I thought I'd bring some more context into what is already a rich conversation.
One of the interesting bits of background about Spiegelman's text is
that the mice were not originally drawn quite so cartoonishly. Instead,
Spiegelman drew them in a manner that was more realistic/ human-like,
clearly based in part on the famous photographs of concentration camp
survivors taken by photographers such as Margaret Bourke-White.
Original sketch for
Maus
Bourke-White photo from
LIFE magazine of liberated prisoners
With this in mind, it's interesting to speculate about just why
Spiegelman chose to revise his original mice into something more
cartoonish. As Jennifer D. said in her response, does it have something
to do with the icon and identification, as McCloud would have them? Is
his decision to portray the Jews as mice problematic because it
fundamentally essentializes race and trades in stereotype? Or, as we
will see more clearly in Book II of
Maus, is he trying to suggest
something more subversive about race and national identity--and the
combined ridiculousness and danger of racism? Does Spiegelman's choice
to use animals in
Maus encourage or forestall identification, in
your opinion? Would you have responded differently to the mice if they
were drawn in the manner of the more realistic, anthropomorphic sketch
above?
Another important aspect of the Jews-as-mice, Germans-as-cats,
Poles-as-pigs metaphor, as many of you have noted, is its historical
accuracy in terms of the stereotypes in currency before and during the
war, as well as the preoccupation that many Germans had with whether the
Jews were a race.
Beginning during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, roughly
coterminous with the Enlightenment's investment in creating scientific
and racial taxonomies, anxiety about Jewish racial difference came to
center around the Jewish body. Many Europeans became obsessed with the
idea that Jews were members of an inferior, non-white race. Part of
this obsession centered around the idea that Jews had distinguishable
physical characteristics that rendered them decidedly other.
Sadly, many stereotypes found their way into caricature.
Above, you can see early examples of Jewish caricature that focus on
supposed physical differences of Jews, including large noses and ears,
oversized feet, and talon-like nails.
Later Nazi caricature traded in similar stereotypes of Jewish physical difference. (see below)
During this period of anti-Semitic propaganda, as some of you have
noted, Jews were often likened to vermin, particularly mice and rats.
The Nazi film,
Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal, or Wandering, Jew),
one of the most disturbing anti-Semitic propaganda pieces, featured
scenes that juxtaposed "typical" wandering Jew with images of rats and
mice overrunning various parts of the globe. This image (a still of the
rats can be seen below) suggested that, like vermin, Jews spread chaos
and disease, literal and metaphorical, wherever they went.
For more on anti-Semitic stereotypes, you might check out resources such as Sander Gilman's work on
The Jew's Body, this book on
Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, or this book on
Nazi propaganda.
For more early sketches and background on the creation of
Maus, take a look at
Meta-Maus, Spiegelman's behind-the-scenes account of the creation of his work.
