Why Mice?

"It all started with me trying to draw black folks"

How did Maus come to be? Why did Spiegelman choose mice?  In 1971, Spiegelman was chosen to be a part of the comic "Funny Animals". He was going to do a strip in this comic about the black experience in America. He would use "Ku Klux Kats and an underground railroad and some story about racism in America." But then he changed his mind. He wanted to do something else.


He wanted to retell the survivors's tale as it was in his nightmares and childhood. He turned the Ku Klutz Kats into Nazi cats to tell his own story.  In the New York Review interview "Why Mice?", he said, "I realized that this cat-mouse metaphor of oppression could actually apply to my more immediate experience. I was more viscerally affected by, the Nazis chasing Jews as they had in my childhood nightmares."

 

Spiegelman began to do his research. He watched a 1940s documentary called "The Eternal Jew" and learned that Nazis dehumanized Jews as rats. This made them easier to kill. But is this where Spiegelman got his mice idea? No. Not completely.


He used mice for other reasons. According to David Mikics, in his book Considering Maus, “Spiegelman’s use of theriomorphic characters functions as a shield, enabling the presentation of a history that would otherwise be intolerable in its horror and would devolve into a raw account of personal nightmare.” (Mikics, 20) What the hell does this mean? --> (translation) if Spiegelman were to use humans, it would be too graphic. This would be like teaching an infant how to swear. We don't have to expose our children to the dark side of life at such an early age. It's inappropriate.

 

Let's face it. Mice heads just make everything less gruesome. Look at the following two pictures:

Before Maus

After Maus

I know what you're thinking. Both pictures are disturbing. But are they equally so? No. "Before Maus" is much more haunting since the dead bodies are human and they are real. 

I personally would rather have my child exposed to Maus than before actual pictures of the Holocaust. Wouldn't you? I remember I visited the Holocaust Museum when I was in seventh grade. I wasn't prepared. What I saw was scaring. I saw a little boy that could have been me.


Then I imagined my family. All of which was in a concentration camp. Who I cared for dearly. Taken aback, I walked away and came across the following photo:

   


It was all too much. I couldn't handle it. Too much chaos; too much suffering. I went to my teacher and excused myself from the exhibit.

Kids brains are like sponges, and these aren't images we want them to absorb. We must first expose them to Maus, so they can remember the Holocaust. These younger audiences can teach their kids. Their kids will teach their kids. Maus makes this possible. Maus makes it more appropriate for younger kids to read about the Holocaust and harder for the survivor's tale to be forgotten.