Why were these animals used to represent the different countries in Maus?

Question

In Art Spiegelman's *Maus*, he represents different people from different countries as different animals. For instance, he represents the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Polish as pigs, the Americans as dogs, and the French people as frogs. How were these choices representative of the different countries? I mean, the Jews/mice and the Germans/cats is easy - they were hunted like cats hunt mice. But why the others?

Answer 1

I think the answer is entirely subjective.

There can be immediate deductions drawn, as you pointed out in the case of the German's as cats (predators) and Jews as mice (prey). In addition, the French have historically been referred to as frogs, and Spiegelman is also potentially referencing to other literary works, namely, in the Poles' portrayal as pigs, which may link back to Orwell's depiction of soviets pigs in Animal Farm.

But there are other answers too, and thinking critically about the symbolism behind these artistic decisions will help better your understanding of the book itself. For example, think about what it means to create caricatures out of groups of people who were implicated in the Holocaust. By organizing each group of people into a species from the animal kingdom, Spiegelman might be commenting on what such categorizations or hierarchies mean in a society. By pointing these distinctions out so explicitly, readers are forced to question them, just as you have.