Conrad Barber

Maus/White

What is the significance of the use of mice and cats to portray the characters in this story? These events obviously actually happened to humans, yet when Spiegelman retells them he makes the Jews mice and the Nazis cats. Why did he not simply record the events as they actually happened, with the correct species that was involved? The first reason is probably simply that by making the characters all look similar, it eliminates a real identity of each mouse and cat. They all have basically the same simply drawn faces, so that all the mice look the same and all the cats also. This sort of allows us as the readers to make the characters into whoever we want them to be.

So why would Spiegelman want his characters to not have their own visual identities? What is the significance of this intention? By making the faces generic, the results are that the only real differences between characters is whether they're a cat or a mouse. This helps to portray the complete separation of Jews and Nazis. It helps to break down the different sides and to make all Jews simply Jews, and likewise with Nazis. It was this stark generalizing and downright racism which started the Holocaust in the first place.

So how does this clear division of groups contribute to the telling of the story? Spiegelman is obviously pressing his own morals upon the reader, trying to gain their sympathy by portraying himself and the Jews as weak mice who are victimized by the big strong Nazi cats. It's like White said, could we ever narrativize without moralizing? The answer is pretty much no. Any account of any historical event is inevitably going to have some sort of spin on it, depending on who made the record. Every person wants to have his or her side of the story seem like the better side, and they want whoever is reading their account to agree with them, pity them, or whatever.