The reviewing author of Maus II, Ty Burr, gave the novel an A+ for its interesting use of a “cartoon history.” This cartoon projects the events of the Holocaust and uses animals to portray the characters; Jews are mice, Nazis are cats, Poles are pigs, etc. he proclaims that the author did a great job in drawing his father with such defiant grace. He believes that the anthropomorphic animals are there for a reason, and there are some evidences of this from the author himself- “they give the artist and his readers the distance necessary to absorb horrors almost beyond imagining.”
If you enjoyed Maus II, then it would be a good idea to go back and read the first volume of Maus which contain chapters originally released in the new-wave comic Raw. This earlier book follows Vladek through his early years in Poland; his romances and marriage, the gathering Nazi threat, his imprisonment in labor camps, and then ending on a cliffhanger on the doorstep of Auschwitz; as if to pause of a breath of air. With Maus II, it continues this journey. Parts of the novel are exceedingly grim; this is no display of atrocities. Instead, it’s an astonishingly rich portrait of survival through wit and sheer luck.
One of the author’s key points is that in reality, his father really didn’t survive the Holocaust; at least not as the clever, urbane Vladek from the first book. Framing the Auschwitz segments are scenes set in modern day New York, in which the Art, the narrator, sweet-talks his ailing father into recording his memories (he later died in 1982). In this book, the father is a bitter and needy old man; a neurotic hoarder who drove his wife, Art’s mother, to suicide. It’s not a great thing to think about, nor is the artist’s portrait of himself as a rebellious son torn between coming to terms with his father while keeping him at arm’s length.
Maus II is an attempt of understand a man and his place in history through small, evocative drawings. At the very end of the novel, Spiegelman prints a photo of his father in 1945; with this one simple step he leads the readers back into the world of man.
