Right off the bat, I want to say that I read both books through last night, so there may be “spoilers,” but more than likely they’ll be thematic, not specific. I don’t think there’s much to spoil about the holocaust.
Approaching Maus here on the blog is a little intimidating, considering both the gravity of its subject matter and the amount of interpretation its already undergone critically, so bear with me. A lot has been said already since the work’s publication about Spiegelman’s decision to visually “categorize” different racial and religious groups as different animals. Many early readers were taken aback by it. However, it becomes obvious through reading the text that this typing, (an apparent manifestation of racist attitudes similar to the Nazis own propaganda of alienation concerning the Jews) is intended to dissolve through the reading, to satirical effect. Spiegelman himself has stated that the decision to portray Jews as mice was based on the Nazi perception of Jews as vermin. Co-opting this device, then, he uses racial branding to the exact opposite effect and intention of that of the Nazis. There are fractures of solidarity in all of the “animal” types represented in Maus. As a broad example some non-Jewish Poles are portrayed as sympathetic to the Jews, some flatly anti-semitic. Now, jumping ahead to next Tuesday’s reading… (sorry.)
(MAYBE KIND OF A SPOILER? UP NEXT)
Perhaps the most telling example of how problematic (and arbitrary) Spiegelman finds this typing is at the very beginning of book two, when he is talking to his French wife about what animal type she should be represented as. They argue, but in the process her conversion is brought up. Apparently, she converted to Judaism strictly in an attempt to please Vladek. This process is jokingly referred to by Spiegelman in the panels: “So, you and I go to a mouse rabbi. He says a few magic words and ZAP! …. By the end of the page the frog has turned into a beautiful mouse! (12)” This section highlights the generally arbitrary nature of racial and religious typing, while showing Spiegelman’s own conflict about the way in which he represents these “types.”
Nothing spoiled here. In fact, it helps to peak ahead to Book II to emphasize that Spiegelman is well aware of these stereotypes he employs — and well aware of their limitations. In Book I we see Vladek using a pig “mask” to pass as a non-Jew Pole on the train, another example where Spiegelman (and his father before him) subvert the Nazis’ strict categorization of “races.”