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Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
The author of the story, he visited his father in hopes of recording his experience of The Holocaust.- Author Avatar: Well, Art Spiegelman is the author of Maus, so who would have guessed?
- Momma's Boy: It is quite evident that Art was pretty close to Anja, compared to the somewhat emotionally distant relationship he has with Vladek.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Subverted. Art and Françoise briefly discuss his own experiences growing up with Vladek and Anja, and Art notes he used to imagine which of his parents he would save from being murdered if he could only save one, or imagining Zyklon B coming from the shower in his bathroom. He insists, however, that this wasn't an obsession or a game, but simply him trying to process and understand what his parents went through.
- No Face Under the Mask: A variation on this. In the introduction to MetaMaus, Art, still drawing himself as a mouse, reflects back on the comic 25 years later and the overshadowing effect it has on his artistic career. He wonders if he will ever be able to truly put Maus behind him, and maybe even be able to take the "damned mask" off because he has difficulty breathing in it. Art then grabs at his mouse face and struggles for a bit to remove it, before finally managing to pull it off, only to reveal a smiling skull underneath it.
- Posthumous Sibling: His older brother Richieu died during the Holocaust, and since Art was born long after the war ended, they never knew each other.
- Supporting Protagonist: The story follows him, but the book is actually about Vladek.
- The Un-Favourite: He often feels this way, having a sibling rivalry against his brother who died before he was even born.
Vladek Spiegelman
Vladek Spiegelman
Art's father, a diabetic and a Holocaust survivor. He told Art about his experience during the Holocaust.- All Jews Are Cheapskates: Zigzagged. His son and daughter-in-law try to convince him to Stop Being Stereotypical. He claims that the Holocaust, when hoarding food and supplies was a matter of life and death, made him that way. Mala comments that she and most of the family's friends are Holocaust survivors, and none of them are anywhere near as stingy as Vladek.
- Celebrity Resemblance: As a young man, Vladek was often noted to carry quite a bit of resemblance to the quite handsome silent movie star Rudolph Valentino.
- Cunning Linguist: Downplayed. While he may have issues with grammar in the English language, his linguistic ability includes English, Polish, Yiddish and German; the last one allowed him to survive as he managed to persuade suspecting Germans. In the case of English, his relatively comprehensive English skills win him the favor of a Polish supervisor that provided him with food and luxuries not available to other prisoners.
- Determinator: Though luck comes to play frequently in his survival of the Holocaust, Art admits that he admires Vladek's resourcefulness and determination to survive. Even when he gets older, he refuses to let heart attacks get in the way of his life; in Volume One, he nearly falls off the roof of his house and then throws his wife into hysterics when he says he wants to go back up there and finish his work!
- Deus ex Machina: Arguably, one of the more disturbing elements of the Holocaust that the book depicts is how often Vladek managed to survive by sheer luck.
- Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Vladek still shows some trouble with speaking English, notably in sentence construction (understandable since he grew up speaking Polish and German). As the book so very clearly shows, he is far from stupid and also speaks the language much better than most Polish Jews, which ends up saving his life at least once.
- Freudian Excuse: Played with. At different points, he whined some variant of this, saying his experience in the Holocaust is why he acts the way he does. The thing is, he was already like that, and other Holocaust survivors are nowhere as stingy as him. Given that his stinginess actually helped him survive the Holocaust, at most one could say it reinforced his viewpoint that he had to act like this, and thus it continued into his twilight years.
- Genocide Survivor: He's a survivor of the Holocaust.
- Guile Hero: Vladek survived the Holocaust as much through his own cunning as it was luck. His methods of surviving the Holocaust can be downright ingenious. Most of his friends who did not have a guile streak were killed or disappeared.
- Hypocrite: He is occasionally shown to be this way. He accuses Mala of being a Gold Digger, but it's implied that he originally pursued Anja because she was from a wealthy family. Art also points out that Vladek's racism toward black people is not so different from how anti-semites regard Jews.
- I Was Quite a Looker: The one picture seen of Vladek, taken some time after he left Auschwitz, shows a quite handsome young fellow who bears some resemblance to Rudolph Valentino.
- Jewish Mother: Writ large, in spite of his being a man. It is never played for laughs and stops just short of outright emotional abuse, coming close to deconstructing this trope.
- No Accounting for Taste: His marriage to Mala. They're constantly fighting; Mala complains about Vladek's cheapness, while he says that she's greedy and only married him to get his money.
- Parents as People: He's not an easy man to deal with, and can be somewhat emotionally manipulative. But Art has to acknowledge that Vladek did not have an easy life.
- Plagued by Nightmares: Vladek apparently has them every night, as he's always moaning in his sleep. Art says to Francoise: "When I was a kid I thought that was the sound that all grown-ups made while they sleep."
- Racist Grandpa: He's very racist towards black people; he's utterly horrified when Françoise picks up a black hitchhiker and spends the whole time he is in the car loudly complaining about it in Polish. Art is more than a bit appalled at how little self-awareness his father has in this situation.
- Took a Level in Kindness: A bittersweet example. After spending the entire book demonstrating he was a miserly and tight-fisted ass, the last couple of pages have Mala state he's become much more passive, and even agrees to her desire to sell their house and move to Florida. However, it's clear he's only really mellowed out as much as he has due to his old age and deteriorating health.
- Unreliable Narrator: In some aspects, as we (and Art) don't really know to what extent some details he's said are true.
Anja
Anja Zylberberg-Spiegelman
Vladek's wife and Art's mother. She is also a Holocaust survivor.- Bath Suicide: According to the Prisoner on the Hell Planet, she killed herself this way.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Art recalls how she was much less strict in his upbringing than his father was. A specific example was how his father would always make Art eat everything on his plate, even if Art hated it, but Anja would secretly sneak him something he liked to eat.
- Doting Parent: See the abovementioned trope.
- Driven to Suicide: Years after the holocaust, and not only because of it. Both Art and Vladek mention how she always had a tendency towards melancholy and was somewhat fragile emotionally. Vladek also recalls how she also almost committed suicide years before the Holocaust, from severe postpartum depression after Richieu was born.
- Hero of Another Story: In a sense, since we never get to see/hear her view with her having passed away and her diaries either being destroyed or hidden by Vladek.
- Living Emotional Crutch: To a certain extent she was this to Vladek though, this was more inverted, as, considering her suicide in 1968, she probably would have killed herself sooner if not for Vladek being there.
- The Lost Lenore: Anja's death affected her husband greatly to the point that he never really got over it, even after he got remarried.
- My Beloved Smother: Prisoner on the Hell Planet seems to imply she was this in some way, as, while she was more doting (in comparison to Vladek), there was something Art may have found smothering about her love and care, as mentioned on page 3."I turned away, resentful of the way she tightened the umbilical cord [...]You put me here… shorted all my circuits… cut my nerve endings… and crossed my wires!"
- Unknown Character: We mostly know about her through her interactions with Art and Vladek and what's mentioned. Sadly, because of Vladek losing (or, as he says, burning, it's not clear) her diaries, we'll never get to hear of her experiences with the Holocaust.
Françoise Mouly Spiegelman
Françoise Mouly Spiegelman
Art's wife.- French Jerk: Averted. She's shown as being very nice.
- Obnoxious Inlaws: Downplayed but it's clear that she and Vladek don't get along so well. From what we can guess, Vladek disapproved of Art's relationship with her, as she mentioned she converted to please him.
Mala Spiegelman
Mala Spiegelman
Vladek's second wife. She is also a Holocaust survivor.- Awful Wedded Life: Really. Her marriage with Vladek is dysfunctional to such a degree that, in Volume 2, she leaves temporarily, taking half of the assets. She only comes back when his health gets worse and that was out of pity (she calls herself a "sucker").
- Genocide Survivor: Like Vladek, she's a Holocaust survivor, though the comic doesn't go into detail about her story.
- Gold Digger: Vladek accuses her of only marrying him for his money.
- Good Stepmother: Mala and Art are significantly closer to each other than to Vladek, mostly because Mala has her demons under control and is more emotionally open.
- The Masochism Tango: Her marriage to Vladek isn't more than accusations and fighting. Apparently, her being married to Vladek kept him going.
- No Accounting for Taste: Her marriage to Vladek. They did nothing but fight and she'll complain that he's stingy and he'll complain that she's high-maintenance.
Richieu Spiegelman
Richieu Spiegelman
Vladek and Anja's first son.- Death of a Child: He was given over to his aunt Tosha's care so he'd survive the Holocaust but, unfortunately, we see how well that ended.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Inverted. Art resents him for this. He believes that his parents prefer their rosy memories of Richieu to their more complicated living child.
- Mercy Kill: In a "Better to Die than Be Killed" sense, as Tosha poisoned him and the other children in her care, along with herself, so he wouldn't be gassed to death.
- Posthumous Sibling: He died during the Holocaust, long before Art was even born.
- Sibling Rivalry: An odd one, as he's passed on but Art resents him, feeling like their parents never really got over Richieu's death and his own birth wasn't quite the healing fresh start that Vladek and Anja had hoped it would be.
- Spell My Name With An S: His name should correctly be spelled Rysio, but Art had never seen it written down, so he went along with Richieu for the comics.
Lucia Greenberg
Lucia Greenberg
Vladek's ex-girlfriend before he met Anja and long before the Holocaust.- Clingy Jealous Girl: Supposedly, given that this is Vladek's story.
- Informed Attractiveness: According to Vladek, she was very pretty, well, prettier than his eventual wife Anja.
- Woman Scorned: She tried to sabotage Vladek's relationship with Anja after he left her.
Lolek Speigelman
Lolek Speigelman
A relative of Vladek and Art.- Bookworm: To the point of Skewed Priorities in one instance, as when he couldn't find enough food, he filled his sack intended for food with books, much to the dismay of his starving family.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: He's one of the few members of the Spiegelman family to survive, along with Vladek, Anja, and Vladek's brother Pinek.
Mancie
Mancie
A Hungarian-Jewish woman who helped Anja and Vladek.- Ambiguous Situation: We don't really know what happened to her, as Vladek failed to find her, so she could either be a case of Killed Offscreen or, if she survived, she might have changed her name and settled down (probably out of the country).
- Hero of Another Story: She had been appointed as a Kapo at Birkenau and used her position to help other prisoners (risking her life in the process). She was instrumental in securing Anja's survival and was one of the very few people who helped the main characters for genuinely altruistic reasons, refusing to accept Vladek's offer of food to reward her. Vladek tries to find her after the war, but he never discovers what happened to her.
