Maus

I'm working on this one still. It's been a very hectic week. Will update when done. I know I'm about a full week behind in entries, but I've been trying to find the materials I need left and right. Hopefully I'll have Maus all read up later tonight.

So far I've read well into the first half. It's an engaging story, with the humanity that Spiegelman sought to include in contrast to the inhumanities inflicted later in the book. The drawing style is unique and bold, which is best to capture both the caricature of each sort of character and the drama of any given situation. It was intriguing that the artist depicts different races, nationalities, or religious groups, though so far I've only seen Jewish mice, Nazi cats, and Polish pigs. At first I was confused by the message this must have been sending, because the story itself is about anti-Semitism and I thought that further distinguishing the differences between people by making them several different species of animals might have sent mixed messages. But I did notice that among the animals, they looked alike to those of the same 'species'. The only way I could really tell who was who happened to be by what they were wearing. I guess that might mean that even though we're all different, we're still alike to some extent, but I decided not to get too caught up in that. It wasn't the most important message behind the interview.

It is all done in the form of an interview, or rather several interviews that take place at different times. The book is actually an autobiography composed of the author's interviews with his father, and a story about his father's struggles before and during World War II. The way the story reads constantly reminds you that past events are being re-told through the father, either with comments in the square boxes describing the situation or interruptions during the interview that send the reader back to reality for a moment to deal with the human being that had to go through such traumas. The father, named Vladek, shows off his quirks in these short intermissions, and Art deals with them accordingly. I didn't find these sequences to be insignificant at all, because it serves as a reminder that these are people like us. It makes Vladek's story all the more intense because you can imagine these things happening to a real person and not just a mouse. But having all the characters look like animals instead of people does evoke the question of symbolism, and why the Jews were depicted as mice and the Nazi's as cats. I mean, we can all assume it has to do with how cats and mice don't generally get along in the animal kingdom, but then where do the Poles fit in as pigs? But it's clear that the subject of prejudice isn't exclusive to the Nazis. Even Vladek was a little racist himself.

You can still feel sympathetic however because of how they act, just as we're able to watch movies where toys or robots are the main characters and do the same. As long as we're reminded of their human quality, we can relate to them. Just like McCloud mentioned in his book Understanding Comics, once we put a face to something, we can relate to it no matter how far removed from being human it truly is. And knowing that this is a true story, or rather an interview with a real man re-telling the events of his past, makes the experience even stronger. I'm not saying that stories about something fictional can't be as intense; some of them are just intense enough that people who don't know it's fictional might think it actually happened. Other times, it's intense enough to immerse you into into an obviously fictional world where you are able to suspend your disbelief long enough to be a part of it. But when it comes to an autobiography, there's a very genuine quality to it that fiction lacks. Even so, we need to take into account that this is a story being told about a story, even if the recollection is as real as you or me to Vladek. People tend to remember things a little differently from how they happened. I'm not trying to question the truth of this content. I'm just trying to say that whether it's true to the letter or not doesn't have to dictate how powerful a story is. This story is powerful however. It has just the right amount of every emotion to provide an excellent experience for the reader.