Rat family

When discussing non-fiction graphic novels or documentary comics, one of the definitive works that inevitably comes to mind is Art Spiegelman's "Maus," serialized from 1978 to 1991. This book is a classic of documentary comics, a groundbreaking work in the genre of the Holocaust, and was invited for exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1991-1992.

The book meticulously portrays the traumatic experiences of a survivor, not only recreating how the Nazis gradually encroached upon daily life but also showing readers how that history continues to impact the present, from the mother's suicide after the war, the father's remarriage, and the discord between father and son—family entanglements inescapable despite surviving the Holocaust.

The term "Maus" (mouse) symbolizes Hitler's and wartime Germany's contempt and discrimination against Jewish people. The real-world ethnic cleansing is transformed in the author's work into the metaphor of cats catching mice, and the process of Nazi persecution of Jews is relived through his numerous long conversations with his father.

What kind of adaptability allowed the author's father to survive, and at the same time enable his wife to narrowly escape death? And what kind of complex emotions led to his wife's suicide, and caused both his son and second wife to have a love-hate relationship with him, yet still be unable to abandon him? In the torrent of history, we see the admirable vitality of a survivor, while also, from the perspective of his son, feeling both impatience and sympathy for this neurotic and incredibly stingy father.

See how the author uses comics to recreate the workings of totalitarian politics, and honestly depicts how he viewed his father as both a victim and a perpetrator, vividly reproducing the lingering historical aftermath of a tragic era.