Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” describes Art’s sessions with his father, Vladek Spiegelman, who tells him the story of his experiences as a Jew during the Nazis’ invasion of Poland in WW2. As someone who experienced the war himself, Vladek has the greatest Credibility possible, a first-person account. Art shares Vladek’s story of his engagement before the war, his call to action following the 1939 invasion of Warsaw, his capture by the Nazi soldiers, his time in the POW camp, and his liberation from the camp, all in the first half of this novel. Vladek’s incredible story, combined with Art’s artistic talent, got “Maus” the first ever Pulitzer Prize awarded to a graphic novel.
“Maus” was written for a post-Holocaust world. The purpose, as is the case with most accounts of war, is to bear witness. Vladek’s story aims to give the average civilian an idea of how traumatic war truly is. “Maus” was published in 1991, 52 years after the German invasion. Expectedly, memories of the event had been slipping away ever since it happened, and Art aimed to use his father’s story to remind society of the dangers that it holds.
This being a graphic novel, the rhetorical devices appear, for the most part, in picture form. The main use of rhetoric is the extended metaphor of Jews being depicted as mice (hence the title, “Maus”). The imagery used shows the Jews as a helpless minority at the mercy of not only the Nazi soldiers, but eventually their neighbors. This imagery is also used to depict the Nazi soldiers as pigs and cats. The lack of any human pictures conveys the dehumanizing nature of war. The imagery is so effective because of how well it utilizes our tendencies to associate the assigned animals with certain characteristics. This is aided by Art’s ability to depict emotion through facial expression on the creatures.
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