“The Shadow of a Past Time”: History and Graphic Representation in Maus

• Published in: Twentieth century literature 2006-06, Vol.52 (2), p.199-230
• Main Author: Chute, Hillary
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aesthetics; American literature; Artistic representation; Cartoons; Comic books; Connotation; Critical Theory; Criticism and interpretation; Cultural history; Essays; Fathers; Geography; Graphic novels; Headstones; History; Holocaust; Jewish literature; Literary Theory; Literature and Literary Studies; Memory; Narratives; Parents & parenting; Prison art; Signatures; Spiegelman, Art; Swedish literature; Theory and Philosophy; Time; World War II
• ISSN: 0041-462X; 2325-8101
• DOI: 10.1215/0041462X-2006-3001

In the Shadow of No Towers, his most recent book of comic strips, Art Spiegelman draws connections between his experience of 9/11 and his survivor parents' experience of World War II, suggesting that the horrors of the Holocaust do not feel far removed from his present-day experience in the twenty-first century.1 "The killer apes learned nothing from the twin towers of Auschwitz and Hiroshima," Spiegelman writes; 9/11 is the "same old deadly business as usual" (n. pag.). When critics of Maus do examine questions of form, they often focus on the cultural connotations of comics rather than on the form's aesthetic capabilities-its innovations with space and temporality.6 Paul Buhle, for instance, claims, "More than a few readers have described [Mans] as the most compelling of any [Holocaust] depiction, perhaps because only the caricatured quality of comic art is equal to the seeming unreality of an experience beyond all reason" (16).Where Michael Rothberg contends, "By situating a nonfictional story in a highly mediated, unreal, 'comic' space, Spiegelman captures the hyperintensity of Auschwitz" (206), Stephen Tabachnick suggests that Maus may work "because it depicts what was all too real, however unbelievable, in a tightly controlled and brutally stark manner.The black and white quality of Maus's graphics reminds one of newsprint" (155).