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At least fifteen foreign editions are coming out. I’ve gotten 4 serious offers to turn my book into a T.V. special or movie. (I don’t wanna.)
In May 1968 my mother killed herself. (She left no note.)
Lately, I’ve been feeling depressed.
Artie delivers this series of seemingly unrelated statements in the scene that opens Book II, Chapter 2. The scene depicts Artie’s experiences after the successful publication of Maus Book I: My Father Bleeds History. In the panel, he is illustrated as a man wearing a mouse mask. He leans over his drafting table with his head on his arms. The drafting table sits atop a pile of naked, emaciated, anthropomorphized mice. Flies buzz around Artie and the mice, suggesting they are dead. The image suggests that at least part of why Artie feels depressed is that he feels like the success of his book was built on the deaths and suffering of the millions of Jewish people who were killed in the Holocaust. His reference to his mother Anja’s suicide implies that Artie feels he has exploited her death as well. Artie says he doesn’t want to turn the book into a T.V. special or movie, using the childish statement “I don’t wanna,” showing that he both feels powerless over his own creation and deeply uncomfortable with making even more money from it. Maus’s depiction of Artie as a man in a mouse mask further implies that the story Artie tells in Maus isn’t his own. He is wearing a mouse mask like an impostor trying to get away with pretending to be something he is not.
