The Complete MAUS Book

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman is the definitive collection of a series of comic strips initially published in a magazine, later in two volumes of books and finally combined in the complete edition we see here. Okay, so this is a comic book, but don't let that put you off if you are not traditionally a huge fan of the medium. This is a comic book unlike any you have ever read. In 1992 it won the Pulitzer Prize. Yet somehow this prestigious award does not do it justice...

In Maus, the artist Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father's experience as a Polish Jew in Nazi occupied Europe. The story is based upon a series of taped interviews with his father and interestingly the artist presents the interaction between himself and his father and other friends and family as interludes to the main line of the story. Essentially it is a Holocaust survivor's tale but it is also a story about relationships and specifically the gulf that exists in the relationship between father and son (or subject and artist). The artist discusses his own sense of inadequacy and guilt for not ever having experienced firsthand the terrible things that have shaped his father's life, and therefore never understanding or being able to relate to him.

The artist's father and literary subject, physically survived persecution, pogroms, ghettos and ultimately Auschwitz. We are of course privy to all of these heartbreaking episodes of Vladek's past, which the artist manages to depict in both a biographical and wider historical perspective. However, although Vladek physically survived, the artist queries his father's mental survival and contemplates whether he really survived at all. Although the physical scars are almost all but healed (his camp identity number will always remain as a tattoo) the mental scars are still as vivid as ever. His survivor mentality alienates him from all around him. People see his aversion to wasting food and his thrifty methods of saving money as petit and miserly, but he is just living/surviving the only way he knows how.

Spiegelman metaphorically depicts people as animals. For example, the Jews appear as mice and the Nazis as cats. The analogy with the animal kingdom is clear - mice are the prey and cats are the predators and this works for the Jews and the Nazis too. The Poles are depicted as pigs (the metaphor here is a little harder to decipher) and Americans as dogs. Interestingly for a comic book that metaphorically depicts people as animals, the story is inherently human.

Amazingly, whilst heartbreaking in places, like a ray of sunshine breaking through black clouds, Maus shocks the reader with joy, laughter and love. Some of the interaction between father and son had me laughing out loud, when I had been crying only a minute before. Maus clearly shows us both the worst and the best of human nature. It would make a fascinating read for anyone of any age. I would however especially recommend it to the younger generations, who may find this piece of visual work an interesting and easier introduction to a sensitive, harrowing and incomprehensibly dark chapter of human history...one we should all remind ourselves of and never forget.

Combined here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the Holocaust through cartoons the author captures the everyday reality of fear and the sensation of survival.