MAUS II: Art Spiegelman's Maus II

In his graphic novels, MAUS I and MAUS II, Art Spiegelman provides his view as a second generation witness. He is a part of the generation that will transmit Holocaust stories to future generations. He is a witness to the Holocaust in terms of how it affected the survivors but he didn’t live through that experience himself. This is the concept of post-memory, which allows for Spigelman to take up the memories of the survivor generation and transmit them to future generations. Spiegelman comments on his father’s stories but he is careful not to make it his own by appropriating it. He places himself in an empathetic position throughout the novels. The novels are based on Spiegelman’s audio recordings of his father, Vladek, as he is recounting his memories before, during, and after the Holocaust. Spigelman then used these audio recordings of their interviews to portray Vladek’s story in a comic book medium. Comic books are commonly thought of as readings for children and
semi-illiterates. They were created for the purpose of entertainment with funny plots. An integral concept of comics is the juxtaposition of words and images, which encourages for the use of imagination. Spiegelman appropriates the comic book format and uses it for the more serious and formal topic of the Holocaust. He stated that he “didn’t want people to get too interested in the drawings. I wanted them to be there, but the story operates somewhere else. It operates somewhere between the words and the idea that’s in the pictures and in the movement between the pictures” (Brown). The primary use of images forces the reader to acknowledge the events in a graphically manner rather than having the reader create an image themselves. A close analysis of the panels on page 32 of MAUS I, shows how the expanding Nazi regime was terrifying to the Jews (Spiegelman, Maus I 32). The mouse in the top left panel spots a Nazi flag and his sense of shock made the rest of the mice in the train look as well. There is also a Polish pig right next to them who doesn’t react to the flag and remains content. At the bottom of the page we see the flag from the view within the train compartment. Spiegelman’s choice to draw the picture with the point of view over the shoulder of the mice allows for the reader to be in the moment with them. This creates a sense of smallness that can be seen in the mice. The organization of this page is different than that of other pages because the three panels took up an entire page. Other pages usually have more than three panels. By formatting and organizing the panels in a particular way, Spiegelman portrays a perception of time that is more fluid rather than linear. It is also important to note how the characters all look the same. Therefore, the reader must rely on the character’s actions and words in order to distinguish their significance. In this event, they all end up reacting the same way to the sight of the Nazi flag, drawing the reader into the narrative. After the growing success of his first graphic novel of his father’s story, Spiegelman began to feel the intense pressure of the expectations for his next book, as he illustrated on page 41 (Spiegelman, Maus II 41).
In these panels, Spiegelman illustrates himself as a man with a mouse mask over his face, which is the animal that has been representing Jews in the novels. This particular page is only about Spiegelman’s struggles with relating to his father’s experience. The juxtaposition of the large pile of dead mice at the bottom of the page next to Spiegelman highlights the gap between Spiegelman, who is a second generation that didn’t experience the Holocaust, and the mice in the pile, those who personally experienced the event. It shows how one cannot wholly understand an event such as the Holocaust without personally experiencing it. This page also portrays post-memory. Spiegelman is clearly struggling to accept the suffering that happened to his father and those in his
generation.