Maus. Graphic Art and History

The intention of this essay is to establish the validity of Art Spiegelman’s Maus as a historical source and its underlying importance in Holocaust literature. Although a graphic novel, the way in which Art Spiegelman recounts his father’s memoirs and the techniques he employs in doing so, manage to propel the book above and beyond other, more prose-centric, Holocaust work. Its close personal nature, encompassing not only the father’s story but the story of how the author handles the emotional strain involved in digging into his own family’s past, provides meaningful information regarding the aftermath of the Holocaust and how it influences not only the life of the survivors but their descendants as well. This essay explores these functions as well as putting the novel into context regarding other similar work, graphical or otherwise, by using interviews made with the author about the novel, historical background material as well as other relevant sources