Learn To Question 6: Maus
The Holocaust is a hard event to digest when first learning about it because of all the human rights crimes that took place. It’s hard to fully comprehend how anyone alive must be feeling, instead we focus on the numbers of the dead and whether justice was served or how not to repeat this event in the future. I think the comic book Maus has created an effective way of teaching students how to learn about the lives of people who lived through the Holocaust without glorifying them.What most people forget is that one of the most important parts of telling history is the human side, and we usually tell history through a textbook or analyze some charts or graphs. However, art does an amazing job of explaining the human side because art is an expression of our own humanity. Spiegelman specifically uses comic forms to express his humanity using a number of images and an allusion to emphasize his true point behind telling his story of the Holocaust. He also makes it clear to readers how he interprets what he was either told by his father or what he knows. Reading a comic book with visual imagery helps people put themselves into the shoes of those who experienced it. It also helps young people see those who were in The Holocaust as humans. Also many children today enjoy reading comic books, and this would be another way to educate kids on hard topics while keeping them interested. Kids relate more to things that they can see and not have to imagine.
In Maus, one of the great examples that displays how Siegelman used his comic to express the mood is the part of the story where Vladek and Artie began discussing the loss of Vladek’s son and Artie’s brother during the Holocaust. As they talk about his time, Spiegelman uses the greater effect of slowly decreasing time through multiple boxes. On his bike the father began to slow down, and we can see how much of a weight that the discussion of his son that he lost had on him and the events of the Holocaust. I think another great example is part 2 where we learn a little bit more about Artie and who he is. I think after his father died we get a sense that some of the trauma of his father passed down to Artie. He became consumed with so much knowledge of the past that he had felt a sense of emptiness and a lack of connection to a bigger community. Spiegelman makes his thoughts clear not only by words but through dark pencil shades, crowded imagery, and placement of words which end up flowing everywhere. All these little characteristic devices almost made the story come alive.
One of the biggest arguments is that comic books lack seriousness and cannot fully capture the intensity of what happened to people who experienced the Holocaust. However, I think that the comic book Maus is not meant for that specific reason. Maus is meant to tell a story of somebody who experienced the Holocaust. It's not to gripe on what the Nazis did, talk about the number of deaths, or ask for repentance from the Nazi. Rather this comic is more about telling the story of Vladek and how his life had impacted Artie's. I think this is a memoir to Vladek, and this piece and many more are important for future generations to see because it's not about the event that took place but it's about the people. Unfortunately, today a lot of humans miss the point and I think we need to start emphasize that people are more important than numbers.