Language:
English
Year of publication:
1992
Titel der Quelle:
American Literary History
Angaben zur Quelle:
4,1 (1992) 110-128
Keywords:
Cantor, Jay.
;
Spiegelman, Art,
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Humor
Abstract:
Art Spiegelman's "Maus" (1986) is a "novelized cartoon" about his parents' experiences in Poland during the Holocaust - in hiding, in the ghetto, and in Auschwitz. Although they survived and emigrated to America, his mother later committed suicide and his father lived tormented by his memories and by his survival, as he relates to his son in this book. The Jews in "Maus" appear as mice, the Nazis as cats, and the Poles as pigs. Gives two reasons for this depiction: that Nazi ideology itself was dehumanizing; and that the Jews in fact were like mice for whom the Nazis were terrifying cats, and many Poles were, to the Jews, like pigs. States that it is precisely the tension between the animal drawings and the references to them as Nazis, Jews, and Poles that makes "Maus" work. To live posthistorically demands a reckoning with the full burden of the past.
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