Analyzing the Holocaust's Enduring Impact on Vladek and Artie in Maus

This essay examines the profound and lasting impact of the Holocaust on Vladek Spiegelman and his son, Artie, as depicted in Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, "Maus." The essay argues that the traumatic experiences of the Holocaust have left an indelible mark on survivors, influencing their present lives and relationships. Through an analysis of the narrative structure, the essay highlights the interweaving of past and present, demonstrating how Vladek's experiences in World War II shape his personality, behaviors, and interactions with Artie. The essay explores the themes of memory, trauma, and the transmission of historical suffering across generations, drawing on textual evidence to illustrate how the Holocaust continues to reverberate through Vladek's life and, consequently, affects Artie's understanding of his father and his own identity. The essay uses several supporting sources to reinforce the arguments and provides a comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics between the characters and the events that shaped their lives.

Running Head: EFFECT OF HOLOCAUST UPON VLADEK AND ARTIE IN “MAUS”
Effect of Holocaust upon Vladek and Artie in “Maus”
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In the graphic novel “Maus”, the famous Cartoonist of America, Spiegelman has dealt
with the intermingling of the past and the present, through the experiences of the holocaust
survivor. The novel is a story about the experiences of his father, who had been a survivor of
the Holocaust. The novel involves graphical stories of the cats and the mice where the
Germans have been represented as cats, the Jews by the mice and the Polish as the pigs. Most
of the novel revolves around the relationship that Spiegelman shares with his father and his
absence of his mother. The thesis statement that this essay seems to argue is that the
traumatic experiences of the holocaust left a long lasting impression upon the survivors of the
Jews and the past lives through the present of these survivors. The past and the present are
not mutually exclusive. It is impossible for the readers to understand the present without
knowing the past and vice versa.
The first category of evidence is that there have been two narratives that are
present in the graphic novel. One of the narratives takes place during the time of the Second
World War and in Poland. The second narrative is placed during the time frame of 1970s and
early 1980s in New York. The central theme of the story is etched between these two
narratives, that is between the past and the present. The past had affected the life of Vladek
who is a Holocaust survivor and on the other hand it still keeps on reverberating through the

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present generation, affecting his son Artie. One of the experiences of the Holocaust that
Vladek narrates to his son Artie resonates his personality that had turned him to be a lot more
stubborn. When Arti wanted to write the story of Vladek and his girlfriend Lucia, Vladek did
not want his son to write about her. Even though Arti wanted to make his material more
human like, his father at once said “I can tell you other stories, but such private things, I don’t
want you should mention” (23). Also Kruger claims that in the beginning of the novel, the
past and the present are intermingled and is depicted through the territorial map of the
nations, the map of New York has been intruded upon the layout of the Auschwitz camp. The
prison-like stripes are a representative of the fact that how the memories of Holocaust have
trapped Vladek into it and how even till date the memory of the past influences his present.
According to Kruger, in Maus, the concepts and the representations of the past and the
present are not properly labelled but are intricately interconnected on many different levels.
In the second volume, when the procedure of Selektionen is narrated by Vladek, he brings
back the past, demonstrating it into the present by turning his face to the left, just as he was
earlier ordered by the Nazis. Vladek performs the same action of the past in his present daily
activities and Spiegelman effectively reproduces the moment graphically.
During the holocaust, he had been willing to spend his last spare in order to protect
and save his family. The second category of evidence is that he had been giving up his slices
of food just to keep Anja alive. He had been extremely kind and resourceful and this was his
character then. However as per the discussion of Austin, the trauma of the holocaust have left
him to be very stubborn and he complains more about living with Mala at the present. Vladek
said, “Mala makes me crazy. Only she talks about money, always about my Will-…” (67).
He never complained in this manner while he used to spend his days in the concentration
camps. His relationship with his second wife Mala is devoid of any sort of love or
compassion. This had been the effect of the holocaust that had made him think that he can do

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anything and everything on his own, without needing the support of any other person. Also
this has been prominent in the Book I when Arti reflects to Mala to which she responds , “all
our friends went through the camps; nobody is like him!” (131) this statement from Mala had
been a proof that Vladek had not recovered from the trauma of the Holocaust. Moreover
when in the end of the story Vladek mistakenly calls Artie by the name of his first child who
had lost his life during the war (Paparousis). It can be analysed through the graphic
representations that Artie at certain time recalls the effects that the holocaust had done to his
father Vladek and lives through the effect that the memories have on him. This can be said
from the visual representation of the first scene of the first instalments. In this scene, instead
of comforting his son after his friends leave him, he ends up remarking that friends are never
trustworthy and are fickle (Acheson). Also in the first part of the novel, the readers find
several graphic representations which take them back to the then times. The concentration
camp tattoo of Vladek, the photographs of Arti’s parents taken during the pre war times, and
also the accurate depictions of the historic telephones let the readers know about the past.
Also the inclusion of the character of Arti actually integrates the past into the present pr vice
versa. Thus Maus being a modernist literature makes the audience to learn about the past first
generation’s influence over the present second generation.
Throughout the entire novel, the author aims to depict the flexibility of the memory
by involving the deviations and the shades of the daily life that influence and have an impact
upon the memory. All the way through the graphic novel, Vladek gradually narrates specific
details about his physical and emotional experiences of the holocaust history. This can be
marked as the third category of evidence found from the novel. In this manner, he refines the
memory and brings forth the convoluted process that the Nazis followed of classification and
extermination of the Jews. The conversation between Vladek and Ilzecki, has been enough to
prove this fact about the Nazis. Ilzecki told Valdek, “We can’t know what’s going to happen

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to us- but we must keep our children safe” (81). Even though Vladek speaks about his
experiences, he gets distracted by his daily life activities. Thus the transition between the past
and the present is very effectively brought out by Arti and his screams. At times he screams
with distraught in one of the scenes, “Enough… tell me about Auschwitz!” (207). Moreover,
throughout Maus, Arti aims to bring out illustrations that depict the gruesome reality of the
memories. Though they are horrible, Arti continuously tries to remain focussed in his
deceased mother’s diaries of the Holocaust. Moreover the character of Vladek is formed by
both his present and his past memories. The way or the manner in which Vladek raised his
son Arti, is clearly representative of the effects of the past memories. Vladek loved showing
off how handy he what been and proved that anything that Arti used to do, was wrong. There
also had been a visual representation of the verbal intersection of the past with the present. In
one of the cases, Vladek is found to narrate the experience of cleaning stables as a Prisoner of
War in much detail. During this narration, he himself interrupts his personal thoughts and this
is very clearly evident in his words. He says, “But you look what you do Arti! You’re
dropping on the carpet cigarette ashes. You want it should be like a stable here?” (54).
According to Maus, the identity of a person is often influenced by the past and the present
and the experiences that one gathers in the journey. This has been depicted by the images
when Vladek is positioned in front of his son, when he is riding his stationary bicycle
(Gavrila).In such a scene, the Auschwitz tattoo is clearly visible on Vladek and it eventually
obstructs the sight of Arti from the scene. This proves how the past still exploits the present
day of the families who had been a victim of the
Holocaust. Arti Spiegelman was told that, the Germans had put a lot of people in the
concentration camps and the place had been so crowded that mane of them had actually
suffocated. They had no food, no toilets and the situation had been terrible. The people there

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had to jump out of their windows to end their life and their misery since it had been
unbearable.
Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that the past and the present
works both in the context of the trauma. Through the portrayal of remembrance of the
memories, Spiegelman tries to illustrate the ways in which the past continues to influence the
present and as a result the present is imbibed in the past. Spiegelman very effectively
emphasizes the psychological distress and suffering produced from the unimaginable anguish
and its persisting effect through the generations, which continue to the present day. The
experiences from the Holocaust has indeed brought a change in the personality of Vladek
since he was altogether a different person before the World War II. Not only that Vladek is
affected with the memories of the past, it transmits to his son Arti as well. He is directly as
well as indirectly affected with the aftershocks of the Holocaust.

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Works Cited:
Acheson, Charles P. Trauma representations in the graphic nonfiction of Spiegelman, Sacco,
and Beauchard. Diss. Tennessee Technological University, 2014.
Austin, Hailey J. "Time Flies: Remnants of Auschwitz in Art Spiegelman'sMaus." (2017).
Gavrilă, Ana-Maria. "Holocaust Representation and Graphical Strangeness in Art
Spiegelman’sMaus: A Survivor’s Tale:“Funny Animals,” Constellations, and
Traumatic Memory." ActaUniversitatisSapientiaeCommunicatio 4.1 (2017): 61-75.
Kruger, Liam. "Panels and faces: segmented metaphors and reconstituted time in Art
Spiegelman'sMaus." Critical Arts 29.3 (2015): 357-366.
Paparousis, Lauren. "Poetry After Mauschwitz: Holocaust Memory in Art
Spiegelman’sMaus." (2017).
Maus, Keith. "Past, Present, Future: How Time Affects Identity." (2016).