For this week in English 474, we have been reading Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels, Maus and Maus II, which depict the story of the Holocaust as told by Art’s father, Vladek and span the years 1930’s (pre-Holocaust) until 1945, when the Holocaust ends.The difference lies mainly in that Maus breaks a fourth wall.
Compared to other Holocaust stories I have read, such as Weisel’s Night and Frank’s Diary of Anne Frank, this book I found quite different. It is a story both of Vladek and also of Art’s story of writing that story. As a reader, my attention was split between reading about Vladek and the Holocaust, and also paying attention to the nuances of Art’s process of getting the book done and his own struggles and guilt with that.
I believe that while Art is the witness or rather, the person who recognizes Vladek’s trauma, we are called to be the witnesses of Art’s own struggle with transcribing that trauma. We, by reading Maus, are witnesses to Art’s guilt at betraying his father (who didn’t want certain parts of the story shared). We are witnesses to his obsessive research to get the historical detail right, which he talks about an interview entitled:The Holocaust Through the Eyes of the Maus with Marcia Alvar where he was able to find drawings by survivors, and his numerous trips to Auschwitz and Poland and with his responsibility to himself as well, as an artist and as a son.
In reading Maus, Young and watching his interviews, I realized that he has undergone a lot of mental struggle to get this work published, and in his own right, these mental struggles can be considered forms of trauma as well that we must recognize as readers.
Works Cited:
“The Holocaust Through the Eyes of a Maus.” Interview by Marcia Alvar. Youtube. Washington, 1991. Television. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLVG3GNvHkU
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Print.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus Ii: A Survivor’s Tale : and Here My Troubles Began. New York: PantheonBooks, 1991. Print.
Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. London: Routledge, 1992. Web. 23 October 2014.
Great post, Clarice. I wonder though if Art really did betray his father, though. Vladek experiences many different forms of betrayal throughout his life, as documented in Maus I and II. But can his son’s attempt to transcribe these experiences in an authentic manner be interpreted as another form of betrayal? It seems more to me like a tribute to the memories of Vladek, although some are highly personal, and others are highly stylized, they all act to construct a literary monument to the experiences of Vladek. I definitely agree with you on the duality of trauma in both the witness (Vladek) and the witness to witnessing (Art). This came through very strongly.