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"We weren't very close,' Art admits at the beginning. Maus begins with Art visiting Vladek in Rego Park. We learn later that the father and the son had been torn apart by the suicide of Art's mother, Anja, a few years before. In the inquisition of his father's characters, Art honestly documents huge amount of information not directly related to the holocaust, which makes the story more real and human. What really makes Maus famous is that all the characters are drawn with animal heads-- the Jews as mice, the Poles as pigs, the Germans as cats, and the Americans as dogs. A brief feeling these animal heads give me is that these uniform and mask-like faces somehow block me from getting the characters' emotions as human beings. However, as I go along, I feel Art intentionally uses masks to avoid exposing characters directly to the cruelty of their experience. His animals, while they have essentially the same face, all have distinct human expressions. They suggest the condition of Human beings forced to behave like animals.
At one moment in the book, Vladek and Anja walk all night and finally sneak into a cow house. "I don't know you!" A Polish woman with a "pig head" shouts at Vladek fiercely. However, as she sees the shivering Anja, she holds her arm and changes her tone, ¡°Come to my house until you warm up.¡± I feel sad, for it¡¯s both an inhuman and human experience. I see in the book, the Polish wearing the ¡°pig mask¡± all the time, as if they are destined to be indifferent about Jewish¡¯s suffering, caring about nothing but their own peaceful life. However, at the moment when the Polish woman holds Anja¡¯s arm, I realize that she is not an animal, but a real person like me. She is forced to wear the ¡°pig mask¡±, in order to survive from the war and protect her family from danger, but even the brutality of the war couldn¡¯t completely destroy her human intention. It is a story in which human intention has been distorted and reduced to animal's instinct for self-preservation, in which all will and motive has been degraded to mere reflex. <o:p></o:p>
I haven¡¯t experienced fatal catastrophe in my life, but I am familiar with the ¡°mask¡±, under which human emotion is distorted. I was born in 1983, the year of ¡°pig¡± in Chinese lunar calendar. ¡°Pig soul is destined with honesty and optimism,¡± when grandma said this to me, a little white pig rolling happily in the mud appeared in my mind. Since I was born, my dad was a military commander recruiting soldiers around the state. My mom raised me until 1990, when she left to the other state. From then on, my dad was transferred back to take care of me. I soon got along with dad very well. However, every year when mom came back to visit, I numbly acted as if my dad was not my dad, but my enemy. At home, I walked by him as if he was transparent. I remembered once me and mom went shopping, how dad followed behind us silently; how as he approached, me and mom immediately started moving; how when we arrived home, I kicked him on his belly and spit on his army coat when he was holding the door for us. He was silent; only his eyes and the mark my spit left on his coat were wet. The coat¡ªhe used to wear it waiting for me for hours in the snow and cover my frozen body when I came out of school. <o:p></o:p>
I awkwardly acted like an animal for two years, before mom officially divorced with dad on her last visit. I somehow felt released at that point. Mom was gone; I never ever need to live under the mask. In 1994, when I was in fourth grade, I visited my mom on my own and found out she was living with a man younger than him, Yan Jian Min, and his 9-year-old son, Yan Dong. My world collapsed, but it was not the end. ¡°How is your mom? Is she on her own?¡± I was praying not to hear this question when I came back to my dad. ¡°Yes, she is.¡± I was smiling. I hated myself so much. I just stopped living under one mask but suddenly picked up a new one. How long do I have to live like this? Can someone please tell me? Nobody could tell me, because I cheated my dad, my grandpa, my grandma, and my dad¡¯s siblings all together for five years, even after I left to live with my mom and my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer in 1998. <o:p></o:p>
One of the reasons I find Maus and the animal masks extremely sad to bear is because Maus gives me an essential perspective to review the helplessness of human life. Each of the special people in our live¡ªdad, mom, relatives, and friends¡ªrepresents a certain part of our life. As the holocaust to Vladek and Anja, my parents¡¯ divorce makes me move from one place to another, choosing several people to live with and forgo the alternatives. But how can I ¡°go for¡± certain relationships at the cost of other, equally important ones to me? When choices are too cruel to be made with my eyes open, I shut my consciousness down with a mask, betraying my soul and the people I love. <o:p></o:p>
More important is, Maus reveals to me the fundamental difference between the Polish¡¯s indifference, and the fate I bestow upon myself. Enormously painful, but now I¡¯m brave enough to admit that the pig¡¯s indifference in Maus can be understood or explained by the horror against cat¡¯s brutality, but my distorted rebellion from my dad is the mere reflex of my mother¡¯s emotion, caused by the inborn recreance flooding in my mind. Even when I was in elementary school, I walked along the edge of the pavement silently, with a huddle of boys hitting me and stuffing snow into my clothes. My dad didn¡¯t understand why I remained silent. What can I change if I fight! Nothing! They will always hate me if they want! This is the excuse I always use when facing confrontations. I have spent twenty years surrendering to the comfort of not knowing or caring what is going on around me. My grandma is wrong¡ªI¡¯m not an honest pig; I¡¯m merely a spineless human creature trying to hide under a pig mask, pretending innocence, and defrauding compassion. I try to deny my lack of courage to halt my parents¡¯ fighting and my animal's instinct for self-preservation. However, the real reason why I fell to my mom¡¯s side is that mom is more stubborn and eloquent. I¡¯m merely looking for a sense of protection, longing for a companion in a group, avoiding voicing my own idea and confronting people for what I believe. I¡¯m ashamed of saying so, but I¡¯m constantly obsessed by the illusion that I stand between mom and dad, dragging their hands together and telling them how much l love them both and couldn¡¯t live without either of them¡if could for once shout my feelings out with total freedom, dad wouldn¡¯t be leaving with all his grief and disappointment about his life. <o:p></o:p>
¡°ANJA! VLADEK! It was such a moment that everybody around was crying together with us.¡± After closing Maus II, I felt like crying, both for the final reunion and my own insight after so many years. Life can be very tough, I survive by being as tough, by holding my believe, by trying all I can do ¡ªnot by hiding under a mask and pretending I¡¯m not aware of what¡¯s happening. <o:p></o:p>
Posted by Jane Qi on 6/2/04; 6:53:18 AM
from the dept.
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