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Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust
The first collection of critical essays on Maus, the searing account of one Holocaust survivor's experiences rendered in comic book form.
In 1992, Art Spiegelmans two-volume illustrated work Maus: A Survivor’s Tale was awarded a special-category Pulitzer Prize. In a comic book form, Spiegelman tells the gripping, heart-rending story of his father's experiences in the Holocaust. The book renders in stark clarity the trials Spiegelman's father endured as a Jewish refugee in the ghettos and concentration camps of Poland during World War II, his American life following his immigration to New York, and the author's own troubled sense of self as he grapples with his father's history. Mixing autobiography, biography, and oral history in the comic form, Maus has been hailed as a daring work of postmodern narration and as a vivid example of the power of the graphic narrative.
Now, for the first time in one collection, prominent scholars in a variety of fields take on Spiegelman's text and offer it the critical and artistic scrutiny it deserves. They explore many aspects of the work, including Spiegelman’s use of animal characters, the influence of other "comix" artists, the role of the mother and its relation to gender issues, the use of repeating images such as smoke and blood, Maus's position among Holocaust testimonials, its appropriation of cinematic technique, its use of language and styles of dialect, and the implications of the work’s critical and commercial success.
Informed readers in many areas of study, from popular culture and graphic arts to psychoanalysis and oral history, will value this first substantial collection of criticism on a revered work of literature.
In 1992, Art Spiegelmans two-volume illustrated work Maus: A Survivor’s Tale was awarded a special-category Pulitzer Prize. In a comic book form, Spiegelman tells the gripping, heart-rending story of his father's experiences in the Holocaust. The book renders in stark clarity the trials Spiegelman's father endured as a Jewish refugee in the ghettos and concentration camps of Poland during World War II, his American life following his immigration to New York, and the author's own troubled sense of self as he grapples with his father's history. Mixing autobiography, biography, and oral history in the comic form, Maus has been hailed as a daring work of postmodern narration and as a vivid example of the power of the graphic narrative.
Now, for the first time in one collection, prominent scholars in a variety of fields take on Spiegelman's text and offer it the critical and artistic scrutiny it deserves. They explore many aspects of the work, including Spiegelman’s use of animal characters, the influence of other "comix" artists, the role of the mother and its relation to gender issues, the use of repeating images such as smoke and blood, Maus's position among Holocaust testimonials, its appropriation of cinematic technique, its use of language and styles of dialect, and the implications of the work’s critical and commercial success.
Informed readers in many areas of study, from popular culture and graphic arts to psychoanalysis and oral history, will value this first substantial collection of criticism on a revered work of literature.
- GenresLiterary Criticism
204 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2003
29 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 19, 2016
Όταν ένα Graphic Novel γίνεται αφορμή για τέτοιες μελέτες!Επαναπροσδιορισμός αρκετών πραγμάτων,τόσο θεωρητικών όσω και πρακτικών!
May 9, 2023
Here’s a neat little collection of scholarship on the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Maus. The work itself suggests many avenues of thought on its own, so most of the essays included don’t break much new ground, but they do heighten and complicate some of the comic’s more fascinating issues.
Certain articles emphasize the work as being thoroughly postmodern in the sense that it functions as a prompter of change rather than as means of catharsis. If Sophocles wanted his audience to leave the theater with their emotions cleansed, Spiegelman wants his readers to finish the book with a feeling of incompleteness, of work still to be done.
Similarly, Spiegelman grapples not only with his father’s story of survival but also his own of growing up as a second generation victim and, in doing so, darkens the Holocaust’s long generational shadow and the difficulties that exist in depicting it with any kind of accuracy and deserved intensity. The act of retelling the tale both affirms and denies the testimonial process, as Vladek gets to unburden himself but his son can never fully empathize with his pain.
Of course, several articles deal with the comic book format itself and Spiegelman’s decision to make the characters animals. To some extent, the animation stems from the artist’s time in the world of underground comics and is his personal stamp on the nearly unstampable. However, the drawings, in some instances, turn the father/son relationship into a perverse bedtime story. In others, it makes a complex fable that highlights the harsh realities of the Holocaust.
There are many other issues at play as well: the intermingling of public and private stories, how a writer situates his family’s tale of survival within the public history of the Holocaust, the male orientation of storytelling on display and the denial of the mother’s voice. All told in the crusty academic cadence one would expect from this kind of scholarship.
Certain articles emphasize the work as being thoroughly postmodern in the sense that it functions as a prompter of change rather than as means of catharsis. If Sophocles wanted his audience to leave the theater with their emotions cleansed, Spiegelman wants his readers to finish the book with a feeling of incompleteness, of work still to be done.
Similarly, Spiegelman grapples not only with his father’s story of survival but also his own of growing up as a second generation victim and, in doing so, darkens the Holocaust’s long generational shadow and the difficulties that exist in depicting it with any kind of accuracy and deserved intensity. The act of retelling the tale both affirms and denies the testimonial process, as Vladek gets to unburden himself but his son can never fully empathize with his pain.
Of course, several articles deal with the comic book format itself and Spiegelman’s decision to make the characters animals. To some extent, the animation stems from the artist’s time in the world of underground comics and is his personal stamp on the nearly unstampable. However, the drawings, in some instances, turn the father/son relationship into a perverse bedtime story. In others, it makes a complex fable that highlights the harsh realities of the Holocaust.
There are many other issues at play as well: the intermingling of public and private stories, how a writer situates his family’s tale of survival within the public history of the Holocaust, the male orientation of storytelling on display and the denial of the mother’s voice. All told in the crusty academic cadence one would expect from this kind of scholarship.
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April 16, 2025When you stumble on a whole library shelf dedicated to the analysis of your favorite graphic novel… you’re somehow obliged to read at least one of these books. Despite having loved MAUS since I was gifted it at 14, I had no idea that it had been such a pivotal work in the history of comic books, the field of auto-biography AND the genre of holocaust testimonials.
This theory book was very interesting to read, its a nice collection of essays from different scholars who all have something pertinent to say.
“Although George Santayana's injunction - to remember the past lest we be condemned to repeat it - has become a cliché, more recent students of history have observed that the study of the past does not necessarily provide insurance against its reiteration. Hayden White, for example, suggests that
"(n)othing is better suited to lead to a repetition of the past than a study of it that is either reverential or convincingly objective in the way that conventional historical studies tend to be" (Content 82). Similarly, Cynthia Ozick argues that "Never again' is a pointless slogan: old atrocities are models (they give permission) for new ones" ("It Takes a Great Deal" 196). Art Spiegelman's MAUS, one effect of which is to provide historical documentation of the Holocaust, succeeds in affecting hearts and minds precisely because it is neither "reverential" nor "objective" in the common sense; rather, it is - to use a term that Ozick has applied to civilization and which cannot be applied to conventional historical narratives - “custom-built." (G.Trudeah) (…)
The uniqueness of Spiegelman's achievement is, I would suggest, largely a function of zeugmatic strategies that yoke traditionally disjunct forms and conventions. The use of such strategies evokes the perception that the coherence encouraged by figuration-analogy, metaphor, and other sorts of juxtaposition is simulraneously necessary and impossible.”
This theory book was very interesting to read, its a nice collection of essays from different scholars who all have something pertinent to say.
“Although George Santayana's injunction - to remember the past lest we be condemned to repeat it - has become a cliché, more recent students of history have observed that the study of the past does not necessarily provide insurance against its reiteration. Hayden White, for example, suggests that
"(n)othing is better suited to lead to a repetition of the past than a study of it that is either reverential or convincingly objective in the way that conventional historical studies tend to be" (Content 82). Similarly, Cynthia Ozick argues that "Never again' is a pointless slogan: old atrocities are models (they give permission) for new ones" ("It Takes a Great Deal" 196). Art Spiegelman's MAUS, one effect of which is to provide historical documentation of the Holocaust, succeeds in affecting hearts and minds precisely because it is neither "reverential" nor "objective" in the common sense; rather, it is - to use a term that Ozick has applied to civilization and which cannot be applied to conventional historical narratives - “custom-built." (G.Trudeah) (…)
The uniqueness of Spiegelman's achievement is, I would suggest, largely a function of zeugmatic strategies that yoke traditionally disjunct forms and conventions. The use of such strategies evokes the perception that the coherence encouraged by figuration-analogy, metaphor, and other sorts of juxtaposition is simulraneously necessary and impossible.”
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews