There have been very few times in my life that I felt a book needed to be read. I mean each person deserves the right to choose what type of entertainment is meaningful to them. But every once in a while, there is a book or song or movie that comes along that has importance, something that can’t be ignored.
I am the person that consumes books whenever I come across something intriguing. So today, while in a quaint book store and drinking a glass of tea, I was surprised to run across a graphic novel that looked interesting. Even more so, I had never heard of it before.
The front cover is a picture of a swastika with a cat’s head in the middle looming over a pair of trembling mice. Maus is written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman and was published, originally, in 1980 in Raw magazine as a series. It is the story of Artie, a young man and cartoonist who has a strained relationship with his father. During visits to his dad, Vladek, he is able to communicate better than they have in years. The source of their conversations is history. Specifically, it is the history of their family.
Vladek tells his son of how he came to meet and then marry Anja, Artie’s mother. He describes their life together in the late 1930s in Poland. The major difference between this graphic novel and other comics is that it is based on the recollection of events of a real person. In the book, the Nazi’s are portrayed as cats, the Jews as mice, and the Poles as pigs. You see, the Spiegelmans are a Jewish family.
The author gives a vivid description of a son trying to come to terms with the atrocities his parents survived while learning more about his father, a man to whom he has had little interaction with before the storytelling episodes began. The story regularly flashes between the present day and Vladek’s memories. He tells of being betrayed by friends, family, acquaintances, and total strangers to the Germans.
It takes a lot for me to be moved to tears. I’m a pretty cold hearted person when it comes to emotional things and when considering that this is a comic book, the idea that tissues would be needed is surprising. However, during one particularly harrowing part, Vladek is describing how the Nazi soldiers treated the Jews in the condensed neighborhood they were forced to live in. He tells of how the soldiers slowly took people away, sometimes as individuals but just as often in large groups. When getting ready to deport them to Auschwitz, they would separate the men from the women and the adults from the children. For children too small to be of use…..
At the very moment I reached this part of the story, my toddler ran into the room and giggled, “Mommy!” I couldn’t control the flood gates. To realize the level to which these people must have sank to be able to hurt a child. Especially one so young; that they were unable to do anything to either offend or defend.
Within the pages of this book are the tales of love, fear, devotion, understanding, pain, and incredible loss. Though the drawings may be simple, the story weaved is compelling. Maus I: My Father Bleeds History now resides in my permanent collection and I’ll be picking up the rest of the series soon.
I feel like looking back at this time in human history is important. We need to remember that individuals, just like us, had to live through it. We do not need to put just one face to it but many. And sometimes, taking such complexities and simplifying them into a historical game of ‘cat and mouse’ has more of an impact than if it were a story told any other way.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” –George Santayana
