Maus is a Pulitzer winning
non-fictional work from the illustrator Art Spiegelman in the form of a graphic
novel – presenting us the survival story of his own father under the Nazi
regime and various concentration camps. The book goes across various periods –
the writer’s present, in the US in the 70s; Czechoslovakia and Poland before
the war; the survival of his father post war and eventual emigration to the
United States.
The book starts with the author
visiting his father, Vladek, a Jew from present day Czech Republic, and
discusses his idea of presenting his father’s survival story in the form of a
graphic novel. The account is dependent on his fathers recalling of the events
and one could only trust his father to be a reliable narrator. It starts with him
recalling how he met his wife Anja, the birth of their first child Richieu. He
has had a lot of personal tragedy, the death of his firstborn during the
holocaust, the trauma he had to face in the camps, the suicide of his wife much
later in their life (and the impact it had on Art, the author himself), and the
present relationship issues that he was having.
I liked how the author chose to
present the discussion between his father and him as is, including the various
arguments that they had during the course of the discussion (at one point with
the son calling his father a murderer but I would not divulge that). This was
an interesting choice rather than just present his father’s survival story in
the camps as a graphic novel, as we could understand a lot of their present day
struggles, years after the holocaust, including for the descendants of the
survivors (such as the author).
There were also several subtle
themes presented by the author – wherein all characters were presented as
animals – the Jews as mice, the Poles as pigs, the Germans as cats, the French
as frogs, etc. These reflect stereotypes and also the absurdity of classifying
a whole group of people as ‘the same’, considering none of the groups are a
monolith. The author brought this out as well, where there was an instance of an
ideological argument between a Russian Jew – who holds communist ideologies, hit
out at Vladek, for being a capitalist and never having ‘worked’ in his whole
life.
Much as this is a remarkable survival
story, one also needs to note that the story is narrated by Vladek, the
character who seems to have solutions to every problem and has a solution for
all of his wife’s problems as well. The book also brings out his evolution as a
character as in the present day, there is an argument between Vladek and his
daughter-in-law (Art’s wife) where Vladek makes a racist remark on a black
person (confronted on the basis that he is doing to the blacks exactly what the
Nazis did to him).
The struggles of Art was also
shown well, where he was in sessions with his psychiatrist, and also remarks
that his deceased brother is like that ‘perfect child’ and every instance, he
was competing with a photo, which proved to be very difficult for him.
The only downside, much as I
would not comment on life choices on an individual when it comes to a
biography, I would still say Vladek was not a particularly likeable person for
me, he was a racist, to me he came off as a 1930s version of a gold digger –
wherein he rejects the advances of a woman not over a lack of interest, but
over the fact that she came from a very poor family and could not afford his dowry
and for that matter, one of the virtues he stated of his wife Anja was that she
came from a very rich family.
Overall, I liked this book – it was
well presented, I particularly appreciated it being presented more in the form
of a memoir and that it was non-chronological. It presented a very serious event,
one of the greatest tragedies in human history as a comic, with its own
subtleties (when it came to presenting groups of people as animals). On that
note, I would award this book a rating of eight on ten.
Rating – 8/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
