I don’t think I was the only one jarred by the scene on page 98 when Vladek shows himself to be quite the racist. I’ve tried figuring out how this fits into the book: is this just another one of Vladek’s less-than-desirable traits? Is it human nature to distrust people different from you (as someone posited on twitter)? Can a lifetime of racism come from one bad experience as a person in a new country? I’ve thought about this a bit, and I think all of the above come into play, but that Art included this in the story as a storytelling device. We’ve discussed the role animals play in Maus, and in Maus II we’ve seen some new animals enter (the American dogs who finish out the Tom and Jerry chain of mouse, cat, dog) as well as the familiar pigs (Poles), Deer (Swedes), and Frogs (French). These animals all relate to each other in different ways (or at least they relate to the mice and cats in different ways), and in some ways they help to mirror the racism we see Vladek exhibit.
There was more than just this instance where it seemed Art was making a point about dehumanizing others, as well as senseless killing in Maus II and I believe as he moved on with the story, he wanted to investigate more of the reasons on how people can do these things to fellow living creatures. I think a good way of understanding why Vladek’s racism was included comes from many of the relationships we’ve seen between the Jews and Poles in Maus and Maus II. The pigs don’t see Jews the same way the cats do in Maus. In fact, some Pigs are more than willing to help hide the mice when things get bad. We can see the same type of dynamic in the car when Francoise says to Vladek, “That’s outrageous! How can you, of all people, be such a racist! You talk about blacks the way the Nazis talked about Jews! (99). But Francoise has it wrong: the connection here isn’t so much between the Nazis and the Jews, but the Poles and the Jews. When people are afraid, they can become wary of others, and an early encounter in New York helped turn Vladek into a racist much the same way many Poles became hateful of Jews because of fear and desperate times. It can be far too easy to blame one’s problems on other people, and this happens to both the pigs and Vladek in Maus.
I think the situation in the car, with Vladek afraid and Francoise and Art offering a safe haven in the form of a ride, helps show the way this dynamic can play out. Some of the poles provided safe havens, others sold the Jews out to the Nazis, who then took that racism to the absolute extreme in Auschwitz and other camps.
Art tackles this concept as well. On page 74 we see him sitting on the porch with Francoise, just one page after the horrible scene in which we get the description of the people unlucky enough to go to the gas chambers, the ones burned alive (73). Francoise says “it’s so peaceful here at night. It’s almost impossible to believe Auschwitz ever happened” and then Art is bitten by a mosquito, “these damn bugs are eating me alive” (74). That’s when he grabs the aerosol spray can and hits the bug mid-flight, leaving two dead bugs on the porch as they go inside.
Here we see Art’s juxtaposition between Vladek’s fear of black people, and the Nazi goal of exterminating all the Jews, including with the use of pesticides. I doubt Vladek would kill a black person as indiscriminately as the Nazis killed Jews or as Art killed bugs, and the same can be said for many of the Poles in the book. Here it seems, Art is trying to drive home the issues of racism, while also showing just how far removed he really is from the holocaust, because it seems he doesn’t even realize the irony of spraying bugs with pesticide because they are pesky, which very much mirrors what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Holocaust.
Art’s racism is more Polish. It is wary and serves to maintain his self-preservation, much the same way the pigs are often depicted in Maus. Contrasted with Art’s indescriminate killing of a mosquito, we see the other face of racism, which has less to do with survival and more to do with blind hatred for pests, much the way the Nazis are depicted in Maus. Of course, killing a mosquito does not make one a racist, but it does provide a little more depth at the issues of othering that come up in Maus, and the different dynamic between the Jews and Poles and the Jews and Germans, especially the Nazis.