The Mice in Maus (and the Cats and the Pigs...)

I must admit that Maus was one of the most interesting pieces of literature I’ve read all year.  The funny thing is that I actually checked this book out from the library only a couple days before I went to the Stritch bookstore and realized we would be reading it for class.  One of the things that fascinated me about this graphic novel was how the author combined the story of the Holocaust with cartoon animals.  I had heard years ago about this graphic novel and had wanted to read it for a long time.  I couldn’t imagine how the author would go about presenting this story.  Now that I’ve finished reading it (well, Part I), I’m still interested in why the author chose to use animals instead of human characters.  I have some theories:

1. The first and perhaps the most obvious reason for having animals instead of people is just for the simplicity factor.  There are a lot of characters in the story, most of which have confusing names that the average reader (or at least American) would have a hard time keeping straight.  Trying to keep track of who’s a Nazi, who’s a Jew, who’s Pole, etc. can be plain confusing.  The easiest way to fix this?  Make all the Nazi’s cats, the Jews mice, and the Poles pigs.  Easy enough.  You see a pig and you automatically know that person’s a Pole, but not a Jew.  This also eliminates the confusion when some of the characters are pretending to be Poles—just put a pig mask on them.
2. Same as the above, except for the author.  It’s got to be hard drawing countless human characters, all of which have to look somewhat different.  But if the characters are all animals, well, that eliminates that hassle. 
3. The pity factor.  Nowadays people have become incredibly desensitized to human death.  But what about animal deaths?  Ever notice how people can watch a whole movie of people brutally murdering other people and not even blink?  And yet the dog dies and everyone is appalled.  I’ll admit that sometimes I’m that person.  Perhaps the reason for making the characters animals was to play into that sympathy most people have. 
4. A fourth reason for using animals—perhaps the author wanted to include an extra layer of symbolism or make reference to our culture.  I’m not going to go into insane detail listing possible symbolism, etc. (this blog is getting long enough), but there are definitely symbols based on the animals chosen.  The most obvious is that mice are the prey of cats.  Mice are also often used in experiments which could touch on the Nazi experiments performed on Jews.  As for making references to our culture, well, there are plenty.  We mentioned Animal Farm in class, but another one that came to mind when I read it was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien.  It was a favorite of mine as a child.  The story features the good and struggling mice and the dangerous and deadly cat (strangely enough it also features experimentation on mice).  I’m sure with further thought one could think of countless more references.

So why did Art Spiegelman make all his characters animals?  Who knows?  I’d like to think that at least one of my ideas is close, but we’ll never know.  Regardless, it certainly makes an impact and makes this story an even more fascinating one.