Art SpiegelmanÆs (1997) two volume graphic novel The Complete Maus (A SurvivorÆs Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Here My Troubles Began) is an informative account of his fatherÆs interment in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust of WWII. Using images of mice as Jews and cats as Nazis, the comic-strip styled works tell the story of SpiegelmanÆs father, from its beginning before being deported by the Nazis to its end that depicts his fatherÆs struggles to live beyond the horrors of the concentration camps. As Campbell (2004) maintains, ôGraphic novels use images and words to tell a story that has a beginning, middle, and end. It is different from a commix book in that the story endsö (18).
MausÆ two-volume story of his fatherÆs survival of the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps uses cartoon-like animal characters to tell of the death camps and his struggles to survive. As Fazioli (2003) suggests, these books ôuse the seemingly innocent art form of the comic strip to underscore the horror and depravity of the Jewish Holocaust as well as examine SpiegelmanÆs tenuous relationship with his fatherö (84). Similar to African American experiences of surviving slavery and the oppression of racism, SpiegelmanÆs books show that Jews, like African Americans, were often as opportunistic as Nazis in perpetuating the horrors of the Holocaust.
Those who lived through the Holocaust and those who lived through slavery endured many hardships and struggles at the hands of their oppressors. In Maus, Spiegelman (1987) shows through his comic-strip like images how Jews were stripped of their businesses, their belongings, and eventually their humanity at the hands of the Nazis. Maus I, depicts the stripping of Jews of their businesses and freedom for minor violations of law or, as one of the characters maintains, ôWorseàeven if you donÆt break any laws!ö (Spiegelman 1997, 77). The work also shows that Spi...