Maus

I first encountered the Maus books when I was in the fourth grade. My mother had bought Maus II for me by recommendation from a friend, and it was my first encounter with a graphic novel. Flipping through the book, I saw the linework was heavy, and was immediately intrigued by these dark comics, when I had been so used to reading Peanuts and Garfield. I flipped to the middle of the book out of curiousity and just started reading there. A Nazi Cat guard took the hat of a mouse and threw it on the ground. "Go get your hat," he said. The mouse ran to get his hat, and the SS guard shot him, telling a superior that he caught the mouse "running away." This scarred me for life, I closed the book and didn't touch it again. Never had my 10 year old eyes seen something that dark in content, much less in the form of comics. I was too scared to read it again, but a morbid curiosity still remained. The darkness of it was so fascinating to me.

I finally read Maus in high school. Long story short, it made me cry. I was so wrapped up in the story, which was so personal and specific and sincere.

Reading it again now, my feelings for the story remain the same. But reading a second time around, after three years of an art school education, I was able to look at Maus again not only in terms of its story but also in terms of its execution as a graphic novel. The heavy linework and graphic shapes and shading that intrigued me so much as a 10 year old still affects me today. It is so appropriate for the historic moment and story that it is telling. It is bold, dark, and almost intimidating. Sometimes the dark muddiness of certain underground comics distracts me, and when returning to read Maus, I found the same problem. With just black and white, and black shapes taking up the same amount of space as white, the focal points could sometimes get lost, were it not for the big white speech bubbles to somewhat guide your eye when it first meets the panel. While I found this disappointing, somehow it lent less as a detriment to the reading experience and more as an impression. This was the first time I picked up mouse in four years, since my junior year of high school. And yet I remember Maus for this aesthetic and how it lent to the impact of an already heartfelt story.

What I think is also interesting is the debate brought up from Spiegelman's use of animals to depict different races. On the one hand, it undeniably visually simplifies the relationships between races. Then there is the debate that Spiegelman's choice to choose certain animals for certain countries and basing them on stereotypes is in fact, accentuating and bringing back those stereotypes. I choose to not get into this debate. Whatever Spiegelman's intention was, if he thought deeply about what he was doing with the metaphor, or decided to simply play off the  clear and universal visual meaning of cat-and-mouse relationship, I believe his use of animals serves as an interesting commentary and thought game. The Holocaust was an event with stereotypes, racism and misunderstanding at its core. In the story itself, the different animals create a clear vehicle to depict racism. And even just touching on the question "is Spiegelman's use of animals stereotyping in itself," it brings you out of the story to think about the pure notion of stereotyping. If you don't think too deeply into why, but just think about the notion as is, I believe it further solidifies the theme of stereotyping, in a very general subconscious way.