GNED-1404 - Writing About Images: Depiction of Ghetto Life in Maus

This essay analyzes Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, Maus, focusing on its depiction of life in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. The essay examines the dehumanization of the Jewish community, the loss of collectiveness, and the constant fear and suffering endured by the people. It explores the role of "kombinators" who deceived Jews, the impact of starvation and violence, and the struggle for survival. The essay highlights Spiegelman's use of graphic representation, hand-drawn imagery, and the portrayal of Jews as mice and Poles as pigs to convey the horrors of the Holocaust and the survivor's tale. The essay also references the assignment brief provided by Professor Baker for the GNED-1404 course, which required an analysis of a graphic novel incorporating outside research. The essay concludes by emphasizing the lasting impact of the ghetto experience on Vladek Spiegelman's life and habits. The essay draws upon various sources to support its arguments, offering a detailed exploration of the graphic novel's themes and historical context.

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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

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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

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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.

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He explained the incident that they were nicely hidden away from the Gestapo, and even their
dogs could not smell them out. However, it was their human nature that got them into trouble.
The changing attitude in Srodula shows the evidence of how collectiveness was gradually
withering when people were divided in their opinions of trusting a stranger to leave their
bunker, “What had we to do? We took on him pity.” furthermore, the other person in the
same bunker wording his fears, which later proves to be accurate, “He may be an informer.
The safest thing would be to kill him” (Spiegelman pp.113). The stranger must have deceived
them and broken their trust for some zlotys and a promise of letting him live. Artie has
displayed the impact of the life which Spiegelman spent in the ghetto through his habit of
picking up things which might prove to be useful or the usefulness of the thing which he has
learnt in that life (Ireland).
Depiction of Jews as mouse and Polish Jews as pigs is the reflection of the German
attitude towards their extermination. It is shown with the help of the incident of the Polish
Jews, given the notion by a guard that he would look away when they pass in return for a
bribe but were killed brutishly when they passed. Even though Vladek and Anja requested
people to stay inside, lack of food and the hunger pangs made them take the decision that
they will trust the same guard who would shoot them at sight. Anja’s fear was realized, and
as soon as they came out to mix with Polish workers, they were shot to death. The gravity of
the situation can be realized with the dialogue that his father never turned to look at the scene,
“I stood secret, behind a corner, I heard loud shooting, and I didn’t go to see what

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happened…I only ran very fast to our bunker.”; to wait for the guards to lower their shield
and then to arrange for escape (Spiegelman pp.124).
Spiegelman’s Maus is indeed a survivor’s tale where the graphic representation of the
incidence and the use of the hand-drawn and handwritten brings out the experience of living
in a ghetto more vividly than any imagery would have and has been used ingeniously. The
depiction of the ghetto and the visual drawings of the bunkers and the passage made out from
the shoe pile of the dead for the living to escape is the rhetorical representation of the
animalistic life that the Jews were forced to live to survive the concentration camp. The
struggle and the suffering, which was the very meaning of the ghetto life, is shown in the way
people had to watch others being dragged and filled in the vans knowing fully that they were
being taken to the concentration camps. Even though people stayed hidden in places where
only scavenging animals lived, and yet they were freer than people hiding in their habitat.
Maus stays to true to its subtitle of A Survivor’s Tale, for Spiegelman did not only survived
the Holocaust and the ghetto life but his wife’s suicide and along with it the guilt of not
supporting her in the beginning when it could have mattered. The horrors of the ghetto life
are made to be felt alive for Vladek carried the habits even outside that life.

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References
Ireland, Brian, and Penelope James. "A Journey Through Hell: Dante's influence on Art
Spiegelman's Maus." Dante e l'Arte 5 (2018): 0037-60.
Shores, Corry. "The Minor Machinery of Animal Packs: Becoming as Survival in
Spiegelman’s Maus." Graphic Novels as Philosophy (2017): 150.
Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. Penguin Books, 2003.