the few people he has with whom to talk. In highschool, I even took up a Spiegelman-inspired task of beginning to write my papa's biography and immigration story. In this light, I think it is obvious that Spiegelman is using this interesting father/son dynamic to show how Vladek Spiegelman was, perhaps above all things, a father first, and a holocaust survivor second, even though at times this was not clear. Vladek's struggles and suffering during the holocaust profoundly impacted him for the rest of his life, affecting every aspect of his life even down to his fatherhood, and it affects even Art Spiegelman, who must often see a psychiatrist as a means of helping himself handle the difficulties that spread through his father's life and into his own.
As I touch on in previous post, the usage of different animals for different races has symbolic meaning that reveals much of the dynamics races and cultures relations back then. This also allows the reader to easily distinguish whose part of what faction.
ReplyDeleteMaking the characters into animals also helps disarms the audience. As someone mentioned, most of us are familiar with the effects of WWII on a macro level and how devastating it was, but replacing the characters with animals somewhat helps the reader distance themselves from the big picture and helps understand the situation on a more personal level.
After getting to know the father’s story, it becomes much easier to understand his attitude in the preface of the story. At first we might think that the father is being unreasonable with his remarks that Art’s friends aren't really his friends, but after we see how Vladek was treated by his friends, his reasoning becomes clear.
By using animals as a mechanism to tell a story, Spiegelman invites criticism toward his work as underselling the tragedy of the Holocaust. Although, on second thought many storytellers throughout the ages have utilized animals to tell stories in the form of fables and allegories. I personally believe that Speigelman hits his mark as far as capturing many of the serious cultural and philosophical atrocities experienced by his family and others. By transforming the people in these stories into animals it removes some of the personal attachment readers feel toward these characters. Normally this would be a bad thing for writers to do, but in the case of "Maus" I believe the use of animals as a metaphor is effective. The thoughts and feelings evoked by writing about the Holocaust can have an undesirable effect on the readers willingness to continue the story. By using animals as metaphors, associations made by readers connected to their own experiences are downplayed. This isn't a story that drudges up old, personal family histories because it's happening to mice. Much of the human element is removed from this historical account, which is for better because the tragedy is so great. In some respects, I believe, Spiegelman is sugarcoating the harsh messages trying to be portrayed in "Maus"; not to disguise them, but to make them easier to swallow and more universal.
ReplyDeleteI do think that Spiegelman is playing into the precedent of the animal cartoon. Speigelman isn’t the first writer to use animals for a heavy handed topic. Animal Farm, though a different medium, comes to mind when considering animal figures used for political representation. Even stories that hold no connotation behind the animal characters aren’t always friendly like Watership Down for instance. The same can be said of the Fable series in which the animal character suffer from issues within the Fable society that are no less concerning than that of the human characters. The idea of animal characters being ‘light-hearted’ is something that children’s cartoons and Disney movies have created – although there are quite a few animal-centric Disney movies that are a bit dark in their own right. If we think back to folklore, adages, fairytales, and the like animals can be just as cruel or good-natured as humans. Give an animal human characteristics or set them in a situation similar to human life and our suspension of belief will go so far to allow us not only to ignore their nonhuman appearance but connect with them as easily as we would with a human character.
ReplyDeleteConsidering what Vladek goes through during the war it is no wonder that he would be considerably more protective of his children than a father who has not gone to war. One also has to consider that before marrying Anja and owning his own business Vladek was broke a majority of the time in his single life. Combine these and it is obvious that he would want so much more for his children especially after the war where his son has a better chance to prosper and have what he needs.