Maus: Between The Lines

I was struck by Art Spiegelman's attention to even the minutest details. His style of telling a story is the polar opposite of Elie Wiesel's in Night. Wiesel's stark writing speaks to the reader up-front, taking the reader along on the journey just as it happens. Spiegelman, on the other hand, assigns heavier importance to the unsaid rather than the said. The reader has to carefully scan and take in everything, and think through not only the dialogue, but the accompanying images as well. Skimming or quickly reading through any of it is unacceptable-no, impossible-to do without missing some hidden element that completes the story. An excellent example of this is on page 12. Spiegelman is convincing his father to tell his story and his father retorts that "It would take many books" to recount his experiences. (12.5) In the drawing, we see that the father is working out on his bike. But as we look closer to the right of the image, we catch a glimpse of the father's arm, and on it a tattooed set of numbers. 175113. This small addition to the drawing immediately infuses it with a much larger, deeper meaning and gives the father's story greater impact. The reader sees that even though the father has moved on from the Holocaust, he has a constant reminder of that past's reality. He is forever marked by that particular stain on history; he may move on, but he can never completely forget. Yet, because of the shading on his arm and the overall busyness of the section, a reader who reads only the dialogue or just glances at the images would miss this detail. Spiegelman definitely intended his story for a careful reader, as is evident from the six digits emblazoned on his father's arm.