Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, did not directly experience World War II. However, his father, a Polish Jew, experienced that war and definitely did not willfully cling onto those memories. The Holocaust is a time period that remains a major scar for humanity as a whole. Then how painful would it be to the survivors of the Holocaust, who saw their children and grandparents disappear into poisoned corpses, and spent endless nights with open eyes, wishing the war would end as soon as possible? Maus is a book that introduces the world of painful memories to those who have no idea of the level of pain that survivors have to go through every day until their death.

 

The whole book is basically a long interview of the author's father, a survivor of the Holocaust. As the title implies, mice are the main characters of this graphic novel. In fact, all the Polish Jews are drawn as mice and Nazis as cats, showing the simple relationship between the Jews and Nazis during the Holocaust. Representing people as mice demonstrates the author's intention to make the Jews relatively useless, yet more intelligent than cats, while Nazis depicted as cats may be more powerful, but rather stupid. Also, the non-Jewish Poles are depicted as pigs, which accentuate their lack of power and intelligence within the society at that time. This reveals that those who betray their own country are also considered as condemnable.

 

 

The fact that it is a graphic novel, better known to most people as a comic book, makes it more readable even for younger children. Perhaps Spiegelman deliberately made it that way so that more people would know better about the savageness of the Holocaust, to prevent it from repeating in the future. Educating children about history is necessary because they will ultimately form the society in the future.

 

Despite the accessibility that the graphic novel provides for younger generations, Spiegelman admits that comic books may not be accurate in terms of presentation of detailed historical records. Nevertheless, the book itself is praised for being a story that explicitly tells how the story was written. It clearly shows the process of how the book was created, by showing that he interviewed his own father and even that he based parts of the story on that interview, thus emphasizing particularly important historical moments.

 

Does the comic book make a historical event that is horrible seem less serious? Perhaps, but that is better than people not knowing about the event at all. The Holocaust may simply be history for some. For most members of the younger generation this may be particularly true. However, it is also true that these young people, who are mostly unaware of the horrors of war, will become responsible of forming our world within 20 to 30 years. Therefore, Spiegelman's choice to make history easier and more approachable to current students should be highly praised for its potential helpfulness.