When I was reading Maus I could not avoid to think that this book is a
contemporay version of Animal Farm. Both writers used animals as a methaphor
to talk about the totaliarism. But, what these animals represent?
The animals' characters in Maus represent different races and nationalities.
For instance, the Jews are represented by mices. Thus,they are a projection of
pests or vermin as less than humans since the point of view of Germans.
On the other hand, the "arios" are represented by cats.Aninal predadors that are always
trying to catch the vulnerable and inoffensive mice.
The dogs are American, who save the Jewish mice from German cats.
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The French are frogs, and the Gypsies are moths. The Poles are pigs,
which does not seem as random when we consider that the Nazis sometimes referred to the Poles as pigs.
But again, Maus plays
off the racial stereotypes, and even stereotypical
thinking in general, by
indicating where the allegory falls apart. The mice are not universally good,
nor are the pigs universally good or bad. Mice can pass for other animals by
wearing pig masks or cat masks.
The allegory falls apart at times when the
animal-humans deal with actual animals, as when Art’s Jewish
therapist has pet
cats , or when Art and Françoise have to use bug spray to get rid of bugs
when they are vacationing in the Catskills, a reference to Zyklon-B, the
pesticide gas used
to kill prisoners in concentration camps.
It is very interesting how writers play with meanings and stereotypes. In my case, I had the same thought as you when reading Maus, how similar it is regarding Animal Farm. Furthermore, the importance of images in this graphic novel makes the reader relate not only situations, characters and stereotypes, but also meanings: how Jews represented by mice were treated, as a threaten, as trash, as something that nobody wants and nobody respects.
ResponderEliminarI can see that I was not the only one that thought about the similarities with Animal Farm, since I start Maus I wanted to write about those similarities, but then I realized that the only similarity was the fact that they both used animals, but in depth there was no real connection between animals in both novels. For Orwell animals mean something totally different than for Spiegelman
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