Early on in Maus, before the Holocaust story begins, Vladek describes his past before the war. Vladek recalls that “I was at that time, young. And really a nice, handsome boy.” Vladek also describes the effect this has on the opposite sex: “I had a lot of girls what I didn’t even know would run after me…people always told me I looked just like Rudolph Valentino” (13). In a similar instance, when Lucia falls to the ground as Vladek leaves he describes himself as having “strong legs” (20).
One issue I have with these passages is that in some ways, they remind me of unreliable narrators I’ve encountered in fiction. While Vladek is certainly not as delusional about his past and present as, say, Brett Easton Ellis’s Patrick Bateman, or as willfully dishonest as Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects, I still feel a familiar hint that someone isn’t being quite honest–or at the very least is playing up their past a bit. This led me to think about reliable narrators, their role and the importance of honesty in a story like Maus.
One issue that comes to play is the role of two narrators. Maus is a strange combination of memoir and non-fiction told through the comic medium. The memoir is all Art’s, a story about father and son. The non-fiction is the mediated story of Vladek’s survival, told to (and recounted/structured/painted) by Art. One of the only novels I can immediately think of that uses multiple levels of narration to tell a story is House of Leaves and without getting too much into that work, let’s just say it’s a mess when it comes to questions about narrator reliability: none of the novel’s three narrative threads are ever presented as completely factual or without their own holes.
Of course, in a story that recounts the horrors of Holocaust Poland, we must rely on our narrators to tell us the truth. A story with such serious subject matter must be told with a high degree of honesty lest it undermine the importance of its message about past atrocities and man’s ability to dehumanize, target and exterminate other men. Our emotional response relies upon this honesty.
It’s also important to note that while I questioned Vladek’s reliability in those early stages, I never felt those notions return as I read on. I wonder if a result of having a mediated story is that reliability always becomes slightly muddled. Or are we just seeing what Art describes on page 131 when he says “…it’s something that worries me about the book I’m doing about him…In some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew.” Perhaps, when it comes to his pre-war past, Vladek really isn’t the most reliable narrator. Does that unreliability vanish when he talks about surviving the war because the events are too traumatic to embellish? It’s pretty clear to me that Art is just trying to create an honest representation of his father, even if the end result will only reinforce some stereotypes. All of this helps reinforce Art’s reliability as a narrator. Still, I sometimes wonder about Vladek’s reliability in those early sections, which has me paying close attention to notions of reliability throughout the text.
So now, I leave it to you: Did anyone else question reliability at any point during the reading? Is it even possible for a memoir/non-fiction text to play with notions of unreliability, or does that immediately place a work in the realm of fiction? Have you seen other examples where mediated re-tellings have hints of unreliability? Or am I seeing something that isn’t there and just being jealous that Vladek was such a ladies’ man in his younger days?
Jared, this is something I spent a lot of time thinking about as well. In fact, I’m going to take a break from examining controversial graphic novel elements for now (wink) to highlight how much I love Spiegelman’s portrayal of his relationship with his father.
I recently attended a workshop with nonfiction essayist Michael Greenberg (http://michaelgreenberg.org/). In it, he discussed how people struggle with the way they are depicted in other people’s writing–simply because it isn’t their own perspective. Most of the time, upset subjects aren’t really concerned about the lack of veracity in a piece; they’re simply upset that it isn’t their perspective.
This is unavoidable.
It is this same struggle over memory and construction that Brown talks about so well in “Of Mice and Memory” from this week’s reading, concluding early on that every way we choose “to tell a story is a kind of censorship” (94). Obviously, this is most exemplified through Spiegelman’s usage of animal “masks” throughout the story, a decision to reverse anthropomorphize that has equally unavoidable moral connotations. Even if this depiction makes us uncomfortable at times, I feel like it also forces us to confront the facts of the writing process (especially those of nonfiction!) After all, every time writers depict someone—including themselves—in their work, there is a hell of a lot of decision making going on, whether it’s overt as Maus or not. It’s for good reason that Gaiman played around with the near god-like power that writers have over their stories and the judgments therein!
Imposing order onto memories is an incredibly slippery thing, as evidenced by Vladek’s propensity for jumping around dates and for trying to locate his wife’s old journals (which, of course, he eventually confesses that he burned). In his analysis, Brown later goes on to call it the “perennial obstacle facing any oral historian” (96). In the same interview, Spiegelman himself compares it to working with “flickering shadows. It’s all you can hope for” (98). What I think Maus does so well is to acknowledge that “flickering” without losing a single bit of the immediacy of the story at hand—a very rare feat, indeed.
Spiegelman constantly wrestles with the construction of identity throughout Maus, with a candor that I find altogether disarming. He’s not afraid to show the debate over portraying Vladek’s first romantic relationship (25) or to confess that his father is coming across like a caricature at times (133). It’s an interesting look into the writing process, the potential responsibilities of which take a sharp turn toward the uber-serious when Spiegelman’s early comic’s brutally personal depiction of his relationship with both his parents leads to some quite uncomfortable conversations.
I said earlier that I think Maus handles the delicate balance between acknowledging the “unreliable witness” while still telling the truth of the story very well. I’ll go a step further and say that in today’s post-modern world, I wouldn’t have it any other way. (Sidenote: is it really a post-modern sensibility? “What IS truth?” Pilate famously sighed, mimicking the philosophers of old, and it’s a question that continues to rattle through the centuries.) Anyway, I definitely feel like Spiegelman’s decision to acknowledge the “flickering” within the text itself was the right choice—and adroitly handled.
@Jared This isn’t exactly in response to your post/questions at the end of your post, but to the line you wrote about how “our emotional response relies upon this honesty.” Do you really think the impact of the story is present mainly in the fact that it recounts true events? Or rather the impact of the story is felt because we as readers believe these events occurred to the narrator as the narrator says they did? It’s interesting, because I think in some ways Spiegelman has actually depicted an atrocity in Maus that stands by itself outside of its source material (i.e. the Holocaust). By using mice, cats, and pigs as characters in the narrative, Spiegelman has in some ways removed the entirely non-fictional aspect of the work. I guess I look at like you said, by using the mice Spiegelman assumes a “new personality,” a new personality that doesn’t necessarily need to be true (or entirely reliable) to be meaningful. If the Holocaust had never occurred, or if Spiegelman’s father had never actually endured these hardships, I wouldn’t find the story any less heartbreaking.
(I guess pressing the tab key somehow posted my comment halfway through, so let me finish…)
I think my emotional response to the story relies more on the events taking place themselves than on whether or not I believe that V or Art are reporting events exactly as they occurred. When Vladek says to Art on page 84 “When I think of them now, it still makes me cry” about the Cohn, Pferfer, and the other being hanged, I don’t question the validity of the statement instead of being affected by the sentiment. And later on page 133 when Art is showing his father the sketches of page 89 that he has drawn and Vladek says again “Yes. Still it makes me cry!” I don’t immediately wonder if Vladek is being overly indulgent in his sympathy for the people hanged or whether he really does cry when he think of it. Instead I see this repetition as a sign that Vladek was witness to things that would make one cry to this very day.
Maybe I’m more of a sap than you for not questioning Vladek’s reliability as a witness, but it just never occurred to me to question something like that. What actually changes if Vladek isn’t reliable? Does the story have any less of an impact if Vladek embellished a little in his recounting, or if Art didn’t report the retelling exactly? You said that the importance of honesty in this story was our emotional response relied on it. What if (like me) the emotional response of the reader doesn’t rely on the reliability of the witness or narrator? Do you think there is any other reason that Vladek’s reliability matters?
@Kristine, It’s not that I think the impact of the story relies on the honesty so much as I think that if I was questioning a narrator’s reliability throughout the text–for example, wondering if something really happened to Vladek or if he is embellishing and telling fibs for a better story, then I feel that the emotional impact would be diminished. The story would still pull at my heartstrings, for sure, but it wouldn’t have the impact it does when I trust the person telling me the story. I’d be distracted and maybe even a little disgusted by a narrator who is spinning yarns about his experience during the holocaust. I think the reason I have an emotional response, is because, like you say, it’s the events taking place. But if I was constantly questioning a narrator about those events, it would ultimately distract from the reading.
While I’m happy to concede that Vladek’s memory is as susceptible to distortions as any of ours, I don’t think his reliability is ever questioned. When it is, it’s Art who questions it; he is our index to the reliability of Vladek’s story.
I can’t tell from your comment if you really think that Vladek is “spinning yarns” or if you are simply saying that that kind of deliberately embellished storytelling about the Holocaust would be off-putting.
In any case, going back to Art as our index of reliability, we aren’t ever lead to believe that Art himself thinks that Vladek is embellishing his tale, are we?
I think we all wonder whenever we read a piece of nonfiction narrative how honest the narrator can be, even when he’s trying his hardest to be honest. Memory is fallible, and it reminds me of that Watchmen line that the future gets darker but the past gets brighter all the time. While thinking back to the Holocaust wouldn’t give you the warm and fuzzies, thinking back to the time before it would definitely be affected by a more nostalgic notion of the past. In our other reading for this class, Speigelman said that he checked his father’s story against other survivor stories and interviews and wrote the work under those considerations. That’s all we can really ask, I think…