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Maus is the magnum opus of Art Spiegelman, a pioneer of the underground comics movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The work is a memoir of Spiegelman's parents, Holocaust survivors, and is interspersed throughout with images of Spiegelman and the strained relationship he has with his father in the present day. The interviews Spiegelman conducted with his father during this time make up the bulk of the book.
The work has all the basic underpinnings of a Holocaust memoir, portrayed in the comic book style. If you had seen it before, you would have recognized it: World War II-era nationalities and people are all portrayed as Funny Animals. Except they're not funny. At all.
Maus is in two parts, both released to heavy critical acclaim: "Part I (My Father Bleeds History)" in 1986 and "Part II (And Here My Troubles Began)" in 1991. It is probably the best argument currently in existence that comic books could be a legitimate art form, and was treated as such when it was first released. In 1992, it received a special Pulitzer prize as an acknowledgment of all this.
Anyone who thinks comics don't get no respect simply must read this. This is the kind of thing you would read for your literature class, if it wasn't a comic book — and, indeed, some literature classes have started using it anyway.
- All Jews Are Cheapskates: See Stop Being Stereotypical below.
- Animal Stereotypes: Combined with National Stereotypes, Practically every involved nationality was given its own animal. Art discusses the concept with his wife, describing a small comic strip where he tells his father he's going to marry a 'frog' (his wife is in fact French), then takes her to the rabbi who says some magic words that turn the frog into a beautiful mouse. Francoise is less than thrilled.
- Acceptable Nationality Targets: The Poles are pigs.
- Cats Are Mean: The Germans are portrayed as cats, the Jews as mice.
- Note that there are Poles and Germans who are portrayed sympathetically throughout the story and Jews, such as Yidl, who are not. Supposedly the pig imagery is due to eating pork.
- One notable panel depicts a married Jew and (non-Jewish) German. Their children are cat/mouse hybrids — essentially, mice with tabby stripes.
- At one point there's a prisoner that Vladek sees at one of the concentration camps, who's trying to convince the guards to let him out ("My son is in the army, I fought in WWI and got medals from the Kaiser"). Vladek sees him as a cat, but the guards see him as a mouse.
- Art Shift: Spiegelman reprints, in its entirety, a comic he drew in college on the subject of his mother's death, about which he felt considerable angst at the time (not to mention uncontrollable blind hostility). Everyone is depicted as human, although the author draws himself wearing his father's concentration-camp uniform.
- The subject comes up because Art's father and stepmother have both read and been shocked by the comic; Mala, though, empathizes with the confusion he depicted, and Vladek says it's "good that you got it out of your system".
- There's another one - though not as drastic - in the chapter where Art draws himself in the present and goes to talk with his psychiatrist. Everyone has a human body but is wearing animal masks.
- At one point, we see the psychatrist's mantle, with a picture of a cat on it. In recognition of our mental gear-shift, there's a note saying "Framed photo of pet cat - really!"
- Ass In A Lion Skin: The mice (Jews) wear pig masks to pass among the general population of pigs (Poles}.
- Better Than It Sounds: It's a comic book about talking animals during the Holocaust. And it won the Pulitzer Prize.
- Breaking The Fourth Wall: At the end of a long monologue to Francoise, Art admits that the whole conversation never happened the way he's shown it — "See, in real life, you would never have let me talk this long without interrupting."
- 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.
- Dirty Communists: Anja and her friends from her student days, before she got married to Vladek. Also, Yidl, the chief tinman: he's unpleasant to Vladek personally for being rich, but isn't remarkably immoral. Nonetheless, Vladek says he's always shunned reds.
- Driven To Suicide: Oh, Anya...
- Everybodys Dead Dave
- Funny Animal: Cruelly subverted. They may look like it, but they are not funny.
- Well the Catskills bit had some pretty amusing moments. Who returns a half-eaten box of cornflakes?
- Furry Confusion: At one point, Vladek and Anja are hiding in a cellar, and Anja panics when a (non-anthropomorphic) rat runs over her hand. Vladek tries to comfort her by telling her it was just a mouse. Later, Art (drawing himself as a man in a mouse-mask) says that his shrink's apartment is overrun with stray dogs and cats, and muses "Can I mention this, or does it completely louse up my metaphor?"
- And shortly after that, and shortly after hearing his father talk about gas chambers for a whole day, making sure to notice that Zyklon-B is an insecticide, Art himself sprays a bunch of mosquitoes without thinking twice about it. Yeah.
- Goomba Stomp: The prisoner who claimed he wasn't Jewish was dispatched by a guard jumping on his neck.
- Jerk Ass: Vladek. In addition to being extraordinarily stingy with money, he nearly has a stroke when his son picks up a black hitchhiker.
- Nightmare Fuel Unleaded: It's about the Holocaust. What do you expect?
- At Auschwitz, when the bodies were pulled out of the gas chambers, they were pushed into ditchs and set on fire. Not all of them were dead.
- Punch Clock Villain: One of the guards at Auschwitz.
- Released To Elsewhere
- Shoot The Shaggy Dog: some Holocaust survivors returned to their homeland just to be killed by their compatriots.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Spiegelman's character laments that his father has all of the hallmarks of a nasty, miserly old Jew and fits the stereotype very well. When challenged, his father says he's tight-fisted only because of the holocaust itself, and he clearly wasn't when he was younger. He's also an exceptional dealmaker, but of course his family were notable bourgeoise (which fellow Jew Yidl hates).
- Tear Jerker: The ending to the second book (and thus the whole story), one of the most powerful moments of the story, when Vladek slowly goes to sleep and tells Art goodbye... but addresses him as "Richieu." The next and final panel shows Vladek's tombstone.
- The Un Favorite: Art is forever compared to his brother, who died in the war.
- Tough Act To Follow
- Values Dissonance: Despite having been a victim of what was probably the worst case of institutionalized racism in the history of mankind, Vladek has a few old-fashioned ideas about race and class.
- This is Truth In Television for many Holocaust survivors - Hannah Arendt, a survivor, makes this point specifically: Why would people think the Holocaust is a learning experience?
- Hannah Arendt was a genius, but she wasn't really a Holocaust survivor. She was in a camp for a couple weeks in France, but she got out and was a refugee in America. Doesn't invalidate her point, though: she was really making a point about other people, as opposed to herself.
- Yandere: Lucia Greenberg, Vladek's ex from before he met Anja, to the point where she tries to sabotage his relationship with Anja.
- Who Would Want To Watch Us: Invoked when Vladek tells Art not to tell the story of Lucia Greenberg because it would add nothing to the overall story of survival and Art says he will not... right at the end of the chapter that features it.
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