maus close read

On page 125 of Maus I, Vladek describes his and Anja's escape from the Srodula ghetto. At the bottom of the page is a panel of Vladek and Anja holding hands and looking out over the bleak scene ahead of them.

The path they walk on is shaped curiously like a swastika; this implies that though both have escaped the clutches of the Nazis this time and are free to go wherever they want, they remain continually under the threat of recapture. Their very lives, their paths to the future, are laced with the horrors of Nazi oppression.

In the distance looms the silhouette of a factory building; the smoke spewing from the chimney reminds viewers of the crematoriums of Aushcwitz. This serves as a silent warning to the forlorn pair that any decision of theirs will lead them to this terrible fate; their freedom is only short lived, and their struggle to survive will soon be reduced to mere wisps of smoke.

The majority of the landscape—the grass, hills, homes—is mercilessly striped. Vladek and Anja's shadows, too, are striped both ways, making a rough crisscross pattern which resembles prison bars. Although they try to outrun their own shadows, their imprisonments of fear and panic, they are surrounded with the jailbird stripes associated with inhumanity.

Earlier, on page 114, Vladek says to Art, "At that time it wasn't anymore families. It was everybody to take care for himself!" However, through the depiction of Vladek and Anja holding hands, Art is hinting at the strength and comfort his parents found in each other. Vladek and Anja exhibit true love and care for each other before, during, and after Auschwitz which is what unites them across bars and barracks and allows them to survive and ultimately produce their second son, Art. It is this son that lives on to revive their story, to not only air the suffering, but also to reveal the power of undying hope and unselfish love.

paternal links in maus

Art Spiegelman once remarked about Maus, "From the book, a reader might get the impression that the conversations depicted in the narrative were just one small part, a facet of my relationship with my father. In fact, however, they were my relationship with my father. I was doing them to have a relationship with my father. Outside of them, we were still continually at loggerheads."

Just as Art seeks to reconnect with his father, Vladek himself spends his life under the shade of various father figures: his wealthy father-in-law, his dreamed up grandfather, the rabbi who consoles him at the POW camp, and the Catholic priest at Auschwitz. These men fuel Vladek's will to survive; they praise his ingenuity and identify him as a recipient of God's choicest blessings.

Vladek, though, does not seem to make his son feel this way. In fact, in a conversation with Pavel (his Holocaust-survivor-psychotherapist), Art says he remembers "arguing with [Vladek]... and being told that I couldn't do anything as well as he could." The entire discussion revolves around the duality of his damaged relationship with his father: his guilt and anger at feeling inconsequential next to him yet also his reluctance to place his father's deepest core in the light for potential ridicule.  

In a similar vein, it's interesting to note that Art dedicates the second book to his daughter (and to Richieu, who is also a child). This gives us a glimpse into the inner workings behind Maus. While it is a means for reflecting upon and mending the relationship with his own father, it is also a catalyst for Art's ruminations on what kind of father he himself will be. As he writes the tale of his father, he wonders: what kind of story will he impart to his own children? 

a bit of dark humor