Satirical Irony in Spiegelman^s Mans: A Survivor^s Tale
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the text, an additional layer of irony is operative in those moments in which the
text calls attention to itself: the many references to needing to write down quotes
by his father, the scene in which Spiegelman at his drawing table expresses
conscious awareness of the way in vsiiich his own story will become
commodified, the moment when he and his wife discuss who should be assigned
which animal, and many others.
Yet the effectiveness of satirical irony to achieve a depth of humanity
that might otherwise be effaced in Holocaust commercialization begins to falter
on the text’s problematic relationship to stereotyping. Representing the Germans
as cats, the Poles as pigs, the French as frogs, and so on, suggests certain innate,
essential features on which the stereotypes rest. LaCapra notes that “nuances are
introduced into the animal figures ihat mitigate one’s initial response to
stereotyping,” though he acknowledges that in the case of the Germans, they
“tend to remain the categorical perpetrators” (161). LaCapra even suggests that
Mans undermines stereotypes of animals themselves by “transvalu[ing] the
image of the vermin” (161). Nevertheless, despite nuancing certain qualities
ascribed to each animal or rendering actual animals sympathetic through such
ascription, the stereotypes that circulate in the text raise questions about the
limits of satirical irony.
Spiegelman is well-aware of this problematic, calling attention to it at
the beginning of Book Two. In a conversation between Spiegelman and h \