Representation in Maus

In Spiegelman’s Maus, he explores the idea of representation and the meanings that visual representations convey in his graphic novel.  One particular, visually dense chapter is “Auschwitz (Time Flies)” (201) in which Spiegelman describes the guilt that has consumed his character (Art) throughout the process of writing his novel.  One interesting facet of these panels is that all the characters appear to be humans wearing animal masks instead of being portrayed as actual animals like in the rest of the novel.  In this way, he brings the reader into the present and makes it clear that he is using animal imagery in a metaphorical way, but that he doesn’t want to compromise or undermine the meaning of these animal images by dismissing them in the description his own life.  It also speaks to the way that these connotations last throughout generations and how he still considers himself, or wants to be viewed as a “mouse” as offspring of a “mouse” just like the German reporter is drawn as a “cat” like German Nazi predecessors.  In this section, Spiegelman dismisses the idea that writing this novel was in any way “cathartic” but rather the complete opposite experience.  It is a common idea that fiction is written as an emotional outlet or as a way to express a specific message, but Art claims that he had no message to tell and that catharsis was not his intention, but rather that as a writer, he has a responsibility to tell his father’s story.  The symbolism of the mask is also interesting because masks are commonly used as disguises to be seen as something different that what is beneath it.  The knowledge that the reader has about Vladek and Art is only what Art writes about in his novel, we have the dialogue that he chose and the preconceived notions about what it means to be a mouse and a Jew, and the relationship that there might be between the two.  Similarly, the relationship between father and son is seemingly strained from the preconceived “ideal” relationship, which we know due to the author’s recounting of heated dialogues between Art and Vladek.  The idea of metafiction is exemplified in these panels in which it is clear that one man’s viewpoint has created the personal lens with which the reader views this story, and not only that, but he admits, even embraces the personal, yet accurate, nature of his storytelling.  This realization forms a distance between the author and us, as it shows how we cannot view this story as a cathartic outlet because that is not what the author intends, and it is also not an immaculate, detailed and completely factual account of the entire event, it is personal.  It is simply a story about something that happened, and the emotional response that we as readers form after reading this story is revealing of our own perspectives regarding the Holocaust.