A comic book about the genocide of Jews? Sounds unusual, but why not? The important thing is to convey knowledge, and the method is secondary. Some people read books, some only watch movies, and some consume information exclusively through comics. And it’s long been foolish to think that comics are just for kids or the unintelligent. As the history of manga shows (see my review of Frederik L. Schodt’s “Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics”), sometimes comics can convey more knowledge than a specialized encyclopedia.
So the existence of such a comic didn’t surprise me at all. What did make me slightly wary, though, was the prestigious award it received. I have this odd quirk—I tend not to trust overly hyped or award-winning works. It seems to me that these awards often follow their own internal logic, which doesn’t always correlate with actual quality.
Maus by Art Spiegelman is “the only comic book to win a Pulitzer Prize,” as proudly stated on the cover. And it tells the story of a Polish Jew, Vladek Spiegelman, who struggled to survive after Nazi has occupied Poland but ultimately ended up in a concentration camp with his wife.
Vladek Spiegelman is not a fictional character; he is Art’s father. And the book is a real-life account of his experiences, told through his son’s perspective and presented in the form of a comic as a storytelling method.
Art Spiegelman chose an interesting visual approach to depict the story and racial distinctions. In his work, different races are represented by different animals. Germans are portrayed as cats, Poles as pigs, and Jews as mice (though it’s hard to say for sure—perhaps rats). This choice, of course, raises some questions, but as an artistic device, it is intriguing, as it allows the reader to instantly recognize who is who. When Jews attempt to disguise themselves as other races, they are depicted as wearing masks.
The book is structured as a combination of personal narrative and conversations with his father about the past and his life during the war. Both Art’s father and mother survived the concentration camp and later immigrated to America, where Art was born. He considers himself more of an American, a citizen of a free country. His mother eventually took her own life. His father, having endured the horrors of fascism and later the loss of his wife, developed a rather difficult personality over the years, making it challenging for others to get along with him.
But his son asks him to share his life story so he can turn it into a comic. And this is what the book captures—their conversations in the postwar years, the complex family dynamics, and, of course, the sheer horror of survival during World War II.
But despite several glowing reviews I read before picking up the book, I personally didn’t enjoy it that much. I respect the method and artistic choices, but I feel like this book is often misunderstood and misrepresented. Yes, on the surface, it seems to be about the Holocaust. But that’s just the top layer. Beneath it, it’s really about the author himself, his life, and, strangely enough, his personal struggles and inner demons.
Because under the guise of conversations with his father and retelling his story, Art constantly brings up his own story. There’s even a mini-comic inside about Art Spiegelman’s own psychological issues, his grief over his mother’s death, and his sense of isolation from the world. I can’t say for sure how much of this is based on real events and how much is artistic license, but this aspect of the book stands out even more than the actual history of Polish Jews.
Additionally, in the book, as Vladek Spiegelman “tells” his story to his son, he speaks in broken English, emphasizing his status as an immigrant who never fully mastered the language (unlike Art, who was born and raised in the U.S.). I read the comic in Russian, but at some points, I started doubting whether it was an official translation because Vladek’s lines sounded too much like “machine translation.” It just didn’t feel natural in Russian. So I checked the English version and realized that this was actually an attempt to preserve Vladek’s “incorrect” English. The translator put in a lot of effort to reflect this, and many readers even praise this choice. But for me, it made the story harder to follow—though I do appreciate the attempt.
Vladek’s story is honest and unembellished. He shows how people tried to survive by any means necessary and how those around them had vastly different attitudes toward the suffering of Jews—some hated them, some exploited them, and some risked their lives to help. But for me, as someone who has long been deeply interested in the topic of the Holocaust, the comic book format ultimately worked against the story. And the protagonist’s personal struggles only distracted from it.
That’s why I finished the book more out of a sense of duty, knowing that there are far more powerful works on the same subject (with or without prestigious awards). For an in-depth look at attitudes toward Jews in Germany, there’s Two Brothers by Ben Elton. For life inside a concentration camp, Spark of Life by Erich Maria Remarque.
But if you’re not a fan of reading books, I’d rather recommend watching two outstanding films on the same topic—both based on real events and memoirs originally published as books: The Pianist by Roman Polanski and Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg. Either of them is a better choice than the Maus comic.
My rating: 3/5
