I just finished reading Maus, a two part graphic novel that will haunt me for a long time. Maus is as much a story about how Vladek Spiegelman survived the holocaust as it is about Art Spiegelman's troubled (and at times bordering on the Abe Simpson/Homer Simpson dynamic humour) relationship with his father.
Vladek Spiegelman was a miser to such an absurd degree that if he did not have an unpleasant history, he would make for a great comic character.
Of course, Vladek IS a comic character. Graphic novels ARE costly, deep, dark 'mature' comic books.
The terrible beauty of Maus lies in its powerful imagery, it's tender and frank portrayal of life in those ill-fated times. Believe me, no book or movie captures the desolate picture of a heap of dead bodies than that of a comic book artiste wearing a Maus mask and sitting atop a pile of dead mice.
In the book, the Jews are Mice, the Germans are Cats, the Americans Dogs and the Polish are Pigs. Perhaps one of the reasons Spiegelman chose to portray Jews as mice was that one of the most enduring cartoon characters of the past century is a Mouse drawn by a jew cartoonist (the present day Vladek hopes Art becomes as famous as that cartoonist). Art Spiegelman chronicles in parallel how Vladek Spiegelman survived the holocaust and how he had to coax out the story from his father bit by bit. It starts with Vladek becoming the son-in-law of an affluent businessman and thus becoming a rich Jewish businessman himself. He is then lead through a series of multiple arrests, escapes, survivals and betrayals. The Nazi are not to be trusted, not once do they come through with their fake promises, except to kill and plunder. He survived somehow. He had luck and he used every skill he knew to his advantage. He didn't end up as smoke through the chimney of Auschwitz, but he wasn't spared the horror either.
His wife Anja, his constant companion until they got separated in Auschwitz wasn't as strong as him, but had great faith in his ability to bring sporadic flashes of light in the darkness. The couple lost their first son in the war, he was poisoned bu his aunt who thought it better to commit suicide than to be taken to the gas chambers.
The present day Vladek complains of how the companies that helped build Germans their holocaust machines still flourish (It's a commonly known fact that a well established cell-phone company of today used to build gas chambers for Herr Hitler). He also fetters about every morsel of food left over, when Art was a kid he was force fed everything on his plate, never allowed to leave any food. Vladek saves everything, even things he finds in the garbage like a cut telephone wire.
Living with the old Vladek Spiegelman is a comic nightmare.
Being a good businessman, Vladek trades everything from cigarettes to his ability to speak in english in exchange for small pieces of life, he escapes death every time, and not always by skill.
Ironically at the end of the story we see Vladek being suspicious of a black man, a lot like the way the Nazi were wary of the Jews. HE gives no justification, no explanation for this behaviour. Vladek Spiegelman too was a racist.
The story ends with Vladek gently falling asleep while finishing his tale, telling Art of his reunion with Anja after the war. He says, And they lived happily ever after...now let me sleep. Enough stories.
For him, perhaps there was no happily ever after. The holocaust scarred him forever and turned him into an obsessive paranoid miser.
Anja committed suicide in 1968. She didn't leave a suicide note.
Vladek Spiegelman suffered multiple heart attacks, he died in 1982.
Maus won the Pulitzer prize in literature in 1992.
