A review by goobur
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

The most effective way to build understanding between people of wildly different backgrounds and experiences has—and always will be—through storytelling. Spiegelman likely could have just filmed a documentary with his father recounting his experiences, but where would the creativity, the honesty, and the interpersonality be? Nowhere. People need to feel the motions of life, to witness its push and pull, to understand its complexities, in order to completely comprehend the scope of a tragedy like this; it needs to be raw. Even though we, ultimately, are reading this through the author and not his father, there was never a moment where I didn’t feel like Vladek was in the room with me relating his stories. He’s given such a pronounced and unique voice in the writing that it allowed me to hear exactly how he would speak. It’s incredibly rare that someone’s character is so clearly pulled through the pages like that. 

When I mean raw, I don’t just mean the erratic but honest structure of the story, but also its aesthetics. Spiegelman’s choice to go for such a scratchy, raggedly style of art lends itself so perfectly to the content it's illustrating that it's a little unbelievable. One would assume that something more realistic would land better as it more clearly visualizes the terrifying scenarios depicted, but their bite isn’t taken away in the slightest. The images are just as haunting as you would expect them to be, likely assisted by imagination filling in the gaps that the art doesn’t present. They’re presented firmly, honestly, and with little in the way of overdramatizing that would take away from the frankness of the story. 

A particularly ingenious aspect of Maus is what it chooses to focus on. Although the majority of the story is about Vladek’s experiences during World War II, this story is really meant to be a portrait of him as a whole. I imagine most authors would choose to omit the interpersonal details between them and their father, but Spigelman understands that these vignettes help endear us to him while also revealing the complexities of the people that actually went through the tragedy. Whether or not Vladek’s character is formed because of what he went through, or if he was always destined to be the way he is, is left completely up to the reader’s interpretation, but his trauma is an undeniable factor in his existence and by extension the author. Trauma can carry over through generations, and it seems as though Art realizes that he may be a victim as well.