Identity's Mask

One of the most recurring motifs in both volumes of MAUS is the motif of masks and animals. Spiegelman uses this motif to illustrate the fluid definition of one’s personal identity. An example of this motif is greatly shown on page 50 of MAUS VII.

In the second and third panel on this page, a soldier in Auschwitz is pleading that he is a German like the Nazis. However, in the novel Spiegelman still draws the man as a mouse (Jewish person). Spiegelman further shows his view on the superficiality of identity by changing the man from a mouse to a cat in panel 4. Even though the man is now depicted as a cat, like the Nazis, he still had the previous mask of being a mouse so he was still killed. Art Spiegelman used  this quick change from mouse to cat to represent how identity is portrayed as all exterior, and you can’t simply know one’s true ethnicity and religion by just their superficial features. By having different nationalities and religions drawn as different animals, Spiegelman also played off of human nature to judge someone as soon as we see their exterior.  Additionally, when the man so easily transformed into a cat just based off of what he said he was, he was covered in even more stripes. Spiegelman frequently used stripes in MAUS to represent both physical and mental imprisonment. By having the man as a cat in more stripes, it’s depicted that the man is being both mentally and literally imprisoned by his identity. He’s literally being imprisoned in Auschwitz, but is also being imprisoned mentally by not being able to accurately express his two different and valid identities through one animal/mask.