Art Spiegelman’s Maus has been a successful graphic novel since its publication; it has been written about, talked about, and declared the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. The fascination with this text is largely due to the combination of comics and the serious matter of the Holocaust; the serious and the unserious come together. I took interest in the commingling of mediums which Spiegelman chose to incorporate in his telling of his father’s experience of the Holocaust.

Philip Pullman questions, “what is [Maus]? Is it a comic? Is it biography, or fiction? Is it a literary work, or a graphic one, or both?” These were the questions I faced when I read Maus. How should I define the genre of this multi-medium text? I want to call it a work of art, a historical piece, a literary text, and biography all at once, and in the confusion, I think this is the unique quality Maus offers. 

Spiegelman prefers the term “comix” over “comics,” as he believes comix captures the combining of text and art, and I believe this mixture can further include the addition of genres, and overlapping stories. Maus is the product of story telling, visual art, words, and history. This work is drawn out like a traditional comic with animals and sound-effects, but there is a sophistication to its creation and resulting impact on the reader.

As I read Maus, I kept comparing it to my reading of Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz. While I read Art’s personal telling of how he interviewed his father for the story and his reaction to the story, I could not help but recognize those feelings as my own towards Levi’s text. I understood the desire to understand, and inability to do so. I experience horror in reading both Levi’s and Spiegelman’s works, but Maus made the Holocaust more understandable for me. I tried to imagine Levi’s experience, but failed to really imagine what it felt and looked like, but the mixture of the words and visual art helped me visualize and connect with the story in a way I could not for Levi.