The Use of Metafiction in Maus (Essay Sample)

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The Use of Metafiction in Maus
Is it cheating to use fiction to fill in some aspects of an actual narrative? How can readers separate fact from fiction in such as story? Metafiction is a technique that Art Spiegelman uses to comment on the fictional nature of his work. In Maus, Art Spiegelman depicts interviews with his father, Vladek Spiegelman, in a graphic novel regarding his experience during the Holocaust. Vladek is a Polish Jew and was subjected to various horrors that other Jews went through during the period. The novel tells Vladek's story from his early adulthood before World War II until the end of the Holocaust. Vladek survives the ordeal, and the novel is an attempt at describing his experience of survival. However, Spiegelman experiences various problems with the narrative. For example, millions of people did not survive the ordeal, and hence retelling the story requires a way to ensure that their voices and experiences are not ignored (Gavrilă, 67-68). Moreover, since the story is told from Vladek's memories, recalling every detail is problematic, and hence some information might be incomplete (Metamaus, 28). Finally, Spiegelman seeks to represent the narrative in a manner that engages the reader but is also unlike the various existing accounts of the Holocaust. These problems indicate that while the overall story is based on events that happened in the real world, some aspects of the narrative will still be fictional in order to create a complete representation of the issue. The challenge becomes finding a way to still narrate the story but also highlight its fictional elements. Consequently, Spiegelman uses explicit and implicit metafiction to remind the readers of the various inadequacies of Maus, in the context of the Holocaust, and to create an engaging narrative.
According to Patricia Waugh, metafiction refers to the parts of literature that remind its readers about the fictional nature of the work (4-5). In this sense, the depicted events include various instances that emphasize the constructedness of the narrative. Wolf, Bantleon, and Thoss further divide metafiction into explicit and implicit (37-38). Explicit metafiction involves the aspects of a narrative that clearly inform the reader about the fictional nature of the story. They involve the various comments that the author uses to explain the process of writing the story. In Maus, it can be viewed from the author's struggles with writing an appropriate narrative to depict the evils of the Holocaust as well as the way of life during the period. For example, Spiegelman includes his challenges in depicting the different characters in the story. In particular, the novel shows the author struggling with deciding the animal that he will use to represent his wife. In the book, Spiegelman depicts himself trying to draw different animals in order to decide the best one that represents his wife (Complete Maus, 171). He struggles with the fact that she is French, a nationality that he has not incorporated in the novel at the time. This is an instance of explicit metafiction since it is a commentary regarding the dilemmas that Spiegelman experienced when writing the novels. It also reminds the reader that the animal characters are a subjective creation of the author.
On the other hand, Wolf, Bantleon, and Thoss define implicit metafiction as the elements of the story that the author uses to show its fictional aspects (37-38). Implicit metafiction in Maus is used to keep the readers engaged with the narrative as well as to fill some of the unavailable details, such as the physical appearance of the individuals involved. For example, Spiegelman uses animal characters with human features. The animals he chooses are relatable in that he uses their characteristics to depict actual events during the Holocaust. For example, cats usually hunt mice. In the novel, Spiegelman depicts Jews as mice and the Germans who were killing. In addition, dogs and cats usually do not live together, and they fight whenever they encounter one another. Based on this perception, Americans, who fought the Germans and whose participation in the war was crucial to ending the Holocaust, are depicted as dogs. While symbolism may be used to explain these depictions, a key reason for using such characters is because Spiegelman does not know some of the people involved in the narrative. As such, the use of human faces would create a false story. Spiegelman then resorts to using animal characters with human characters in order to show the reader that there are still some fictional aspects of the story in the narrative.
Furthermore, the depiction allows the author to recreate the horrors that Jews experienced during the Holocaust in an engaging manner to the readers. If Spiegelman had used human characters, it would have been difficult to depict the various mass deaths experienced in the concentration camps in a manner that will not cause readers to turn away or feel repulsed by the narrative. For instance, during a typhus breakout, Spiegelman depicts Vladek walking the halls of the camp on top of corpses of other mice. Such a scene would be impossible to depict using human characters without making the readers cringe in disgust, which is not Spiegelman's objective. As such, he uses animal characters in a manner that helps him to engage the reader while at the same time reminding them of the fictional nature of some aspects of the text.
Another instance of implicit metafiction is that of the author in the story. Spiegelman manages to inject himself into his own work at the time of writing. His representation of himself in the present is different than that of the past. He depicts himself as a human being wearing the costume of a mouse (Complete Maus, 202). In this case, he attempts to portray his Jewish heritage as well as his struggles to understand the events of the Holocaust being a second-generation survivor. Moreover, he also attempts to hide the identity of the author and act as Artie, his character in the novel. The hiding of the identity is similar to that of Vladek when he pretends to be Polish while on a train. The implicit metafiction is reinforced by the explicit one when Spiegelman states that "I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through!" (Complete Maus, 176). In this sense, the costume illustrates that he is a Jew who is still affected by