The holocaust was a grievous war that terminated the lives of several Jewish people. As one of the victims of the terrible conflict, Valdek was tremendously lucky as one of the few Jews who managed to live along with making it through the war. Despite him being alive, he is never capable of forgetting the awful things done by Nazis. The lessons he learnt from concentration camps will continue to have impacts on his life. After reading Maus, the audience can perceive several varying manners that the holocaust affected the personality of Valdek. It made him become an exceedingly frugal, irritatingly manipulative, and incapable of relaxing a great deal. These three traits are evident quite a lot in the entire book.
At the beginning of Maus Volume II, Art Spiegelman’s persona (Artie) worries that he has depicted his father, Vladek, in overtly negative light in the bid to offer a truthful explanation not only of his parent’s ordeals during the Holocaust, but also of its results in their personal American residence in Rego Park, New York. The son and the father are enstranged and their gatherings are often fraught with tension and anger. Vladek is extremely miserly and overbearing; qualities enabling Artie smash against the elder Spiegelman.
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It is this familial pressure that unsettles me when reading Maus I and Maus II. However, contrary to Artie’s anxiety that the audience would find his father appalling, it is he whom I impulsively blame for their compromised relationships. Artie emerges in the old family residence only to have Vladek mention his story. Also, he is disinterested in his father’s health situation, second marriage, despair the suicide of the first wife, and estate. Often, Artie resorts to blaming the father’s imperiousness for his own flaws along with avoiding responsibility for Vladek wherever possible. According to my perception, it is the father who assumes the position of a hero. At the epitome of Jewish pogroms, Vladek strives for the survival of his family, seeking methods of navigating through the harsh system imposed by Nazis to ascertain subsistence and safety. Even in his old age, Vladek extends this fight for sustainability, this time battling against the intimidations of infirmity from aging heart as well as diabetes. In a nutshell, these are steps which are so admirable.
There is, however, the question that Art Spiegelman, the artist, faintly posed in Maus as regards Vladek’s loss of certain characteristics from the Holocaust: What does it imply to survive? And having explained that, it is for the right cause? These are vital questions that will aid in understanding not only Artie and Vladek, but other casualties of trauma, and perhaps even life or history itself. I, however, decide to refrain from dwelling on these concerns further in this paper as they lead to a myriad of spoilers. I would rather an individual read the book for themselves.
As a reader striving to borrow some sense from the book as well as gaining experience by reading the book, it is evident that Vladek did not lose anything from surviving the holocaust. There are questions that can help in understanding why Artie depicts his father as an individual partly disoriented by the effects of the war. An individual coming from a Filipino family right away can perceive that the crucial and obvious lens mediating their reading culture is shaped through accepting and understanding that caring for the parents in their old age forms the basis for responsibility as a child. This is not evident in Artie, who resorts to identifying the faults of the father instead of offering any substantial support for ailing old man. More than a duty, caring for the aging family members is central to the perfect image of familial love. For example, using the perspective of Filipino to explain Artie’s refusal to coexist peacefully and mutually helpful with his father, it is important to note that his behavior is irresponsible and callous. This, however, does not define the cultural paradigm in a universal setting. Therefore, it is possible that an Urban American audience may find Artie’s character is entirely justified and normal. The audience, through contrasting their origin with Artie’s urban culture evident in America, it is possible to understand his conduct more without having to concur with him.
I have become sensitive to Artie’s claim that the father might have lost a vital feature in life by surviving the holocaust. Similar to Vladek, I had a grandmother who in a lot of similar manners was like Vladek. She was young at the height of the Phillipines invasion by the Japanese during the Second World War. With a sickly mother and womanizer and drunkard father, she had to act as the adult in the family, making sure that all the other five siblings are well. Even after the end of the war, grandmother still lived through adversity. It was only years later when her kids got married when she began to coexist a little easier. As a hero similar to Vladek, she could have existed through a life of adequate comfort using her pension, but never did she outgrow the mindset of a survivor of war. She used to economize all the time, particularly with herself. Also, she adopted the habit of storing crackers and bread in tin cans under the bed, such as food rations, to stay vigil of any emergence of unexpected war.
Overall, while some survivors fail to forget the hunger and fear of the hard years and carry these experiences with them throughout the later years, some other individuals do manage the shift to peacetime and stay free from the anxieties. The question, however, is to determine the fairness in expecting all post trauma casualties need to respond to their experiences in only a single way, which is to move on. This response is of the opinion that certain experiences are so horrifying that it is difficult to heal more completely. This explains why Vladek should not be labeled as someone who has lost anything significant in regards to normal life of an adult. It is important to honor the struggles of individuals who have undergone horrifying experiences and still continue to ensure the comfort of others. Similarly, people should also accept that there are times where normalcy cannot be returned to. Perhaps, Artie should understand that there are occasions when there are possibilities of arriving at a totally “new normal, but the past and its actual characteristic are aspects that are long gone. Since we are the survivors of war survivors, perhaps the problem of understanding relies on our shoulders.
