I picked up the binding containing the two volumes of Maus and took off the plastic wrapping. I had never heard of this work and certainly was surprised when opening to the first page to find it was a graphic novel. I settled down to read in my room, with the night’s basketball game on in the background and roommates coming and going around me… I hardly looked up again until both of the books were done.
The harsh realities of the Holocaust and the vividly portrayed images were emblazoned at the forefront of my mind. Still, I could not believe how Art Spiegelman was able to illustrate- literally illustrate – a story of such magnitude and importance. A story that included horrible devastation and human suffering, as well as the simple joys in life that enabled victims to survive. Intertwined within the story is Art’s own story of writing the book and the relationship he and his father shared. The two stories migrate back and forth between each other nearly seamlessly, without any inhibitions or difficulties.
Spiegelman’s Maus is unlike anything else I have ever read and I truly enjoyed reading it. The stories he tells strike a note of humor in the language used and pictures shown just as easily as they strike nausea at the inhumane treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. He describes the travails he suffers through merely trying to get his father to focus on the story rather than babbling on about his wife, his money and his health. How those problems are on the same page with beatings, murders and slavery demonstrate such a harsh contrast in lifestyle and circumstance. This contrast makes Spiegelman finally be able to appreciate his father and what he went through.
On the surface it may appear that Maus has little in common with another recent read, The Color of Water. However, both stories show a child’s struggle to learn about his parents, to in turn, learn about himself. The two also share the imagery and elaborately portrayed emotion that only a personal touch can provide. Fiction is fine in its own right, and certainly has the ability to interest and intrigue readers. However, true stories have the power to completely engross an audience with powerful emotion and vivid detail. One can imagine his or her own family going through the same thing and sympathize with the real-life characters.
This is the reason why reality TV makes up such a large portion of television programming today. People enjoy watching, reading and hearing about other people and their problems, their ups and downs, their lives. The stories of a Black Jewish man struggling with his identity and the past of his mother keep our attention. In the same way, a family and an entire religion torn apart by a war hungry, racist machine hits close to home. The aspect I loved most about these books was far and away the authors own personal input. In The Color of Water, McBride talks about his upbringing and says, “Being mixed is like that tingling feeling you have in your nose just before you sneeze-you’re waiting for it to happen but it never does” (262). He describes all of his experiences so vividly and lucidly that the reader can truly feel what the author is describing. McBride talks about how surprised he is to find understanding in “old southern crackers who talked with southern twangs” and says that it “says a lot about this religion- Judaism-” (224). He is searching for his mother’s past but in the process he starts to find out about himself. The hunt for information on his mother sheds light and yields learning about who he actually is.
The more one looks into these books the more one finds they share in common. In The Color of Water, James McBride switches narrators between himself and his mother from chapter to chapter. Each talk of their own personal struggles and both stories relate to and help complete the other. Without reading the mother’s story it would be impossible to see why James and his family was brought up the way they were. Yet, without the retelling of James’ own childhood and the problems he encountered with family, religion, education and writing the book, one would have no perspective on why his mother’s history was important. His mother’s past was a well kept secret that he had to painstakingly pry out piece by piece, over the course of years, so he could understand himself and be able to finally write his story.
McBride states that “in order to find out who I was, I had to find out who my mother was” (266). This is one of the major themes that defines both of these works. Art even says in the beginning of Maus II that he “can’t even make sense out my relationship with my father…how am I supposed to make any sense out of Auschwitz?” (14). Both authors struggle with their own identities and their own lives and in turn relate the struggles of their families. It is these struggles that enable the authors to discover their true identity.
Spiegelman also needs to pry a parent’s history out for a story and to make sense out of his own life. The story starts on page six with his father scolding Art, “If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week…then you could see what it is, friends.” This quote would have no grounds and no power had the narration of his own story and his trials in life had not followed. Spiegelman wants to know his family’s story not just for the book but for his own personal knowledge. He needs to know about himself, he needs to know about his father and his mother and why they were the way they were.
In Maus II, Art says that he even feels “some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did” (16). Art’s problems seem so minuscule in relation to his father’s life, however, for Art that doesn’t make any of his problems easier. His books portray the aggravation he has in attaining information about his father, but it is this information that in turn, makes Spiegelman appreciate his father. Both Spiegelman and McBride struggle in their quests to find out more about their parents and about themselves, while encountering their own stumbles and problems on the way.
Spiegelman switches between different times, settings and voices, just as McBride does in The Color of Water. Art tells his own story of a strained relationship with his father; while Vladek narrates the story of his personal Holocaust. Art heard the story first hand and tape recorded it, and when reading it in the book it feels as if I am right there listening for the first time with him. The two stories play off each other and add meaning to one another. In both books, the author- the son- uses personal input to shed light on the oftentimes tragic story of his parent.
Both stories also revolve around religion, specifically Judaism. I am also Jewish and my family originates from Poland and Russia. I was brought up Jewish my whole life, unlike McBride who suffered from “a penetrating loneliness” because he was still a mystery to himself (229). Still, I have had to come to my own terms with it. I have never been prouder to be Jewish, as I sport a Star of David tattoo on my arm. I am comfortable with my own level of participation in the rituals of the religion. Still, an Orthodox Jew would look down on my showing of pride as hypocritical, because they believe any tattoo or alteration to the natural body is a wrong doing.
Religion is different for everybody, and as these authors find their own place in life and religion, I too am looking for mine. The fact that the Jewish people as a whole have survived and forged on is what makes me want to flash our symbol on my arm. I am not forced to wear a tattooed identification number on my arm in place of a name. I am not forced to show a shamed face as I wear a yellow star on my sleeve to make me stand out. I am standing here ready to slap my religion in the face of anybody who tries to deny me the right to be who I am.
Obviously Spiegelman’s story of the Holocaust has much personal meaning to me. It hurts to have to read about your people being persecuted for believing in a certain religion. Certainly one of the reasons my Grandfather joined World War II was so he could possibly have a hand in the liberation of his kind. To this day my father will not buy a single product of German origin. (Popular companies including Mercedes Benz and BMW produced the weapons and poisons that fueled the slaughter of the Jews).
During my childhood I had to learn by trial and error how my father felt about the subject. It was not until one day that I suggested a BMW 5 series would make a cool car to lease, that I learned my father’s self-imposed ban on the product. It was not until I put myself into my Grandfather’s shoes, and imagined what it possibly could have felt like to be a young man fighting a war against people who wanted him extinguished from existence, that I learned what true bravery and courage was. One day I asked who I was named after (traditionally all Jewish children are named after dead relatives). I discovered that my middle name was Max, after my Great Uncle who escaped persecution in Europe riding hundreds of miles on horseback. In learning about my family’s heritage and their own struggles with identity and Judaism, I have shaped my own values and gained pride for my religion and my past.
In the same way, Art comes to understand why his father is so frugal and untrusting. McBride learns why his mother refrained from bringing him into her past and also discovers the powers of his true religion. I think that when given an opportunity, it is essential that a child learns about what defines his parents as individuals. This is the only way one can learn about his or herself and truly understand and relate to his family. When I delved deeper into my family’s past it made be proud to be who I was. It gave me a sense of who I am and how I came to be. The authors also travel along the paths of discovery and insight towards their families and pasts. Without which, neither author would have had the sense of closure or understanding that they eventually attained.
Since I was a child attending Hebrew school classes several times a week, I have read and heard and talked about the Holocaust. Every person endured their own personal tragedies and suffered their own personal losses. Yet, despite how many times you hear about it, the tragedy never loses importance. Each story you hear is so different, and that is what helps to make Maus so special. It is discussing a topic that everybody already knows of, but specifically focuses on the struggles of one family. The story is completely engrossing and fills the reader with every emotion on the spectrum ranging from shock and anger, to sympathy and happiness.
Both of these books, The Color of Water, and Maus, were able to spark strong emotions inside me. The two have compelling and moving stories that are deeply embedded in personal emotion and truth. Whether or not you believe that “honesty is the best policy” to succeed in life, it is certainly the most thought evoking and important basis of story telling. And who knows, maybe even the incorporation my own thoughts on family and religion, of how I read these stories, will effect your own view on what you read…
