Character Analysis
Let’s throw an idea out there.
Art isn’t a character.
How can the author not be a character in a book that draws on his own life, you ask? We’re not suggesting that Art Spiegelman doesn’t exist. But just for kicks, let’s play around with the idea that Maus is about a character called Art who is looking for… something. A self. An identity. A voice.
In the opening scene, we get a flashback to Art’s childhood. He’s eleven. He trips and falls. His friends abandon him. He goes to his father for comfort. What does his father say?
“If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week… then you could see what it is, friends.” (I.vi)
Eleven-year-old Art – or Artie, as his father calls him, even as an adult – doesn’t get …show more content…
In the comic, produced shortly after his mother’s suicide, Art can hardly stand his father’s overwhelming grief. In the last panel, he accuses his mother of murder and of letting him take the blame. She timed her suicide so that he would find her and save her, but he arrived too late. Even though she killed herself, he feels responsible for not saving her.
Within Maus, the heart of the story belongs to Vladek and his memories. Art takes a back seat; the only scenes we see with Art are in scenes that frame Art’s recording sessions with Vladek. The novel only departs from this structure when Art steps in to reflect at length on the difficult artistic choices he had to make in producing his father’s tale in Part II. We see Art at his drafting table, in long conversations with his wife and his therapist. Art seems most present in the novel as a painfully self-conscious artist, rather than a character.
And certainly not as the kind of heroic character that emerges in Vladek’s self-portrayal. Indeed, Art admits that he partly became an artist because it was an area where he wouldn’t have to compete with his father. But as the artist representing his father’s words, Art is well aware of the danger that he may end up taking over his father’s story and make it his own, competing with his father in art in a way he wouldn’t be able to do in
Let’s throw an idea out there.
Art isn’t a character.
How can the author not be a character in a book that draws on his own life, you ask? We’re not suggesting that Art Spiegelman doesn’t exist. But just for kicks, let’s play around with the idea that Maus is about a character called Art who is looking for… something. A self. An identity. A voice.
In the opening scene, we get a flashback to Art’s childhood. He’s eleven. He trips and falls. His friends abandon him. He goes to his father for comfort. What does his father say?
“If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week… then you could see what it is, friends.” (I.vi)
Eleven-year-old Art – or Artie, as his father calls him, even as an adult – doesn’t get …show more content…
In the comic, produced shortly after his mother’s suicide, Art can hardly stand his father’s overwhelming grief. In the last panel, he accuses his mother of murder and of letting him take the blame. She timed her suicide so that he would find her and save her, but he arrived too late. Even though she killed herself, he feels responsible for not saving her.
Within Maus, the heart of the story belongs to Vladek and his memories. Art takes a back seat; the only scenes we see with Art are in scenes that frame Art’s recording sessions with Vladek. The novel only departs from this structure when Art steps in to reflect at length on the difficult artistic choices he had to make in producing his father’s tale in Part II. We see Art at his drafting table, in long conversations with his wife and his therapist. Art seems most present in the novel as a painfully self-conscious artist, rather than a character.
And certainly not as the kind of heroic character that emerges in Vladek’s self-portrayal. Indeed, Art admits that he partly became an artist because it was an area where he wouldn’t have to compete with his father. But as the artist representing his father’s words, Art is well aware of the danger that he may end up taking over his father’s story and make it his own, competing with his father in art in a way he wouldn’t be able to do in