Maus and Contemporary Connections

Art Spiegelman's Maus is a riveting account of the Holocaust and its aftermath. The tale recounts the struggle of Vladek Spiegelman living with his family in Sosnowiec in the late 1930s and his tragic odyssey during the war which ultimately led him to Auschwitz. Throughout the story, Art also confronts his complicated and difficult relationship with his father. Vladek is very stingy, and he and Art do not always see eye to eye.

A major theme in Maus is not just the tragedy of the Holocaust and its effect on those who survived it, but also its impact on those who did not live through it. This is highlighted near the end of the first book when Art calls his father a murderer for having destroyed Anja's diaries. Art wanted the diaries to complete his work and their destruction also cuts him off of any chance of finding out the truth about his mother.

The use of animals in the story is very controversial. I believe Spiegelman is using the animals in a satirical manner. The animals are based off of how the Germans depicted certain nationalities: Polish are pigs, Jews are mice, Americans are dogs, and the Germans are cats. The use of animals serves to prove how ridiculous the entire tragedy really is. It also shows that the Holocaust degraded the victims and perpetrators to less than human status.

I think that when looking for contemporary connections we should be careful in our selection. The Holocaust systematically killed 10 million people because they were perceived as flawed, different, and imperfect. That being said, there are a few examples that I think have some similarities.

First, I am reminded of the partition of India in 1947. After India was granted independence from Britain, it was divided into India and Pakistan, which eventually splintered into East Pakistan, West Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The partition forced the upheaval of at least 15 million people. Over 7 million Muslims left India for Pakistan and about the same number of Hindus moved to India from Pakistan. During this massive migration, violence and ethnic cleansing accounted for what is estimated as at least 1 million deaths.

Another possible contemporary connection is the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The Rwandan Genocide was a mass extermination of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. The killings were carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups over the course of 100 short days. Over 500,000 Tutsis and thousands moderate Hutus died in the genocide. Some estimates place the deaths at closer to one million. Today someone in class said that it is important to talk about events like the Holocaust so that history does not repeat itself. In the case of Rwanda, it would seem that history is repeating itself in Darfur.

Finally, I would like to close with a quote from Maus that caught my attention. In the first book on page 122, Anja is distressed and crying about how the family has broken apart. Vladek consoles her by saying that "to die, it's easy but you have to struggle for life!" This is very similar to the famous Frederick Douglass quote, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress."