The Impact of “Maus”
With our discussions of comic books and graphic novels/narratives in class, I have been thinking back on the few that I read growing up. Those included complete collections of Calvin and Hobbes, dozens of Archie comic books, the Bone series and many superhero comic books that I would get on free comic book day at the local comic book store. I also read Maus several years ago, a graphic novel about the creator’s (Art Spiegelman) father’s experience in Auschwitz. This is the only comic ever to win a Pulitzer prize, and on a personal level, one of the most important Holocaust texts I have ever read.
I grew up in a Jewish family and went to a Hebrew Day school, so learning about the Holocaust was something that I did almost constantly. I have read several books on the topic and heard many survivors share their stories. Although these accounts of the Holocaust were all equally moving, informative and thought-provoking, when I think about the Holocaust, it is the images of Maus that come to mind.
I never quite understood why this was until reading “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis” by Hillary Chute, and understanding her opinions on how graphic novels can help us understand trauma. After reading it, I would highly disagree with the first panel of comics in the post. Reality is not too complex for coincs. I think that Maus does the best job of representing a reality that is so hard for us to imagine. Like Persepolis, the main focus of Chute’s article, Maus uses simple black and white, as “color of flesh and the red of the blood […] reduces it by making it realistic” (Chute p. 99). As well, in using a graphic novel to retell the story, “we are provoked to imagine the visual reality of this brutal murder” (p. 100), and I think in an even more powerful way than a novel. Seeing one depiction of a brutal event, and then having to pause and think about our own ideas makes readers understand just how unthinkable these tragedies really are.