There’s an old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. In a work such as a graphic novel, it can be so much more. Photographs, whether they be real or drawn, add to a story like Maus. They add to the message of the story and even add a certain authenticity that a drawn medium can’t.
The first photo that appears in Maus is that of Anja and a young Art Spiegelman. The drawn on information on the bottom of the photo shows that it’s from 1968, most likely from a family vacation. It’s part of “Prisoner on the Hell Planet,” and it’s held by a drawn hand. It’s a fitting picture, given the subject of the comic. Spiegelman used this photo to contrast against the style in which “Prisoner on The Hell Planet” was drawn in to show a sort of authenticity. He notes in MetaMaus that it “allows the photograph to carry the kind of “authenticity” snapshots carry,” (Pg 218). That authenticity is that the events that he draws about in Maus and “Prisoner on The Hell Planet” really did happen.
Authenticity is something that Spiegelman is going for, despite the fact that the characters in the graphic novel are mice, cats, pigs, dogs, etc. It’s his family’s story that he’s telling. The choice to make Jews mice, Germans cats, Americans dogs, so on and so forth is more of a commentary and also a subject for another day. It shouldn't go against the truth he’s telling here. When he adds photographs, it shows that these are real people and real events. Just because they’re drawn in one style or another doesn’t make them any less real.
One of the questions that comes up in Metamaus is about Holocaust deniers and their reactions to Maus. Spiegelman says that he hasn’t had anything too extreme, but was browsing through a Holo-haux site once and found a thread where they tried to use Vladek’s bad memory as proof that he was a liar and the whole story was made up, all because Vladek couldn’t remember there being an orchestra as he left Auschwitz. Spiegelman then has this to say about the Holocaust deniers:
“At my most deliriously generous, I believe Holocaust denial is an understandable response to trying to wrap one’s brain around the scale of the crime; then i come to my senses and realize it’s just more of the mindless anti-Semitic venom that wiped out my family in the first place.” (Pg 102)
While he doesn’t have to answer to people like this, who deny the suffering of millions, the inclusion of photographs like the one above and the one of his father give Maus an in-your-face authenticity. This in-your-face authenticity proves them wrong.
We open the pages of Volume II, “And Here My Troubles Begin” to a page with the picture of a child. It’s a dedication that reads “For Richieu And For Nadja.” Richieu, Anja and Vladek’s first born, is first introduced in Volume I and we learn early on that he died before the war, but it isn’t until later on in Volume I that we learn how. Even though Richieu died at an early age, Artie always feels like he is living in his diseased older brother’s shadow. He mentions at the beginning of Volume II that “It’s spooky having sibling rivalry with a snapshot!” (Pg 15). Artie does seems to have some sort of issue with his “Ghost-Brother” (Pg 15) and says that the photo is some sort of reproach, a sort of disappointment from his parents. To Artie, Richieu would have become a success to his parents, while Artie himself is not. Yet, when it comes down to it, Art Spiegelman himself decides to put the picture that haunted him for most of his life as the dedication of the second volume. It’s because he felt that Richieu was more tied to the narrative than his own child, Nadja. He also mentions that having the picture of Richieu there makes it so that all of his childhood family has photographic representation. Art himself and his mother have their picture in Volume I and Vladek’s picture is in Volume II. It only makes sense that the presence that had been with him all throughout his childhood would be represented in the graphic novel as well.
I stumbled upon an article by Marianne Hirsch title “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory,” which goes over the photographs in Maus. Of Richieu’s photograph, she has this to say “The child who could not survive to live his own life — especially in his equivalence with Art and Nadja — becomes the emblem of the incomprehensibility of Holocaust destruction” (Pg 23). So the photo not only represents Vladek’s narrative, but it also represents how millions of innocent people lost their lives during the Holocaust.
The last photo in Maus is that of Vladek. It’s a souvenir photo of himself in a camp uniform and he doesn’t look emaciated or dirty, so we know that it’s been a while since he has been in the camps. He’s also standing in front of a curtain. Marianne Hirsch says that it is particularly disturbing because it “stages the identity of the camp inmate” (Pg 24).
And she’s right.
It’s a staged photo that partially reproduces a horrific time in Vladek’s life. Why would he want to don that uniform again? What would compel him to put on a costume of the very clothes he had been made to wear for months while starving in the camps? Why would he take a picture like he had just gone through some amusement park?
Hirsch put it perfectly, “Vladek’s photograph at the end, is intended as a sign of life to reconnect the lost Vladek and Anja after the liberation” (Pg 24). The photograph, while disturbing, is Vladek’s way of saying “I’m alive. I survived.” and it also is what ends up bringing Anja and him back together. For Art Spiegelman, the photo holds a similar place in the graphic novel. Artie tells Vladek in the graphic novel that he needs that photo and Spiegelman himself really did think that the photo was important. Up until the photo appears, readers get to know Vladek and get used to seeing the mouse face. So, when the photo makes its appearance, its sort of a shock to the reader. This is what Vladek looked like, and more importantly, this is a real person. When Maus Volume I came out, the New York Times put it under fiction, due to the fact that Spiegelman had chosen to draw everyone as anthropomorphic animals. Adding Vladek’s picture to Volume II makes it more obvious that the story isn’t fictional, just like it was with the picture of Anja and Artie. The story is real, the people are real, these events really happened.
The drawn photographs of the rest of the family members are also important to the story. Vladek’s family is represented by pictures of Vladek’s brother, Pinek. Pinek is the only other surviving member of the family, drawn in one picture. A whole family gone, as Vladek says to Artie, “From the rest of my family, it’s nothing left, not even a snapshot” (Pg 116).
These drawn photos reflect the destruction done by the Holocaust. Vladek’s side of the family has been reduced to two people, and he has nothing left to remember the rest of his family by. Anja’s family was lucky enough to get their pictures back but we see a lack of post-war photos. In MetaMaus, two versions of Anja’s family tree are included. One from the beginning of World War II and one from the end of World War II. The difference in the two is staggering. This is represented in the graphic novel by the amount of pre-war family photos and the obvious lack of post-war family photos. On page 115, the photos pile up like the pile of bodies shown before. These are their loved ones, who lost their lives. Just like Richieu’s picture included in the beginning of Volume II, the pile of photos drawn on page 115 represents the destruction caused by the Holocaust.
In Jerusalem, Israel, there is a memorial called Yad Vashem. Its the Jewish people’s living memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. In the Hall of Names, a ten-meter high cone displays 600 photographs of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. It’s only a fraction of the lives lost, but the pictures serve as a memorial. These are people who have no graves, no headstones, and no family left. The Hall of Memories helps their names live on so that future generations will know them.
Hirsch mentions that the photos added to Maus represent “what has been and what has been violently destroyed” (Pg 9). They represent the family, both Anja’s and Vladek’s extended families and Art’s immediate family. They represent the loved ones that are no longer around. They also represent a message in the story and the authenticity that adds to that story.
Works Cited
Hirsch, Marianne. “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-memory”. Discourse 15.2 (1992): 3–29. Web
Spiegelman, Art, and Louise Fili. MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale, II : And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1991. Print.
Spiegelman, Art. MetaMaus: A Look inside a Modern Classic. New York: Pantheon, 2011. Print.
