"Staring in the face what we choose to accept, but can't ignore..." Maus and How to tell a story about violence avoiding violence.

         There are a lot of books about the second world war, every one of them filled of the most terrible anecdotes of the war. But, in this saturated topic, Maus Stands out, and I think that one of the main reasons is the use of animals as a replacement of Human beings.        

       Why would the author use animals to tell the story? Some may argue that the reason is simply because by using mice, cats, and pigs, he could portrait how Jews, Germans, and other folks were perceived back in WW2. Jews were mice because they were forced to hide behind walls, in basement, in attics in order to avoid being slaughtered. Germans were pictured as cats, maybe because they are seen as a threat for the mice.

And I believe that’s a solid argument, but still, I’m inclined to think there’s more to it. If not, why write a graphic novel? Why didn’t the author write a book instead? Or a movie?  After all, the story of Maus is not so different from other war books.

And after thinking and thinking, searching for an answer and image appeared on my mind: Four mice hanged in a public square and a box that reads “They hanged there one full week”. It was terrible, even though they were mice, something that we normally wouldn’t care for, I felt terrible. Was it because I knew they weren’t really mice? Because I knew that those four were four human beings whose lives were taken because they belonged to a certain community? Then, what would I feel if instead of mice, the author had drawn four humans? It wouldn’t be bearable, not because we wouldn’t want to accept that it happened, but because we would not accept that it could still happen.

This realisation brought me back to one of my previous readings (Not quite related to the literature course) “Slaughter House five: The children’s crusade”. It’s quite the same setting or context: Someone wants to write about the war, and they do, but something in the story is barely missing, or not quite there, or is being overlooked or taken as normal. And after searching and searching, comparing Maus to Kurt’s book, I found what was barely present: It was violence.

My epiphany told me it was violence what was missing or not quite there or being overlooked, taken as normal. Why, why would I think that? Why would anyone think that? I mean, Maus is a graphic novel, violence is not only told, but somehow shown. You can see the four mice hanged, you can see how Vladek shot the German soldier. But still, it’s told as if it were just a bedtime story, something that happened long ago, and it is constantly interrupted by daily events such as counting pills, doing exercise, talk about diseases, etc., which lessen the impact of the story being told, which makes our minds not to focus on the violence. The same happens in Kurt’s book: Violence is interrupted by the experiences of Billy after the war, or when he is abducted. And even when he narrates the bombing of Dresden, one of the worst war crimes committed by the allies, Kurt makes Billy know about the state of the city, not by putting Billy in a place where he could see the destruction of Dresden, but by making Billy hear the comments of German soldiers: "A guard would go to the head of the stairs every so often to see what it was like outside, then he would come down and whisper to the other guards. There was a firestorm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn..."

City of Dresden after the ally's bombings.

Violence is staring right at our faces in both pieces, but still somehow we managed to avoid confronting it. We choose to accept what was, but still we also choose to ignore it, why? I don’t know. I believe that we soften violence or overlook it because we’re afraid to accept that we human can commit such acts of violence. Even mice wouldn’t want to accept that violence, that’s why Maus even features a comic made by mice, but starring humans.

And that’s perhaps the beauty of Maus: It tries not only to tell the atrocities of WW2, but also tries to show us how we avoid that violence. Thank you for reading.   

"...Birds were talking. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?”

References.

Vonnegut, K. (1969). Slaughterhouse five. United States: Delacorte

•               Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus: A survivor's tale. New York: Pantheon Books.