While trying to survive this crazy and stressful weekend, I've had time to read Art Spiegelman's Maus series. It was a lot to take in and was just the thing to remind me of how terrible the holocaust was for jewish people. The story was about Art writing and recording information about what the holocaust was like for his father and mother and what means they used to survive. Sometimes there is a break in between to story to show the interactions Art, his father, his wife and his step mother go through in-between the flashbacks. I feel this was necessary to not only give the reader a break from the story but to leave the reader wanting more and have a curiosity to know what happens next. It was also good to know what went through Art's own mind when writing this and some of the struggles he had to deal with in his childhood. I like how he used the depictions of animals to illustrate the characters so you can relate to them more and don't feel a close association with the other characters. Some of them are kind of funny like the french being frogs, the non jewish-polish being pigs, Jews as mice, and Germans as cats. Maus's visual style was simple with the black and white not leaving any distractions from the narrative.
While the book was a fun read what really caught my eye was how I felt about the character Vladek. I was impressed by his ways of surviving like with handling a business and negotiating with people for survival. He saves food and rations incase he needs to use them for later and has a knowledge of several different languages and skills so he could be useful to others and not be killed. But when his depiction in post holocaust comes. He seems more strict and uptight with money and saves useless things. He's stuck in the past and keeps bringing up his dead wife Anja and dead son Richieu. He's also a racist and assumes all black people would steal from others when given the chance despite what he's been through. You can feel Artie's struggle with his troubled relationship with his father as his father is critical with everything. His constant fighting with his new wife, Mala, is present in the the story to show a different point of view with the hardship in living with his views. I'm not sure how Vladek would have turned out after the war but his personality was affected for sure. What's the most amazing was how he survived Auschwitz since that's where the gassing takes place and it's what killed his father, sister, wife's parents, and more. I wasn't sure if I should like Vladek or not but what I feel is more like pity than actual sadness.
To make matters worse in the experience was Anja's suicidal death and how it affected the family. I think the different ways they tried to cope with it was also interesting. Art wrote a comic about her death and made it to explain how she left was hard for him since she didn't even leave a note. For Vladek he went into great despair and destroyed all of her re-written diaries from her time in the Holocaust. Artie called him a "murder" for destroying all of her experience. I think that's the only word I could have used to describe his actions as it's like when her body was decreased her, he "murdered" her other life as well.
Reading Maus just led me to wanting to know more about what happened to others during the Holocaust and what they did to survive but also feeling sad over the aftermath and how they continue to live their lives after their struggle.
I think Anja's death was a brilliant element that enhanced the story. It was as if Vladek old self from the WW2 has gone with her and it also gave a war story a strong sense of nostalgia. On the other hands, Vladek's new self and new world can be seen through Artie and Mala. I believe that there is a great subtlety in the reason why he burnt Anja's diaries which we would have thought that he would treasure it most in his life. Anja was obviously his great happiness but his memories of her also held a lot of sorrow. Not a kind of sorrow he'd hate but the one that harshly shaped his being, therefore it is also meaningful. Through Artie's point of view, the destruction of his mother's diaries might be the same as murdering her identity that he hold dear. Although, through Vladek, there is no longer a point in holding that sorrow any longer as the departure of Anja left Vladek the only person who could understand what they've been through and made them what they are. I hast become an appropriate time to let his struggles turn into just a story of the past.
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