Loyalty And Family: Vladek Spiegelman

Vladek shows heroism in life threatening situations when everyone else has given up. After receiving a letter from the Polish government, Vladek leaves his family to fight the war against Nazi, Germany. After facing the terrible conditions of a P.O.W. camp and the back-breaking work of the “volunteer labor assignments” (Spiegelman 54) Vladek returns home to his family only to find their situation in shambles. In Vladek’s efforts to bring in money when there is none to be made; he constantly risks his life so the Zylberberg’s can live a modest life, compared to the luxury they were used to. When the Jewish families are forced to move to Stara Sosnowiec Vladek

Spiegelman has presented his father’s memoirs in a creative way by portraying racial groups as animals and by making the story into a graphic novel. By presenting it in comic form, Art Spiegelman is able to better capture the emotions of those in the graphic novel. Not a dedication in the conventional sense, the book eternalizes the memoirs of Vladek and those around him.

“The Pianist” by Wladyslaw Spilman is a extraordianry story about a man’s survival in the holocaust in Warsaw, Poland. The book explains how Szpilman survives the holocaust in Poland by hiding, escaping, and with luck. Szpilman is important to society because he explains the following topics in his perspective for them not to happen again, religious discrimination, human rights, and punishment in crimes involving genocide. Many of the issues raised by the holocaust continue to have an impact on the world today.

The Spiegelman family and their comrades were trying to be compassionate and help someone that they identified with, someone who, through a shared desperate situation (or so they thought) they tried to befriend. Unfortunately, he was so quick to turn his back on the people who had treated him so kindly.

After the Holocaust on May 8th, 1945, a book called Maus was released which is revolved around survival. The author, Art Spiegelman intended the story was to reflect upon his past and express his feelings world how he had to deal life was at the time.The book is a story of Art’s father named Vladek, he tells his point-of-view to the world to show multiple struggles he had to withstand. The theme of Art Spiegelman’s book Maus is survival; Art Spiegelman shows the theme of survival by using tone, mood, and point-of-view throughout the graphic novel. Vladek is the main character of Maus and shares his point of view. Vladek tells a true story about how he survived the Holocaust and the things he had to accomplish to make it through alive. This book is based on a true story of what had happened during the Holocaust.

Vladek arranges to be reunited with his wife and son by working with the Polish. Spiegelman shows Vladek wearing a pig's mask to convey his polish

The character Vladek in Art Spiegelman’s Maus greatly changed throughout the book. Events due to the Holocaust shaped Vladek into the person he is at the end of the book. The Holocaust caused Vladek to become extremely frugal, to have an obsession with tidiness, and to not be able to trust anyone. Vladek became extremely frugal from living through the Holocaust. In the beginning he was poor and couldn’t buy extravagant things.

Svidrigailov is portrayed as an individualistic man with greed for power to achieve full control over other characters in the book. As the development of Svidrigailov’s character furthers into the book, it reveals more and more of his dangerous personality. Svidrigailov begins to disclose his underlying motives and theory that he is a strong man who can be alone by himself in order to survive. Svidrigailov’s foundation of his mental stability and his arrogant mindset is from his expertise to control people and the situations to fulfill his desire for power and self-enjoyment. This can be supported by his abusive nature towards women and that through physical violence, it proves that he has the power over people.

Art Spieglemans graphic novel Maus showcases deep parent-child relationship divisions deriving from the horrors of the holocaust. Spiegleman does this by illustrating his strained relationship with his parents, Vladek and Anja’s whose personality traits were forged by the unfortunate events of their pass. Vladek’s cleanliness, his inability to get along with his son, and his cheapness exemplify this, as well to go along with Anja’s emotional issues all have a clear link to the events of their past and continues to effect lives negatively generation by generation.

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.

Before I start I must note that to answer every question on one page I had to consolidate my responses a bit. My apologize if certain responses seem undernourished. I think that Spiegelman begins Maus with the story of himself falling off the skates to demonstrate his father’s personality, and moreover, show that he has been irreparably damaged from his experience in the camps. It becomes clear throughout Maus that Vladek is somewhat of a frugal character whose mindset is that of someone focused on surviving.

“Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice”, focuses on the relationship between the protagonist, who is referred to as ‘Child’, and his father, referred to as ‘Ba’. The opening story follows the protagonist as he is struggling to overcome writers block, whilst dealing with his estranged Vietnamese father who is visiting. A number of flashbacks are used as a literary device to divulge into the protagonists past with his father as well as the fathers past. This reveals, not only an abusive past with his father, but also his father’s memories of the Vietnam war. It becomes clear that the son makes excuses for his father, with his girlfriend Linda also noting this, “I think you’re making excuses for him…You’re romanticising his past to make sense of the things you said he did to you” (pp.20). The protagonist reflects this himself, making the excuse that “he was a soldier” (pp.13), and that is why his father treated him as he did. The protagonist, despite once being able to admit to Linda that his father abused him, can no longer admit this, as his relationship with his father grows, and it can be argued that he is willing to overlook his past in an attempt to reconcile with his father. “It was too much these words, and what connected to them” (pp.13).

Humans relationships are full of up and downs, and in this book we can clearly see the struggle between Artie and his father relationship. All around the book we can sense a tension between father and son .On his journey to try to tell his father’s story, Artie discovered much more of his father personality and what is related to his terrible experiences from the war. Through the book Spieglman is always showing the conflicts between them, exposing his father tough personality and how he was always trying to impose his will on Artie. Therefore, we could observe that Vladek had an authoritarian parent style. Authoritarian parents usually don’t express love and affection well but they are very high on discipline. Spieglman, could started

“A person who deserves loyalty receives it”. If you are faithful and are devoted to someone or something, you are loyal, and care for whatever you are devoted to. The theme loyalty is shown by the main character Will. When Will was loyal to his father, the rangers battle horses were loyal, and Will chose to be a ranger instead of a knight in battle school, which shows he is loyal to Rangers. Will is loyal to his father since he always wanted to make him proud and that's why he struggled choosing between being a Ranger or a knight.

In the story “The God of Small Things," the term family can be defined as persons that an individual cares about. The obligations of the family members appear to be influenced by the bold ties. Despite the disputes among some family members, the blood ties obligate them to express care and love towards one another. Just like in real life situations, the novel explains that family relations can be frustrating, complicated, and confusing. In most cases, it is apparent that most individuals are forced by the family ties to stick together. The failure to express care towards one another is seen as one of the factors that prompt families to fall apart.