The Effectiveness Of Using Animals In Spite Of Humans In Art Spiegelman’s Graphic Novel Maus
The pulitzer prize winning graphic novel MAUS, illustrated and written by Art Spiegelman, depicts humans in the form of animals as he follows the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's’ Europe, and his son (Art), a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story, and history itself.
In personifying animals, Spiegelman taps into the central spurring point of the Nazi killing project: dehumanization. He takes reference from ethnic slurs and stereotypes to draws a concise distinction within the Nazi dominated hierarchy, spoon feeding us an agonizing yet exhilarating story while being mindful of the typical human’s hesitation to witness suffering. Spiegelman effectively draws direct reference to the role of dehumanization in the holocaust by using racist animal ethnic stereotypes to portray certain races.
The long withstanding anti-semitic view of characterizing Jews as “vermin of the earth” and Polish as “disgusting, filthy, and greedy pigs”) is taken very literally in Spiegelman’s graphic novel as he portrays these said races as their respective stereotypical counterpart. Dehumanization played a huge role in allowing Hitler to effectively spread hateful rhetoric and propaganda. In said articles, Jews were regularly depicted as rats. Posters of killing the vermin and making them flee were part of the overarching metaphor. In fact, dehumanization was the very the heart of the nazi killing project itself. In portraying humans as animals, Spiegelman taps into the intrinsic nature of the holocaust itself: hatred. It has long been known that during the holocaust Jews were often characterized as vermin, as the Nazis considered them such.
The Jews were in fact, treated like scum, so Spiegelman in turn, drew them as the scum of the earth. The representation of humans as animals also allows readers to draw a clear distinction of hierarchy within the races; assuming that the reader does not know much about the holocaust, he/she/they is still able to derive a quick conclusion regarding the hierarchal standings of each race given their animal. Cats are predatory creatures, luxurious and revered in many cultures. Mice are usually considered as disease ridden and often exterminated. The traditional cat and mouse allegory takes its familiar route: the cat and mouse affair mirrored in the German hunting of Jews. Poles are drawn as pigs, whom are considered to be lazy, filthy, greedy, and all in all unsavoury. Simply drawing the characters as human removes the relevancy of the situation; the Jews and Poles had to be depicted as something of a lower echelon, while the Germans were the ‘supreme’ Aryan race. There was no way for Spiegelman to be more clear and distinct in his motive than to draw them as mice, pigs, and cats respectively. The truth and agonies of the holocaust is difficult to accept, much less read about. Provided you are not a sadist, humans flinch from the thought of harm.
The portrayal of humans in animal form is an effective way of feeding us the truth in a more caricatural, accessible way. On Pg 119, Vladek tells Haskel and Milock about his encounter with a German that nearly “blew his brains out”. Milock comments that the German “kills some poor Jew, just for fun”. While the statement in itself, is abhorrent, we take it more lightly. In a way, there is a sense of removal from the situation as the characters are illustrated as animals and not people. Paired with the graphic novel formatting, the book also appeals to children and those of younger ages. Provided the characters in the book had been illustrated as human, the audience range would have been reduced. There is a profound vignette of four mice being hung in the middle of a city square. In a similar instance a Jew is swung by the ankle against a brick wall like a rag doll; the point of contact showers the room with blood. If the scene had been drawn with humans, it would have been too much to handle for young readers.
By using animals as humans, Spiegelman cleverly alludes to the degradation that took place during the holocaust. By doing so, he allows readers to draw a clear hierarchical differentiation between the different races. He also opens up the accessibility of his graphic novel to many different audiences by portraying the story in a more caricatural way.
