Men as Mice in Maus: A Survivor's Tale

    Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale is a graphic narrative-biography based on the author's relationship with his father and his father's experience as a holocaust survivor.  Before I get into the metaphor analysis, I'd like to point out this is one of the most enjoyable and interesting books I've ever read.  I even like it almost as much as the Harry Potter series! With that important and pertinent information aside, let us discuss the many metaphors present in Maus.
    The most apparent metaphors in Maus are the representations of people as animals.  Jews are represented as mice, the Nazis are cats, the French are frogs, Poles are pigs, and Americans are dogs.  Spiegelman chose certain aspects of the different nationalities, religions, and races present in this narrative and their role in the Holocaust to determine what animal to assign that group.  Spiegelman chose animals that have stereotypes associated with them when these animals interact with one another.  At one point in the book, Spiegelman's father retells an incident where he acts like a Polish person in order to avoid being captured as a Jew. Spiegelman illustrates a mouse wearing a pig mask to show that the only actual difference was the way that his father looked. Readers are able to see the dangers of classifying people within these rigid lines, as in the way the Nazis persecuted the Jews as a whole during the Holocaust.
    The Jews represented as mice is to be mainly from the perception of the Nazi regime. To clarify, representing a Jew as a mouse is something that would seem fitting in the mind of the Nazis.  Mice are dirty, scared, nuisances to people, and need to be exterminated.  People don't get attached to mice (normally) and can distance themselves from the death of a mouse.  Jews are shown tortured and killed throughout the narrative while a smirking cat with a Nazi uniform paces in the background, taking pleasure in the pain and suffering of the Jews. Mice are always victims, and Spiegelman represents the Jews as helpless mice during the Holocaust.  Many things that Vladek and his family did during the Holocaust are similar to the actions of a mouse.  His family hid to avoid capture, only to eventually be captured and killed or sent to a concentration camp.  Although readers have many negative perceptions about mice, there is a more important quality in mice that I believe Spiegelman highlights in the narrative.  Mice have a remarkably strong will to live, just the way Vladek described the efforts of the Jewish population to live after being captured by the Nazis.  Vladek sold his belongings, worked many jobs in the concentration camps, and did everything he could to keep himself and his wife alive.
    Relationships between the animals in the narrative are similar to the interactions they have in real life.  For instance, Spiegelman chose to represent Jews as mice and Nazis as cats knowing that cats chase and kill mice in real life.  He chose to represent the Americans as dogs knowing that dogs chase and (given the opportunity) kill cats in real life.  Spiegelman did more than metaphorically designate characteristics about each of the animals to people.  He applied relationships between animals to relationships between the good, the bad, and the victimized groups of the Holocaust and World War II.