MAUS II: Art Spiegelman's Maus II

In his graphic novels, MAUS I and MAUS II, Art Spiegelman provides his view as a second generation witness. He is a part of the generation that will transmit Holocaust stories to future generations. He is a witness to the Holocaust in terms of how it affected the survivors but he didn’t live through that experience himself. This is the concept of post-memory, which allows for Spigelman to take up the memories of the survivor generation and transmit them to future generations. Spiegelman comments on his father’s stories but he is careful not to make it his own by appropriating it. He places himself in an empathetic position throughout the novels. The novels are based on Spiegelman’s audio recordings of his father, Vladek, as he is recounting his memories before, during, and after the Holocaust. Spigelman then used these audio recordings of their interviews to portray Vladek’s story in a comic book medium. Comic books are commonly thought of as readings for children and
In these panels, Spiegelman illustrates himself as a man with a mouse mask over his face, which is the animal that has been representing Jews in the novels. This particular page is only about Spiegelman’s struggles with relating to his father’s experience. The juxtaposition of the large pile of dead mice at the bottom of the page next to Spiegelman highlights the gap between Spiegelman, who is a second generation that didn’t experience the Holocaust, and the mice in the pile, those who personally experienced the event. It shows how one cannot wholly understand an event such as the Holocaust without personally experiencing it. This page also portrays post-memory. Spiegelman is clearly struggling to accept the suffering that happened to his father and those in his