I really enjoyed Maus. Not the horrible parts of course.
But because it was a story of a holocaust survivor and his life as retold
through his son, who did it accurately as possible. Allowing for his father to
be real, mind you his father was a bit of an ass and racist, how he is still a
racist after the holocaust, I don’t know. But that’s what makes the story so
good, to often than not were told these survival stories like the person was
good that’s why they survived. Not because they were lucky and that them
actually having to be an ass saved them. We tend to throw out their humanity
and replace them as something heroic. So in the end, by taking away their
humanity we make the horror more palatable. Which it should never be, you can’t
shy away from something like that, honesty is better in that situation than
dressing it up.
Spiegelman did this very well,
although he made the horror easier to read by it being told through animals. He
didn’t shy away though; he still allowed what his father remembered to be told.
Which is very important, Spiegelman’s consistent honesty keeps us engaged and
brings us to an understanding of the horrors his father went through and how
they still affected him. Maus for me really is the most honest
story written about the holocaust that we have, its visual and text driven
narrative really helps the reader. We aren’t overwhelmed by either the visual
or the textual. With this we have a well-balanced story that really puts us in
the situation and realize that truly to survive was from luck and from being
intelligent. That what Spiegelman shows us is that you aren’t a hero if you
survive or die, that really you can’t choose what comes your way. You can only
prepare for it and hope for the best. That the horrors of the holocaust are not
to be ignored that destroying or ignoring what happened to the people there is
just murdering them all over again.
