Art Spiegelman's Maus as a Holocaust Narrative

Bansal 1
Shiwangi Bansal
GNED-1404-009
Professor Baker
30 March, 2020
DEPICTION OF GHETTO LIFE THROUGH SPIEGELMAN’S MAUS
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was one of the most significant incidents to take place
when the people living in the Ghetto finally rose to revolt after being tired of living in
constant fear of being taken on the next trip to the gas chamber. People gathered what little
weapons they can and started retaliating against the Nazis. However, the lack of food and
water made everything worse, and the Jewish community started withering and disintegrating
from within. The chaos was the only constant thing, and people started living in bunkers, and
attics have hidden away and died from hunger and malnutrition. It led to people losing their
sense of collectiveness that has been saving their life and made each of them stand against
each other. Art Spiegelman is best known for his graphic autobiographies ad is known to
introduce the concept of the comic as a mature medium for writing. His work Maus is a
graphic novel representing his working style after moving to the United States in 1951. It was
first published in the year 1986 and is responsible for the evolution of the depiction of the
mass genocide, which was carried out during the German Holocaust. The work is derivative
of his father’s experience as a German holocaust and Warsaw ghetto survivor, and the work

Bansal 2
is completed with hand drawing and dialogues with his father as an interview who shows the
symptoms of suffering from the post-traumatic disorder. The essay will show the depiction of
life in the ghetto and the concept of a kombinator who deceived Jews hiding in the ghetto
under the misconception that they will be spared. The thesis statement for the essay would be
understanding Spiegelman’s depiction of life in the ghetto concerning the history of the
Warsaw ghetto.
Life in the ghetto, as described from the visual hand drawings in Spiegelman’s
images, shows the dehumanization of the society struggling to maintain its ground. People
who were surviving were losing the sense of collectiveness, which is shown to be developing
alongside the collective desire to stay in a group for feeling safe. There is constant flow of
words throughout the novel, which emanates the feeling of fear and suffocation, and the only
mode of refuge is the collectiveness of the society as a whole (Shores). When Spiegelman
describes to his son that there was no relation left in the world of the ghetto, each of them was
trying to look after themselves while describing his cousin, Haskel. Describing to Artie,
Spiegelman speaks as if it is still fresh in his memory and iterates, “At that time it wasn’t any
more families, it was everybody to take for himself!”; showing that at that time and even after
it, they understood that it was not individual who did wrong to them but the condition which
the existence of ghetto had brought upon them (Spiegelman pp.114). The dehumanization is
shown in the form of kombinators that he referred to Haskel and explained to them to be
someone who made “kombinacya, a Schemer...A Crook”; this was not the only mention of

Bansal 3
this kind of person. Another individual was the traitor of the bunker and Pisach, who sold
cake made out of laundry soap, which made the whole ghetto who were struggling to find
bread to eat fall sick out of eating cake.
The incident of Anja’s father and the involvement of cousin in leaving her father
screaming and tearing his head reflects the real situation of the ghetto life as reflecting life in
hell. Here, one can witness the problem of losing a family relation and living in a society in
which the worth of these things have been dragged down to the value of dirt as being the
living essence of hell (Shores). People were forced to live hidden in ghettos and bunkers such
as that of Spiegelman’s other cousin, Miloch, who lived in his Janitor’s house. As per
definition, he did not live in a house but lived in the garbage dump in a mere five to six feet
area separated from the dump, and the inhuman condition reflects from Moloch’s helpless
words, “We have no choice. At least our bunker is underground... And the decomposing
garbage gives some heat (Spiegelman pp.153).
The loss of moral and ethical values in the society was the product of the fear which
was induced by the grotesque killings and the treatment of the Jews as animals. The death of
Anja’s parents depicts it despite the financial strength of being a millionaire; their worth was
calculated by a person who was known to be inhuman even before the formation of the
ghetto. The scene in the work where he is shown to be tearing his hair and screaming while
Anja and Spiegelman had to leave him for Haskel decided that his life was not worth saving.