Satirical Irony in Art Spiegelman’s
M ans: A Survivor*s Tale
Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor *s Tale is premised, like so many
other books by children of Holocaust survivors, on the impossibility of ever
having direct access to the event itself The immediacy of the event is bracketed
off, consigned to ellipses, and available to Spiegelman only through mediation
and representation. Maus is a text that is self-reflexively and playfully
representational. The form of representation is not absolutist but satirical-ironic,
calling attention to the difficult if not constructed nature of remembrance.
Satirical irony is a term that deliberately brings together two distinct,
though often conflated, rhetorical tropes. Satire is most often used to ridicule
folly. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, satire is the use of ridicule,
irony, and/or sarcasm in written or verbal form for the purposes of exposing
folly. Irony is arguably most effective as a rhetorical device when it is in the
service of sarcasm, as Jonathan Swift knew well. Yet a distinction between
satire and irony is important, for irony might very well not be satirical. When
one’s actions lead to an outcome that is exactly the obverse of what is expected,
that outcome is not satirical although it is clearly ironic. Of interest to me in
Maus is the way in ^\^lich Spiegelman draws on the irony of the Holocaust and
the familial events that surround it and subjects both to satirical treatment. Thus,
by satirical irony I mean to refer in part to Maus" technique of working within
familiar Nazi tropes in order to subvert them. In so doing, the text critiques
incisively the Nazi conception of Jewish (non)identity that made the logic of
extermination possible.
But to wJiat extent is satirical irony effective either in stepping outside
the fi*amework of essentialized racial ideology or in responding to ironic life
events? In exploring a possible answer to this question, I will turn to another use
of satirical irony in the text—Spiegelman’s representation of his own search for
the truth both about the Holocaust and his m over’s suicide. That is, Spiegelman
turns the satirical-ironic gaze on himself and the process of writing. In so doing,
he poses questions about the possibilities and limits of using satirical irony as a
defense against the ironic conditions of life.
Irony itself pervaded the Holocaust. Slavoj Zizek observes that “the
bands playing vsiiile the Jews marched to the gas chambers or to work, [and] the
notorious ‘Arbeit macht fi-ei!’ inscription above the entrance to Auschwitz” were
all “unmistakable signs that the ‘final solution’ was carried out as a gigantic joke
which submitted the victims to a supplementary act of gratuitous, cruel and