Maus - Art Spiegelman

Buenas noches amigos, hoy les quiero compartir un trabajo de mi propia autoría, "My own Opinion".

Este ensayo trata sobre una breve y muy entretenida novela gráfica del autor-ilustrador americano, Art Spiegelman. Espero les guste:

“My own opinion”

Introduction

This thesis proposes a semiotic analysis of Maus, a graphic novel created by Art Spiegelman, which narrates the story of Vladek Spielgeman's life (Art's father and survivor of the Jewish Holocaust) before, during and after the Nazi Germany. The characters are anthropomorphic creatures (with an animal head and a human body): the Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, the Americans are depicted as dogs while the Polish are shown as pigs. The choice of hybrid animals might offer multiple readings, for example, the absence or denial of sentimentalism and of the classic confrontation: victim- murderer. 

The analysis of this thesis should be interpreted as one possible reading of Maus that will allow the reader to reflect on the Jewish Holocaust, a complex topic which can be developed and discussed in comic strips in a serious and original way, despite the fact that the comic presupposes the existence of fiction.

Historical Context

In the frame-tale timeline in the narrative present that begins in 1978 in New York City, Spiegelman talks with his father Vladek about his Holocaust experiences, gathering material for the Maus project he is preparing. In the narrative past, Spiegelman depicts these experiences, from the years leading up to World War II to his parents' liberation from the Nazi concentration camps. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, and the absence of his mother, who committed suicide when he was 20. Her grief-stricken husband destroyed her written accounts of Auschwitz. 

Graphic Novel 

The book uses a minimalist drawing style and displays innovation in its pacing, structure, and page layouts.

A three-page strip also called "Maus" that he made in 1972 gave Spiegelman an opportunity to interview his father about his life during World War II. The recorded interviews became the basis for the graphic novel, which Spiegelman began in 1978. 

He serialized Maus from 1980 until 1991 as an insert in Raw, an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly, who also appears in Maus. 

Maus was one of the first graphic novels to receive significant academic attention in the English-speaking world. 

It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize (the most recognized award in letters).

This article intends to analyze the comic book, Maus, from a double perspective: first, from his belonging to the artistic production linked to the Holocaust, since, as we will see, it is not a creative theme more, but of a subject that by its nature has generated notable controversies about the possibility of its representation through art. And secondly, from the remarkable creative and innovative contribution to the history of the comic as a genre that supposed its appearance.

From both points of view the publication of Maus means a break with respect to tradition: on the one hand it represents the use of a popular medium such as the comic to deal with a matter of very complex and deep moral and ethical resonances, and on the other the irruption of history and reality in a genre, until then, fundamentally focused on fiction. Both were at the time controversial aspects, and in both Maus it has been established as a precedent, so the historical relevance of this book has not, since the time of its publication, done more than increase.

Semiotic Analysis (Animal symbolism)

Up to this point, only the role of anthropomorphic animals as a crude indicator of the discriminatory reality that was lived at the time is shown, but now is when I will try to explain the artistic-expressive connotation of each of the species used as a tool to represent the hard social stigma that was lived not so long ago.

Jews are mice, as they were seen and considered the plague that infected Germany; the Germans are cats, just the predators by nature of the mice, they, the Nazis, showed themselves as the saviors, the ones in charge of cleaning the world of the "Jewish plague"; Americans are represented as dogs, always highlighting their superiority in strength and loyalty; and the Poles are shown as pigs, In what I believe is a portrayal of a nation that that would turn their backs on the vulnerable at the first sight of danger. Pigs function “en masse”, they do not react as individuals to defend what they think is right, they just think of themselves and their needs.

Conclusion 

I believe that the portrayal of the characters nationalities is not something random, but it is something that the artist did purposefully to enhance the symbolism of the graphic novel.

Muchas Gracias.

Atentamente, Thommy Shelby.