Maus

Entire Maus Volume:

I hope I'm not going to go to far of track here, but when that happens good things can come of it. I have learned about the holocaust for as long as I can remember learning about history in general. Lets just say that it’s a hot topic for people to discuss. Of all the semi fictional stories about holocaust survivors all seem to be the same book, this includes Maus. Germans bad, Jews not so bad, Americans very very good. Except for one Aesthetic value it’s a story that’s been repeated over and over again for years.

Art Spiegelman decided that people of different race or religion would have the appearance of different animals, to the point where is a person was acting as another race he/she would appear to look just like they usually would but with a different mask. The characters don’t refer to themselves as animals they refer to themselves as people, the main character is a human being not an actual mouse. I think this is a genius technique and it makes me think about a lot of things. It’s a visual technique to describe a human reaction to hate.

Animals seem to be very aware that they are separated by species. A person doesn’t usually walk into the forest and see a the black bear and fox sitting together over a nice chiante or a rabbit and mole grilling up some carrots. There seems to be little interaction between specie except for the usually predator and prey food chain thing. Is this what Spiegelman is trying to say? That except for killing or consuming each other man decides to treat those that are different from him like a different species? I mean humans are 96 percent ape. If someone offered you a sandwich with 96 percent fecal matter and 4 percent turkey would you believe that you were eating a turkey sandwich? It must go even deeper then segregation of species in the human mind because the Germans treated the Jews like less than animals. Know one goes to the zoo and watches 80,000 monkeys get gassed to death. What drives hate of this power? What drives a person to be so passionate about genocide? I think I might have a few ideas.

I said in the beginning that I hope I don’t go to far off track but sometimes that’s the point. What was different about the Jews and Germans? What causes most wars? What causes most social disorder or chaos? What would a large majority of people in this world die for? RELIGION. Religion grabs a hold of the human soul and manipulates it from childbirth. Here we are going to dip your face in water and give you the gift of a make believe characters protection before your even old enough to sit up right properly let alone commit your soul to one thing or another. I think the basic flaw with people and religion is absolution. This might seem like I'm trying to be a Jedi and say that only Sith deal in absolution but time after time people have shown that there belief in the uncertain can out way there compassion for life and destroy it in a second. There are not many religions out there that say…believe all of what this book is telling you truly and completely oh and its ok to read other books that ask the same thing of you. This seems to have become me ranting about religion but I'm ok with it. What will it take for people to realize they are blinding themselves? Could it be how materialistic this world has become? Since when did what we pay for color clothes gage our gravity? Is it that people are so afraid that God might not exist that they delude themselves to the point of extermination of those who refuse to believe in their delusions? Why did I capitalize god?
The way that Maus is delivered to the reader is somewhat intriguing to me as well. It’s not just a recounting of Art’s fathers past. We find out that Art is a struggling comic artist just like the actual author and he is flush out of ideas to make work about so he decides to scrape from real life accounts rather then completely fictional traditional comic art. So Art decides to ask his father to go through his entire life up until this point as detailed as possible. This is fabulous to me. Although my own personal father son relationship didn’t turn out this way, racking dad’s brain history was one of my favorite things to do. Just something about stories from his past seemed so full of life and action. Whether when it was about him deal cocaine in the 80’s or confronting to hardcore black panthers at a high school he had me enthralled. It’s not just a father but older people in general. I just like to hear people’s memories in oratory form. That’s all this story really is, but with the added technology of written word and illustration.