Maus I

It seems kind of silly to blog about my reaction to what is only the first half of Art Spiegelman's Maus, but I'm a pretty "by the book" type of guy when it comes to my backlog, and although I happen to own both halves of Maus, I also happen to own them in the form of two physically separate books. In case you hadn't heard, Maus is a highly acclaimed graphic novel about the Holocaust. When Sweeney posted about Persepolis the other week, it reminded me that I've always been meaning to get around to reading Maus. This first part takes us from the rise of the Nazi party in Germany up through the beginning of Hitler's Final Solution. At the risk of sounding disrespectful, I'll say that I wasn't quite as blown away as I expected and hoped to be. There were a few gut-punching scenes and drawings, to be sure, but ultimately I didn't feel the same level of woe and sorrow that I experienced while, say, watching Schindler's List. And I'm only talking about the early parts of Schindler's List that parallel the first half of Maus. Both stories showed me the graphic brutality and relentless disregard for human life associated with the liquidation of the ghettos in Poland. Both tales showed me grieving parents and children, husbands and wives, being torn out of each other's arms knowing they'd never meet again. But it just didn't feel nearly as raw and harrowing in Maus I as it did in Schindler's List. My theory for this is that Maus, as you probably know, uses a unique gimmick in which all Jews are anthropomorphized mice and all Germans are anthropomorphized cats. And it just felt a lot less sadistic and more natural, to me, for cats to be killing mice. I know the cats-and-mice theme was chosen for such a reason, but I'm not sure if it's having the desired effect on me, at least so far. Granted, everything I've read so far has only been a warm-up for Maus II: Shit Hits the Fan, which I expect to be very little aside from cruel and merciless slaughter from cover to cover. For that reason, I can't say that Maus I disappointed me yet. But I can say that I'm hoping for a lot more despair in Maus II. (Man, that sentence sounded awful, like I'm into historical fiction torture porn or something. Sorry, everyone. But you know what I mean.)