Heroism In Maus : Vladek And Anja Spiegelman

In the book “Maus”, Art Spiegelman documents his father’s experiences throughout the Holocaust. Vladek has his life shaped by the Holocaust, affecting even his personality, he is portrayed as a character with an aggravating personality, cheap, selfish, and spiteful. Everything about Vladek can be linked back to the Holocaust, his selfishness to when he had to take things from others to survive, even if it meant stealing. His spitefulness as of being repeatedly betrayed by those who were supposed to help him. With Vladek’s most major trait being how cheap he is, this is most likely linked to how money saved Vladek and his family members on multiple occasions and that because of money he was able to survive the Holocaust. Vladek's entire personality

In the first volume, Artie ruminates on the subject of Jewish stereotypes and the ways in which his father fits into them. In one panel, he says, “In some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew” (Maus I, Spiegelman 131). It’s important to Artie to portray his father accurately, but he’s understandably concerned about playing into stereotypes. Just like the animal and nationality stereotypes, the stereotypes that Vladek fits into work in two ways. Vladek is the ‘miserly old Jew’ but the text shows over and over again that this same pragmatic tendency helped him survive a lot of times in the war, and so in some ways validates the practice. It’s important to note though, that the tendency to save negatively affected Mala and Artie; they both carried a lot of resentment towards Vladek in the ways that he denied them a lot of basic necessities, and in a lot of ways prioritized material items and money over members of his family. So while the text shows an explanation of sorts for Vladek’s behavior, it doesn’t necessarily make excuses for the problems he caused with his actions later on. The engagement between cultural perceptions and lived experience continues the subversive action that is the basic underlying function of the texts.

In chapter one of Maus by Art Spiegelman, Artie sets out to visit his father, Vladek, in Rego Park after being away for nearly two years. Vladek has remarried to Mala after Artie 's mother 's suicide. Artie convinces his father to tell him his story so that he may write a book about his life in Poland and the war. Vladek begins his story by explaining how he met Artie 's mother, Anja. In the beginning of chapter two, the honeymoon, Artie visits Vladek regularly over the next months to record his story. Vladek mentions that Anja had an ex boyfriend, from Warsaw who took part in Communist activities. Anja 's parents explain how she had been translating the documents to her boyfriend. When she was warned that police were on their way she went into hiding and left the package with the seamstress. Later Anja 's father helps finance a textile factory for Vladek to manage. Around the same time Anja delivers her first newborn but then suffers from postpartum depression. Anja and Vladek then go off to a sanitarium where she recovers. They arrive back home to find out that the factory had been robbed. As this happens the conditions worsen for the Jews and Vladek later receives a letter from the government stating that he has been called into active duty from the reserves.

The experience of holocaust survivors Anja and Vladek was harrowing but there was a bequeathed suffering they passed on to their son Artie long after the end of the Holocaust. This inheritance was a pain and displacement that tainted his very identity. Artie’s relationship with his parents was a difficult one, guilt and the omnipresence of their traumatic experiences was stifling. Entrapping Artie in a life he did not even feel entitled to. A life that, based on his parent's unattainable experiences, Artie could never truly understand. Artie is incapable of understanding his world based on the experiences his parents had because those experiences were experienced by Jews suffering immeasurable pain during the Holocaust. Normally adults struggle, to an extent, in understanding the world as their parents did. Artie struggled so much more so because Anja and Vladek didn’t just experience a different world, they were forced by that world into new identities. Artie’s parents were never really free of the Holocaust, because of this Vladek consistently discredited Artie’s understanding of life. What it meant to be, “friend”, “lover”, and “son”. Artie

The Holocaust continually torments Vladek and Anja who survived, by somewhat maintaining a prisoner of Nazi Germany status upon their unrestricted future life. Spiegelman reasons Vladek’s somewhat erratic and fickle persona, implying it was the gruesome treatment of the Jewish population which resulted in the broken and therefore unstable father readers are exposed to. The marriage of Vladek and Mala is dysfunctional and loveless where the money conscious husband restrains a frustrated Mala to

Recently we have come across two authors, Jacques Lusseyran and Art Spiegelman, who share their stories over some of the experiences during World War II. Lusseyran’s autobiography, And There Was Light is a remarkable autobiography which lets us in on the early life of a man who survived the presence of great evil of World War II despite him being blind. In Maus, Art tells the story of his father Vladek Spiegelman, a WWII survivor, who carries the pain and death of millions as well as, his own family. Although Art experiences WWII through his father’s history and Lusseyran through , both of them were affected in different ways by the Holocaust.

This shows how many people Vladek lost during the war and how horrible it was. Of course, Vladek seems to say this sentence in a somber, gloomy tone which reveals that he is very sad and upset when talking about this. These emotions are caused by the Nazis killing his family for no reason and leaving him behind with very little family. Vladek’s emotions convey how horrible it was for the Nazis to use their power to kill all of these innocent people. It goes to show how the Nazis don't care if they make people like Vladek sad or angry and that they only want to worry about themselves and kill Jews.

Perhaps, Prot’s findings can give a better explanation on why the character Vladek in Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, has such a strong tone towards his son Artie but they still manage to come together and share oral history. This relationship reveals the importance of storytelling in the Jewish culture. Artie finds storytelling to be very crucial. This is why he calls his father a “murderer” when he finds out that he burned all of his mother’s diaries that she had written during the Holocaust. The most important thing to remember here is that the main source of Artie’s guilt is from of his mother, Anja. The feelings and stories of Anja are left untold and all Artie had left was the memory of his father Vladek. After finding

While discussing the miraculous fact the Vladek had even survived the Holocaust, Francoise mentions, “But in some ways he didn’t survive” (Spiegelman 90). Unfortunately, Vladek become stuck in this “saving” mindset for the rest of his life, as seen when he picks up a stray wire from the street in the first novel, his tendency to save “useless” things such as stationary from hotels, the rather embarrassing act of returning half-eaten groceries, and so on and so forth. This act of “saving” anything he could also led to his financial over planning, in which Vladek preferred to save money “just in case” instead of break down and spend it when it was easier to purchase something knew versus fixing it. While this thriftiness that was essential for survival during the Holocaust turned Vladek into a person who was rather hard to deal with after the fact. Due to the fact that Vladek was so engrossed with the idea of “saving,” he was in conflict with those he loved who didn’t see the need for the practice.

Being Jewish during the Holocaust must be terrifying. Overcoming all odds of being put into a ghetto guarded by a Gestapo and being transferred into a concentration camp to be put into intense labor is pure luck, but not for Vladek Spiegelman. In Art Spiegelman’s Graphic Novel Maus, a comic book not only about Vladek's first-hand experience through the Holocaust but also a relationship of a father and son. This relationship is an important narrative all through Maus, and this influences the feeling of guilt. Two different kinds of guilt are presented in this book: a familial guilt, and the survivor's guilt.

The Nazi’s Warsaw ghetto brought out the worst in many people. Crammed into a few blocks with little to eat or drink, people were forced to fight for their survival. Some were affected worse than others—betraying family members and friends for a bite to eat was not uncommon. However, not everyone bore their worst. For a very few people, the dark times drove them to be the best they could, to fight tooth and nail for their people’s survival. They did not lose themselves and shrink to mere husks of their former selves—they remained strong and with resolve. Nowhere is this contrast more evident than between the two good friends Paul Bronski and Andrei Androfski. While Paul withered away as a person, unable to handle his great burden, Andrei

Art Speigelman’s Maus is a graphic novel that clearly displays the appalling treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust. Throughout the novel it becomes clear that the text is not just about experiencing the Holocaust but surviving it's impact. It can be easily seen that the effects of the war are long lasting and Vladek was undeniably traumatised by the event. Despite physically surviving the war, in some ways Vladek did not survive. The Holocaust also impacted Art, even though he did not directly experience it, and Vladek’s relationship with Mala.

Vladek is also very aware of throwing food away, this comes up many times in the books, but it is especially predominated when he takes groceries back to the store even though they are opened. This is in direct relation to starving for so long during the Holocaust. There is also a time where Spiegelman makes a comment about how his father moans in his sleep and has his whole life, showing that the horrors of the war still haunt Vladek. Spiegelman is not only explaining what happened to his father during World War Two, but he is also showing that there was repercussion to the terrible things that he had to

Thesis: Art Spiegelman writes about the pain and suffering that the jews endured during the Holocaust. In Muas 1 Spiegelman writes about the slow oncoming of the holocaust through the eyes of Vladek a relatable character to show the harm and pain that it inflicted on his life.

Additionally, by including less detail, Spiegelman makes his characters easier to relate to, or as McCloud references, more universal. After Vladek recalls the hanging of a few of his associates, Spiegelman illustrates a very plain, bleak image of him mourning their loss in present day. The image consists of the most basic character features, making it effortless for the reader to mentally input their face on Vladek’s. Overall, this “amplification through simplification” (McCloud), aids the reader in feeling the emotion of the character, finding a deeper connection to the story as a whole, and can reveal universal truths.