“What did Art Spiegelman get out of publishing Maus?”

 The one question that made me a little confused was question 18, which asked about what Art got out of the publishing of Maus, which is really weird because it doesn’t seem like it is a very hard question, and, more importantly, one that matters. However I found that the question runs deeper than what is the surface answer, and is worth having a discussion about for the follow-up questions afterwards. The question verbatim was, “What did Art Spiegelman get out of publishing Maus?”

The answer to this question is indeed obvious. Spiegelman gained popularity in the form of a cult following, fame, money, and a popular book that will make his name remembered in history and be taught in classrooms. What he gained from this book is great, but we also have to talk about what he lost, which gets much more interesting. This is because he even alludes to it in his own book. In a section that is meant to be a flash-forward in the novel, Artie, Art’s animal counterpart in the story, is portrayed shrinking whenever he comes into contact with people, becoming more child-like with his dialogue and his appearance, and he sits over a pile of dead bodies swarmed in flies that are meant to be the Auschwitz victims. From these images we can see that there is a certain guilt weighing over Art for publishing a book  portraying victims of one of the greatest human tragedies in modern times as animals, and capitalizing off this story. He also shows that he feels some sort of inferiority complex around other people, perhaps for feeling like scum for even creating such a thing. These are interesting because it is not something we expect people to feel sympathy with this successful author for, or even recognize, but it seems so obvious once the author mentions it within his story.