Où est Ma Chatte?

     The phrase "Où est ma chatte" is French for "where is my cat?" In Alice in Wonderland, Alice offends the small mouse she is talking to when she asks him that question. In a sense, the quote ties into the allegorical graphic novel Maus. In the two volumes, Art Spiegelman anthropomorphizes mice as the Jews and cats as the Germans. Just as in real life, the German cats terrorize the Jewish mice, effectively making their lives a living hell.
     Maus follows the story of Art Spiegelman and how he learns about his father Vladek's horrific but amazing survival as a Jew during World War II. It is a story within a story, a piece of meta-nonfiction. As readers, we immediately sympathize for Vladek and his bitter story of survival. However, after the war, it is evident how hypocritical Vladek truly is.
     As a victim of the cruelties of the Holocaust, he knows firsthand how destructive racism can be. Even so, when he, Art, and Françoise encounter a homeless colored man, Vladek protests his son and daughter-in-law's kindness to the man. He even goes so far as to say that Jews are far more superior to blacks.

 

     In an essence, Vladek's time as a victim of the war turns him into a Nazi of some sort. He believes his own race is better than others. It is darkly ironic, considering that this was the Nazi mentality that caused so much death to the Jews in the first place.

     So, as much as the war may have made Vladek stronger, it also shaped him into a more hateful, racist person. 

     You may think that I've put too much thought into analyzing one page of some random graphic novel. But, if there's one thing I've learned in my life it is that graphic novels can carry so much more weight than picture-less novels. Maus, in conjunction with Alison Bechdel's memoir Fun Home, are the two graphic novels that have changed my opinion on books with pictures forever. -MC