Mouse of all mice.

By Tristan Anleu.

In the final panel of the first issue of the Maus comic, Art’s father, Vladek, tells
Art that he burnt the pages of Anja’s, his girlfriend during the war’s diaries,
destroying her voice and perspective on the war, and for this Art is furiously
angry and leaves his father. This moment is not part of the historical retelling of
the second world war, it is a conversation between a guilty father and a
disappointed son. Reading most of this comic, and in this moment particularly I
began to forget the characters were mice, cats dogs and other animals, instead I
saw them only as human creations; of a human image, due to their life like
personalities. In that moment, Art’s Father revealed that he destroyed Anja’s
notes due to broken feelings and memories to the war, and the persecution
experienced. Such feelings, and memories haunting and painful would hinder
being able to look forward to a new life away from the war, it is important to
forget the horrific past. But, in doing so historic evidence and documentation and
material is being destroyed leaving a part of history unsaid. And for that reason,
Art is upset for he cannot use her notes to complete his historical journal and
damns him, naming him a murderer and leaves ending the comic.

Depicting this scene visually shows the reader the anger felt by Art in that
moment, not through words but by facial expression and emotion depicted in
Art’s eyes. Readers can recognise fury in even a basically-drawn
anthropomorphic animal. Both emotions can be fully understood in this scene,
Vladek’s sadness concerning the letters of a lost love and Art’s anger due to the
destroyed documentation. It is clear that the trauma and tragedy of the war still
haunts the mind of Vladek, mostly by the way he talks about past events.

Art walking away, uttering “murderer” is especially harsh due to the fact that
Vladek destroyed the letters for his own good, and coming from an experience in
war such an act is reasonable. Art, who is of the younger generation born after
the war cannot comprehend having such an impactful and frighteningly
traumatic memory of such events. Calling him a murderer for destroying her
memory is ignorantly harsh.

Being a comic, it is by nature comical and thus is considered somewhat

untruthful or exaggerated. Spiegelman embraces this notion and uses the comic
form to add animalistic traits to his characters to visually demonstrate to the
reader the situation of the War. He also clarifies that what is written and depicted
is only a construction of a memory, and so cannot be wholly accurate. Accepting
this, Spegelman works in these factors even by adding animalistic features to his
characters. Despite the unrealistic nature of the comic, the personality and
humanisation of the characters does make the comic feel, in a sense,
hyperrealistic.

A son is discussing history with his dad; and when the dad says something
dishonourable the son leaves, ashamed.

This type of social interaction is very familiar to most families and households,
and so the reader can connect and truly understand the characters of Art and
Vladik, despite the fact that they’re drawn as animals and the readers can feel
like they relate to the on-page cartoons.

<Spiegelman, AS, 1980. Maus. 1st ed. USA: Pantheon Books.>