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Vladek Spiegelman's Maus

1049 Words5 Pages

In the graphic novel, Maus, that mostly focused toward Vladek Spiegelman's life, the story expresses much more than his own experiences in the Holocaust, what Art portrayed accurately about various events of his father’s life, whom he is not close at the beginning of the story. Maus does not only tell the story of a human suffering and their struggles, neither the story of the Holocaust, however it is more than that it is the story of the strained relationship between the son and his father which develops later throughout the book. There are some clear signs that included guilt, a lack of comfort and support and an attachment to things rather than people. Most of this strained comes from Vladek and his strange mannerism. These behaviours and …show more content…

To give an illustration, Art fell off his skate and his friends left him and the only person Art could find to give him a comforting act was his father as we can see on the very first pages of Maus. Nevertheless, what he could get were ‘If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week...then you could see what it is, friends.’ as an advice in life which Art had a difficult time to forget. There is a clearly demonstrated in (II.2.34) ‘Mainly I remember arguing with him… and being told that I could not do anything as well as he could,” Art tells his therapist. ‘No matter what I accomplish, it does not seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.’ These shred of memories shown as evidences Vladek does not supportive his son like many other parents, which is one of the things Art wanted from his father since his childhood and included these pages on the novel. However, Vladek clearly loves Art and just wants the best for his son and succeed in life. He is desperate to maintain a close bond with his son, he survived the camp in the past, it makes sense that he would be on high alert always looking out for his family. It is one of Vladek’s personalities, what Art tries hard to capture and understand that everything was taken away from Vladek and by not getting close to everyone so he can not be …show more content…

When he was taken away by the Nazis, he was probably scared by how evil people can be and end up prefers material possessions over people. He threw up Art’s coat, made sure Mala put his coat on a wooden hanger and is very strict about money and food. On (I.4.95), Mala has once said that Vladek is more attached to things more than people. Moreover, on (I.6.133) Mala says “All our friends went through the camps. Nobody is like him!” It seems like Vladek is still living in a war, in reality, unable to change his life environment as he does care about things more than people. Not to mention on he is distant from people most of the time, especially for Mala and Art. He is attached to old objects that they remind him of all memories in them hang around his mind like a film, they are not good memories, but just all struggles, this might mean his present sometimes has no good moments and that is why he is attached to the past. With this in mind, Vladek has different attitude clashes between Art and Mala and their relationship usually in tensions, which Art could not have understood at the end of every argument they

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Another factor is that Vladkek’s meaningful relationships were affected by the Holocaust is that Vladkek knows that there is no such thing as friends. He doesn’t have a strong and meaningful relationship with Artie because he never had a stable relationship with him. Int the flashback on the beginning of the book Vladkek say “Friends? There’s no such thing as Friends”,This means that Vladkek will never have meaningful relationships because he doesn’t believe in friends which is the most important factor of creating meaningful

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Vladek pretended to work to protect himself from getting killed. He was smart enough to know that if he pretended to work when a guard walked by, he will have a higher chance at survival. The three traits helped Valdek survive during the Holocaust when he enters

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Throughout the book I could feel the love and longing that he has for her. The second reason that Vladek would want to destroy Anja’s journals is because he was trying to protect his family. There was a part in the book where Anja was convicted of helping the communist. The seamstress was arrested instead of Anja, because Anja was the one that asked her to keep the letters that she had received from the ‘communist’. Jewish people are mice, Nazis are cats, the rest of the population are pigs.

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His father passes, and he crumbled, physically, he may have been healthier than his father, but his mind was not nearly as sound. His father was always making the wise, executive decisions. This compares to Itzhak on a very peak level. With Itzhak always following the lead of Oskar, and doing as asked, he needed someone to guide him. If nobody was there to guide Itzhak, he would have been sent to Auschwitz, and killed.

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As a young man during WW2, Vladek proves that he is a quick thinker with ethical ideas. During the Holocaust, it was a tough time for everyone, especially the Jews. Vladek had to move from place to place just to keep himself and his family safe. This was very difficult because the Polish and Gestapos were everywhere. Vladek had ideas that were enough to save his life and keep him safe.

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Maus also shows a strong family connection but more with husband and wife as opposed to father and son since Art did not experience WWII. Vladek and Anja were able to stay together for the majority of

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Quite obviously, Vladek was emotionally and perhaps even psychologically impacted by Anja’s suicide, as seen when Artie states, “My father had completely fallen apart!” (Spiegelman 101) in the “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” comic strip based on his mother’s death. Taking this into consideration, Vladek’s choice to burn some of the memories of his wife could have been a sort of coping mechanism to him come to terms with and move on from his wife’s death. Much like how ex-lovers tend to throw out memories associated with their relationship, Vladek’s burning of Anja’s diaries could have helped him heal both emotionally and psychologically by getting rid of the physical objects associated with his wife, leaving him only with the memories that would fade over

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Critics argue that this is not the main focus of the book although they are right this is still an important focus of the story. Vladeck and his family are put in very hard situations that they have to find some type of safety to save themselves and others this happens when Vladek and his wife have to figure out what to do with their son. “I have a good friend, a pole, who’s willing to hide my son until the situation gets better. ... I think he’d take you boy too.” (Spiegelman, 81).

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This event in history had mentally and emotionally scarred him, and in his head, it’s almost as if the war never ended. During the beginning of the war, Vladek was very resourceful. He collected things and traded them in for things more valuable, like food, money or to save his life. The idea of him collecting things because he thought that it might somehow be useful in the war stuck to him, decades after the war had ended. In present time, Vladek picks things up from off of the street, hoards wrappers and even jugs from the hospital because he believes it might somehow be useful again.

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The first way that his connections would help him because when some Jewish officials came to register some of the war prisoners so that they could be free, Vladek would tell the officials that Orbach was a friend that he knew that lived in Lublin. In the novel in page 62 to the top panels of page 63, it would start showing that he would get freed to local Jews and thanks to his connection with Orbach, this would later help him be with Anja and Richieu back in Sosnowiec. This demonstrates that his luck with being freed and knowing a local Jew that would later led him to be with his family again after being imprisoned by war. Another example of his connections making up his luck is his encounter with a Nazi soldier that was going to kill him but when the officer found out that he was a relative of Illustrious Spiegelman, he would let him go. In the novel in page 118 in the bottom panels, a Nazi officer would say, “Give me your ID papers or i 'm gonna blow your brains out.”

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This envy and vindictiveness for what the people around him have leads him to acquire more materialistic items that do not necessarily bring him happiness. His life flows pleasantly this way until he reaches a threat that takes away his control. In order for a person to be content at the end of their life is “ if we are in control of our careers, mates, children, and bodies, [then] we can live a predictable and powerful life” (Sansom 419). As Ivan loses control of his environment, the thought of death and losing his possessions makes him scared of death. His life amounts to nothing more than chaos, where “the assumed defense against chaos is more control of relationships, job, environment, emotions, and future” (Sansom 419).

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He is still hung up on many of the things that he had to deal with during the war. One of these things was that he always had to save his food. In Auschwitz, he was only given a little bit of food and although, “Most gobbled it right away, but I always saved a half for later” (II, 49). This shows that back then he was sparing with his food. Seemingly small items are incredibly important to Vladek like his pills

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Later down the page she says “I feel like I’m in prison.” This is a prime example of an unhealthy marriage, and how Mala does not want to be with Vladek any longer. Furthermore, in chapter four Mala declares “He’s more attached to things than people!” This supports the idea that Vladek has become very distrusting and cautious, which leaves Mala believing that he cares more about his money than he does his own wife. The present-day storyline shows how miserable both Mala and Vladek are in the relationship, and that the Holocaust had a major toll on Vladek’s personality.

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In Maus, Art Spiegelman records his personal accounts of trying to delve into his father’s traumatic past. His father, Vladek, is a Jew from Poland who survived persecution during World War II. Art wants to create a graphic novel about what his father went through during the Holocaust, so he reconnects with Vladek in order to do so. Due to the horrifying things that the Jews went through he has trouble opening up completely about all the things that happened to him. But after Art gets together with his father many times, he is finally able to understand the past legacy of the Spiegelman family.

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Another noticeable point is that Art is drawn wearing the uniform of the concentration camp. This illustrates that the author feels as though he is a prisoner of his own life, and ties back to the finishing scene where Art is behind bars, angry at his mother for committing a ‘crime’ and leaving him to take the

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