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Summary
While Artie and his wife Françoise are staying with friends in Vermont, Artie is sketching Françoise as different animals to figure out how to represent her in the book. Françoise says she that she should be a mouse. Artie briefly objects that Françoise is in fact French, so Françoise offers that she could be a rabbit. Artie insists that a sweet, gentle rabbit doesn’t accurately reflect the French’s anti-Semitism. Artie ultimately settles on drawing her as a mouse since she converted to Judaism to make Vladek happy.
Their hosts interrupt with the news that Artie’s father has had a heart attack. When he calls Vladek, Artie learns that his father fabricated the heart attack, and is really calling because Mala withdrew money from their joint account and left. Artie decides to visit his father at his summer rental in the Catskills, and as they drive, he tells Françoise more about his childhood.
Artie recalls a photo of Richieu that he often looked at as a child, wondering if he would ever live up to all that Richieu might have been. Artie is burdened by insecurities, worrying that he won’t be able to successfully translate the enormity of the Holocaust and his father’s experience in a comic.
Artie and Françoise arrive at Vladek’s rental. Early the next morning, Vladek wakes them up, ranting about Mala stealing his money, his car, and his jewelry. He starts an argument about how many wooden matches Artie is using, so Artie goes outside. The neighbors invite Artie in and express their concern for Vladek, insisting that he’s very ill and he needs constant care. Artie tries to reassure them that his father can manage on his own, but then finds out that Vladek leaves his gas burner on throughout the day, reasoning that because gas is included in his rent, he’s conserving matches. After a frustrating attempt to look through Vladek’s bank paperwork, Artie and Vladek take a walk.
Vladek continues his story, starting with his arrival in Auschwitz. The incoming Jews are stripped of their clothing and possessions and given ill-fitting prison uniforms and shoes to wear. Their heads are shaved, and their forearms are tattooed with identification numbers. Vladek sees Abraham, who reveals that he was forced to write his earlier letter. He also sees the Polish smugglers who betrayed him and Anja; the Gestapo arrested them when they were no longer of value. Vladek is overwhelmed with grief but is heartened by a priest, who points out that Vladek’s tattoo contains several numbers that are significant to Judaism. Abraham’s father, Mandelbaum, is also imprisoned with Vladek, and they are assigned to share a small bed in the overcrowded barracks.
A kapo (a Polish prisoner assigned to supervise other prisoners) forces everyone in the barracks to do grueling exercises all day, and some prisoners die of exhaustion. When one of the kapos asks which of the prisoners knows both Polish and English, Vladek volunteers to give the man private English lessons. In return, the kapo tells Vladek that when the S.S. officers arrive the following day, he should stand on the far left when they’re selecting men for work detail. Vladek does as he is told and remains safe, along with Mandelbaum.
The kapo brings Vladek to a room and gives him the first real food he’s had in a long time. The kapo explains that he wants to know English in case the Allies win the war. After the lesson, the kapo lets Vladek choose better clothes and leather shoes from the storeroom, as well as a separate set of shoes, a spoon, and a belt for Mandelbaum. Eventually, Mandelbaum is chosen for work detail, and Vladek never sees him again. Vladek makes a series of guesses about how Mandelbaum died, but he isn’t certain. The kapo continues to keep Vladek safe and adds him to the crew that fixes roofs in the camp based on Vladek’s prior experiences in the tin shop in Sosnowiec.
Back in the present, Vladek wraps his story for the time being, and leads Artie to a hotel patio, avoiding the hotel security. Vladek tells Artie that he often sneaks into the hotel for dancing lessons or games of bingo.
Analysis
The first pages of Book Two return to Artie’s creative process, this time to demonstrate the difficulty of grouping people into racial categories. An illustration of Artie’s sketchbook shows drawings of Françoise as a moose, a poodle, a frog, a rabbit, and a mouse. Artie’s struggle to choose the best animal for Françoise, who is French but converted to Judaism, points to the artificiality of the borders between racial categories. Artie goes so far as to suggest a scene where a rabbi magically transforms Françoise from a rabbit to a mouse after her conversion, making racial difference into something literally magical. Maus organizes characters into racial groups using different animals, but the book acknowledges that this is a metaphor that falls apart when considered too closely. Maus argues that race is a social construct, an organizing concept made up by people, while still demonstrating the real-world consequences of that construct. In other words, race is not biologically real, but people’s insistence on grouping others by racial categories has very real effects in the world.
Chapter Six dramatizes Artie’s overall creative struggle in turning Vladek’s story into a comic book, drawing the reader’s attention to how Artie has shaped that history. Artie says explicitly to Françoise that he does not think he is able to write this book because he fundamentally does not understand the full horrors of the Holocaust. In the conversation with Françoise, he directly acknowledges that “reality is too complex for comics” and then suggests that even the seemingly simple conversation the two have in the car isn’t real life because Françoise would never let him talk so long without interruption. This scene suggests that readers should question every moment in the book as a simplification of the reality being depicted. All histories are stories, Maus suggests again, and no history is objective.
Part of Artie’s struggle to turn Vladek’s story into a graphic novel is his own survivor’s guilt. Throughout his childhood, Artie felt guilty that he did not experience what his parents and brother Richieu did. Richieu, whose photograph hangs in Vladek and Anja’s bedroom, serves as a foil to Artie in childhood, as well. Artie feels like he could never be as good as the potential future that Richieu had and competes, in essence, with his brother’s ghost for his parents’ praise and affection. Significantly, Book Two begins with a dedication to Richieu and a recreation of that photograph. Like the photograph of Artie and Anja in Prisoner on the Hell Planet, this photograph of Richieu reminds the reader that he was a real person and not just one among millions of Jews killed by the Nazis. Artie’s struggle to write Maus owes in part to his sense that the story is not really his to tell, but he is the one who is alive with the ability to tell it.
Vladek’s loyalty to Mandelbaum while in Auschwitz points to the role kindness played in people’s survival during the Holocaust. When they arrive at Auschwitz, a series of small misfortunes makes Mandelbaum’s life nearly impossible. He has to hold his pants with one hand and a too-large shoe with another, making it difficult to pick up his spoon fast enough when he drops it, leading someone else to steal it. Vladek uses his favor with the kapo, and risks his future ability to ask for favors, to get Mandelbaum a belt, new shoes, and a new spoon. Through Vladek’s kindness, Mandelbaum survives longer than he would have otherwise.
Mandelbaum’s eventual death returns the text to the question of writing history. Vladek does not know what happens to Mandelbaum, and he suggests a number of possibilities for how he might have died. Artie chooses one scenario to illustrate, where a guard steals Mandelbaum’s hat, throws it, and then shoots Mandelbaum for trying to escape when he goes to get his hat. Maus both acknowledges that we cannot know how Mandelbaum died because his story died with him and yet still depicts his death. Artie chooses which scenario to illustrate, demonstrating that he has final say over the story told. We know we cannot trust that this is the true story because Vladek is not sure and Artie has already told us that he thinks comics cannot capture the complexity of reality. Yet Maus must make a choice because there is a story to tell, and that story requires Artie to fill in narrative blanks when necessary.
