Masks in Maus

Pictures of my copy of Maus II, taken with my phone

Hi, my name is Ben Kopczynski. I’m a graduate student at the University of Central Florida, and this is my first post on Medium. Let’s talk about “Maus.”

“Maus” is a graphic novel, written by Art Spiegelman. It is structurally composed of two autobiographical stories. Vladek, Art’s father, recounts his ordeals before and during the Holocaust. Meanwhile Art attempts to come to terms with his own identity as a Jew. I focus here on the latter.

Art’s drama throughout “Maus” is tied to his inability to define himself, as who he is depends so much upon the family who created and raised him, who he feels he can’t understand unless he can find some way to understand their experiences in the Holocaust. In this article, I’ll explore Art’s struggles with identity, and how that is expressed through the most striking creative decision in the creation of “Maus:” Art portrays every human as an anthropomorphic animal.

The animals serve as broad stereotypes of national roles, a stereotyping that Art at once enforces and mocks. There is, of course, the eternal fear with which mice regard cats, and which cats feel towards dogs, framing the Jews as the prey of the Germans, who in turn are chased off by the Americans. On the first page of the second volume, Art discusses how he’ll portray the French, “[A bunny would be] too sweet and gentle…Let’s not forget the centuries of anti-Semitism. I mean, how about the Dreyfus Affair? The Nazi collaborators!” (Spiegelman, Maus. 2 11).

Art provides clear evidence that the animal choices are meaningful. Yet when the French do eventually appear in the story, they are portrayed by frogs, a broad stereotype with no clear antipathy for mice. How does a reindeer relate to cats or mice? The gypsy moth is naught but a pun!

In-universe, nobody recognizes society’s bestial nature; most animal features are limited to the face, the rarely seen tail will disappear and reappear between panels, and Anja is humorously terrified of rats. It is at once farcical, but allows for pointed commentary. Take, for instance, the prisoner who claims to actually be German (Spiegelman, Maus. 2 50), who appears to transform from mouse to cat and back again between panels.

This brings to the fore the importance of masks. Throughout “Maus” one, Vladek and Anya employ crude masks to disguise themselves as Gentiles. The masks reappear in chapter 2 of the sequel, where for the first time we see not one animal masquerading as another, but in the disquiet of Art’s studio and the thoughtful presence of his psychiatrist, it is humans wearing the guise of animals (Spiegelman, Maus. 2 41–47). The animal species which we’ve come to recognize as signifiers of identity aren’t inherent, but assumed.

Individuals identify with a social group in much the same way that a mask is worn. Put on a new mask, if you can find one, and you’ll be part of a different group. Wear the same mask long enough, and it becomes difficult, impossible to remove. But under all those masks, where we never see throughout all of “Maus,” we’re all human, as made clear by the family in Hannover, whose mother is a cat and whose father is a mouse, but whose children seem to be hybrids, an impossibility for actual animals.

The entire scenario calls to mind the value Smith and Watson place upon embodiment. While they say, “the body is a site of autobiographical knowledge,” and “life narrative is a site of embodied knowledge…because autobiographical narrators are embodied subjects” (Smith and Watson 49), Spiegelman seems to say “the body is just that of a human, all the rest is just layers of masks.”

By contrast, we might consider “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Bauby’s body is the primary concern of his writing, suffering as he does from locked in syndrome.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, as pictured in his autobiography

While his mind remains fully functional, he has nearly no autonomous control of his body, his autobiography communicated through an agonizingly slow process of winking individual letters. His body has become the prison in which he lives, the diving bell of the title, an unmoving, uncooperative “mask” if we are to extend the metaphor offered by Spiegelman.

However, Bauby offers a small relief, one which is available also to Spiegelman and the rest of us in humanity. While his body is uncooperative, Bauby relates that his “mind takes flight like a butterfly,” (Bauby, 5) imagining locales familiar and exotic which he can visit in an instant, on a whim, without restraint.

Works Cited

Bauby, Jean-Dominique, et al. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. 1. Vintage International ed, Vintage International, 1998.

Purchase link: https://www.abebooks.com/Diving-Bell-Butterfly-Memoir-Life-Death/30906101764/bd

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. 2nd ed, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Autobiography-Interpreting-Narratives-Second/dp/0816669864/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=smith+watson+reading+autobiography&qid=1637028191&sr=8-1

Spiegelman, Art. Maus. 2: And Here My Troubles Began. Pantheon Books, 1992.

Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/Maus-II-Survivors-Troubles-Pantheon/dp/0679729771/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=maus&qid=1637028123&sr=8-5

— -. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Pantheon Books, 1986.

Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/Maus-Survivors-Father-Bleeds-History/dp/0394747232/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=maus&qid=1637028094&sr=8-1