Mous, the Holocaust Jewish survivor
Maus tells the story of a Jewish survivor to Holocaust in World War II. A majority may think that Mous aims to denounce the barbarities committed by the Nazis. But we have to highlight another possible interpretation, how Art has the need to create this cartoon to get to understand who his father was.
What is clear is that Mous makes the reader reflect on a subject as complex as the holocaust, representing one of the greatest tragedies of humanity through vignettes in a very sensible and personal way.
In an era where some authors had already set aside children’s themes in the world of comics and had investigated the comic as a legitimate means to delve into autobiographical issues and stories. Art’s work was not a pioneer in this regard, but it became one of the most representative works and the greatest impact worldwide. A work between the underground comic and the graphic novel.
Now, it should be noted that Mous is not a strictly autobiographical gender graphic novel, but also of memory, fiction and history. That addresses very important issues such as love, death, despair, injustice and freedom.
One of the characteristics for which Maus becomes a novel and striking work is for his animal fable, fiction in the representation of the human race as animals. This dehumanization of the characters makes the reader feel a relationship of penalty and similarity with the personal protagonists, who does not sympathize with them. With this, Art gets the story to have a high historical component. It makes anthropomorphism reflect the loss of identity as an individual, and on the other hand, it is a way of highlighting the dehumanization of humanity at that time.
Another aspect that can be highlighted is the incorporation of real documents such as maps, tickets and photos, but adapted and drawn in the comic style. Which reinforces the idea that the reader does not identify or appear with the characters and favor the documentary value of the work.
The work leads you to reflect on the history of the Holocaust, but also on the reasons and effects that this fact had on the life of a survivor, thanks to the narrative jumps of the comic.
In Maus, we can see that there is a perfect synthesis between the image and the word. Spiegelman uses a modulated line drawing style, of dark stroke, using basic iconicity features making this a simple drawing. His idea is that the reader focuses on the whole of the vignette and is more receptive to what the comic is narrating. Its serious and lacking approach makes a more raw reality, using characteristics that give more drama to the image such as black spot reflecting harder lights.
In the eyes of some readers, in some vignettes, it may seem that they are composed of a very loaded drawing, to the point of not appreciating or losing the details of which it is composed. The joint use of dark line, stripes, shadows, and the small size of the bulletThe rooms crammed with prisoners may seem overloaded. Personally, despite this, Maus caught my attention from the first moment by how to illustrate an event of such importance in the way Spiegelman does. The illustrations can have an immense strength, which makes you introduce yourself completely, from the first moment in history.
Personally Mous has seemed a very interesting work, in addition to a plea in the way he has to deal with the issue of Nazism. Most books focus on the hardships suffered by these people, hunger, torture, despair etc., Instead, Maus focuses on the life of after the concentration camps, which happened with the people who managed to survive. He tells us how they managed to leave Auschwitz alive and did not be the same people, as they overcome this tragedy and managed to rebuild their life.
In short, we must know that Mous has generated a stir inside and outside the world of comics. It has become a universal work of vital testimony, which has managed to transcend the comic format to become a work that all people should know and read.
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