Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
Spiegelman, Art. 1992. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. 1st ed. Pantheon.
Rating:
8
Summary:
touching and honest
Art (Artie) Spiegelman is a cartoonist and the son of holocaust survivors Vladek and Anna Spiegelman. Art decided to tell his parents’ story in graphic novel (comic book) form. The first book, Maus, covers the meeting and marriage of Vladek and Anna and follows their story up until they enter Auschwitz during WWII.
This book follows their story from when they enter the camp until they are finally freed by the Russians. This part of the story is also related in pieces as Art visits his father. Vladek was surprisingly resourceful as a camp prisoner and was continuously able to find positions where he was needed, helping keep him alive. Anna, on the other hand, wasn’t always so lucky but she managed to stay alive. For both of them, much of what kept them alive was the hope of seeing the other person, which Vladek was amazingly able to arrange despite the men and women living in separate camps.
Eventually the war ends and they return, separately, to their hometown in Poland, though they have no knowledge of whether or not the other is alive. Thus, when Vladek, who arrives last, finally makes it home, it makes for a touching reunion.
Review:
This second book is definitely more touching than the first, though this is probably in large part due to the suffering the Spiegelman’s experienced. This book also does a good job of bringing the story closure, though it took quite a while for this book to be published after the first one was.
Once again, the author is critical of himself by illustrating a rocky relationship with his father rather than everything being rosy. This self-criticism leads to my final point. I think the allure of these two books is that the author doesn’t try to dress things up in a pretty package. He does his best to present things as they actually were (at least, as they were seen by his father). The result is that you see things like children having their heads bashed in by Nazi’s slamming them against walls and a son who only grudgingly helps his father but at the same time uses him for his story (that sounds a bit harsh as I’m sure the son was inspired to tell the story just to share it, but he also made money off of it, so he did use him in a sense).
As I did with the first, I would recommend this book. Keep in mind that the book makes no pretense to be an objective treatise on the holocaust – this is a survivor’s tale and it is at the subjective, individual level of one person who made it through. It is compelling and hopefully a warning for future generations about the potential maliciousness humans are capable of forcing on other humans.