The Metaphor and Simbolisme in Maus

            Written by Art Spiegelman, Maus is the life story of his Holocaust surviving father, Valdek. Maus is presented to us in a comic book form. Ironically it talks about a very dramatic subject which makes it seem lighter than what it really is. The following will talk about the symbolism and metaphor used throughout the novel which helps us better differentiate the races, better understand the emotions of Artie, and finally to better understand the past of the Spiegelman's family and although predicting their future outcomes during the Holocaust. .
             First of all, Art Spiegelman has the brilliant idea of using animalistic metaphor and symbolism in his novel to help us better differentiate the races. For instance, the Jews are represented by mice, the Germans by cats, the Poles by pigs and the American's by dogs. To accentuate this unusual metaphor, Art Spiegelman draws certain characters, which are a mixtures of to races, with some specific physical appearances similar to each of their two animalistic sides (2:131). In this example, we see children which resemble mice, yet they have cat stripes all over their bodies. However, their mice features are dominating because of their innocence. Another example is when Artie is struggling on a sheet of paper on how to draw Francoise: "-Francoise: What are you doing? - Artie: Trying to figure out how to draw you-(2:11). She is after all half French, half Jewish. We can also see that certain characters are represented with masks, in order to hide their true identity. A good example of this symbolism, is when Anja tries to sneak by the Germans (1:136). Here she has a pig mask so that the nazis won't catch her. Unfortunately, in this example, Anja's mouse tail was showing, which means that it was very hard for her to go unnoticed. To sum up, the animalistic metaphor and symbolism used by Art Spiegelman makes it very easy for the readers to differentiate the different races.