Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Title: Maus a Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds History
Author: Art Spiegelman
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In his classic graphic novel about the waking nightmare that was the East European Jewish experience in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Vol. 1 My Father Bleeds History (1986, Pantheon, New York), Art Spiegelman has the father of the title recount a dream he experienced in the midst of being incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp. This novel's has a dream-like quality in that the Jews of the story are portrayed as mice, with the gentiles pictured as cats. It is the U.S. in the 1970’s and the author is interviewing his father, Vladek, about his experiences in Poland prior to and during World War II. The interview, like a dream itself, jumps back and forth between the 1970’s “now” and the 1940’s “then.”
Vladek is talking about having been interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp at the beginning of WWII.
Now, the narrating Vladek, with his Yiddish accent: “Always I went to sleep exhausted. And one night I had a dream…”
Then, a voice in the dark speaks to the sleeping P.O.W. Vladek: “Don’t worry…”
Now, Vladek: “A voice was talking to me. It was, I think, my dead grandfather…”
Then, a hand the size of sleeping Vladek appears out of the dark, its index finger touching the sleeping figure: “Don’t worry, child…”
Now, Vladek: “It was so real, this voice…”
Then, a larger-than-life-sized figure of his grandfather is at sleeping Vladek’s side in the dark, its hand on the dreamer’ chest, wearing a prayer shawl and a phylactery on his forehead: “You will come out of this place – FREE! … On the day of Parshas Truma.”
Now, Valdek: “I woke up right away. And when I went to sleep, again it was: “Parshas Truma! Parshas Truma!” The author to his father: “So what’s Parshas Truma?” Vladek: “Each week, on Saturday, we read a section from the Torah. This is called – a Parsha … and one week each year it is Parshas Truma. Before work a few from us prayed. It was a rabbi there with us.”
Then, back in the POW camp, Vladek to the rabbi: “One moment, rabbi. When will we read Parshas Truma?” Rabbi: “Parshas Truma?... In the middle of February … Almost three months from now. Why?”
Now, Vladek: “Three months – and every day was for us a year! I told him my dream …”
Then, Vladek, under the watch of a Nazi soldier: “Let’s hope it’s true. I’m afraid we’ll NEVER get out of here.”
Now: “So we worked, day after day. We survived. Week after week, the same. Until, one time …
Then, an inmate’s voice: “Look – soldiers!” Vladek: “It came very many Gestapo and Wehrmacht.” A soldier: “Attention! Line up on the road in two rows! Immediately!”
Now: “We were not at ease. We didn’t know what they could do with us. I stood always in the second line.”
Then, in a row of shadowed faces: “Psst – Vladek!”
Now: “I didn’t want they should see me much. Someone sneaked next to me …”
Then, Vladek: “Rabbi!” The rabbi to Vladek: “Do you know what DAY it is?” Vladek: “Saturday, of course.” Rabbi; “But do you know WHAT a Saturday?... It’s Parshas Truma!” Vladek is, indeed, released that day.
Now, the author: “You mean your ‘Parshas Truma’ dream actually came true?” Vladek: “Yes – this is for me a very important date… I checked on a calendar. It was this Parsha on the week I got married …And this was the Parsha in 1948, after the war, on the week you were born! … And so it came out to be this Parsha you sang on the Saturday of your bar mitzvah!”
The imprisoned Vladek experiences a sleep dream that is pre-cognitive, it predicts or anticipates events that will occur in waking reality. The specific parsha associated with his release came to have ongoing meaning for Vladek, it being connected to several other significant events in his life. The parsha came have synchronistic, a-causal, significance for him. This story illustrates how sleep dreams can offer hope and sustenance in waking life, serving as something of an antidote to waking nightmares and ongoingly affording meaning with which to make coherence in a life that is shattered by Nightmare.