SOURCE: Ma, Sheng-Mei. “Mourning with the (as a) Jew: Metaphor, Ethnicity, and the Holocaust in Art Spiegelman's Maus.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 16 (1997): 115-29.

In the following essay, Ma discusses the significance of cultural identity, particularly Jewish identity, to the reading of Maus, noting that Spiegelman is “acutely aware that his comics reach a large audience across ethnic and national boundaries.”

I. Mourning with the Jew or Mourning as a Jew

In “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” (originally drawn in 1972), the only segment peopled with human figures out of Maus I (1986) and Maus II (1991), the bereaved father and son mourn the mother, Anja, who took her own life. Vladek, the father and a Holocaust survivor, and other mourners gathered around the casket to intone the Kaddish, while Artie the son recites quietly The Tibetan Book of the Dead¹. An intriguing detail, Artie's choice of elegy reflects the spiritual...