The Holocaust - A Literary Inspiration?

1. Introduction In the following paper I would like to examine to what extent the Holocaust is appropriate as a literary inspiration. I will cite Art Spiegelman's comic strips MAUS I and MAUS II (with focus on the latter) as examples since they are two of the most extraordinary works among Holocaust literature and art. After analysing the problem of classifying Holocaust literature as 'fictional' or 'non-fictional' I will shortly present Theodor W. Adorno's main theses about this topic because his opinion belonged to the most extreme and also most responded ones. Moreover it was, even though there were few people who shared it, refused by many and it is thus worth looking at it. The third chapter will deal with Spiegelman's MAUS to a greater extent. Some of the main features like the use of the animal metaphor shall be examined and discussed. Furthermore it will be taken into consideration whether Spiegelman's comic strip is an appropriate way to represent the Holocaust in literature. Since MAUS was written by someone who was rather affected by the Shoah in an indirect way, it will also be examined whether these people from the second generation can be seen as victims as well as those who experienced the Holocaust directly. In general I want to demonstrate in this paper that Adorno's thesis about the impossibility of writing about the Holocaust is not true. By giving the example of Spiegelman's MAUS it should be made clear that it is even possible to use the Holocaust as some kind of inspiration in a fairly unusual way.