Art Spiegelman

Using a medium often associated with lightheartedness to portray the horrors of the Holocaust.

Reprinted with permission from Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, published by W.W. Norton & Company.

 

Before the publication of MAUS I, Art Spiegelman drew irreverent, dark comic strips for "zines," underground publications on specialized topics. Circulated through informal networks, zines were enthusiastically embraced by many subcultures, notably teenagers and "Generation-Xers" who felt alienated from mainstream culture.

 

Spiegelman first tentatively explored the legacy that the Holocaust left on his parents and himself in a comic called Prisoner of the Hell Planet, published in 1972 in Funny Animals (a comic strip) and Short Order Comix. The Hell Planet to which Spiegelman refers should be read as a metaphor for life with his parents: Vladek, his father, overbearing, miserly, and obsessive; Anja, his mother, melancholy and suffering from survivor's guilt. In fact, the event that prompted the creation of Prisoner of the Hell Planet was Anja's suicide in 1968.

 

MAUS, a Survivor's Tale appeared in 1986; five years later, Spiegelman published MAUS II, a Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, the remainder of his and Vladek's story. In comic book form, drawing the Germans as cats, the Jews as mice, and the Poles as pigs, Spiegelman illustrates his father's experiences in Nazi-occupied Europe and at Auschwitz. While doing this, he tells his own story of growing up as a child of survivors.

 

MAUS took Spiegelman from the subterranean world of zines to the bright lights of literary prominence. The irony of this transformation does not escape Speigelman, who says in MAUS II, "No matter what I accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz." Although portraying the Holocaust in a comic strip first invited suspicion, MAUS's readers soon realized that Spiegelman had represented the Holocaust, as well as its aftermath, in an ingenious and forceful manner. The comic strip form, with its side-by-side illustrations as well as text all appearing simultaneously, allow Spiegelman to occupy at least two places at the same time--a fitting analogy for Spiegelman's emotional state, which he believed to be divided between his father's past and his own present.

 

The critical and popular reaction to the MAUS texts has been overwhelmingly positive. In a country where representations of the Holocaust are numerous, variable in quality, and hugely controversial, MAUS and MAUS II have emerged as watershed texts, especially in their depiction of the trials of the "second generation"--a term used to denote the children of Holocaust survivors. Lawrence Langer, a prominent critic of Holocaust art, wrote that in MAUS, Spiegelman writes "with restraint and a relentless honesty, sparing neither his father nor himself…. Perhaps no Holocaust narrative will ever contain the whole experience. But Art Spiegelman has found an original and authentic form to draw us close to its bleak heart."

 

After the publication of MAUS, Spiegelman returned to writing comic strips for zines, but he also contributes regularly to more mainstream publications and has illustrated several New Yorker covers.