Quiet as a Maus

The other day, while rummaging through more boxes in the upstairs closet, I rediscovered a copy of two old graphic novels that I had nearly forgotten about: Maus and Maus II. Written by Art Spiegelman and first published in 1980, when I was but two years old, they tell the true story of Spiegelman's father and his terrible journey as a Polish Jew during the anti-Jewish pogrom carried out during the Second World War.

It is a brilliant, heart-wrenching look inside the scarred heart and psyche of a man who was subjected to the darkest side of the human condition and somehow lived to tell his story. In his expert rendering, Spiegelman draws Europe's Jews as mice, forced to scurry about underfoot and scrounge food and subsistence wherever possible, always in danger of being pounced upon by Nazi cats. The Poles are pigs, the French are (predictably) frogs, and Spiegelman himself is depicted as a human wearing a cheap mouse mask.

If you haven't read the books, please take the time to do so. It is important to learn about the depths of human depravity, but also to bask in the reflected glow of the triumph of human decency as embodied by Spiegelman's troubled father.