learntoquestion ltq discussions

Originally posted by crunchybiscuits on February 10, 2025 23:53

In the case of Art Spiegelman, his trauma is often misunderstood by many who read his book. On the surface, some find him abrasive, apathetic to his father’s stories, and overall not compassionate throughout the book. However, it is important to understand the everlasting impacts of the Holocaust, and how it also extends to the lives of those who did not experience it themselves. More specifically, the consequences of his parents. In the novel, Vladek’s instincts in his day to day mannerisms are drastically different compared to the “average” American family. For example, his obsession with saving money, his harsh critiques of Mala (his wife), and often isolating himself even from those who’ve known him for quite some time. According to Spiegelman’s drawings, the genocide had manifest in his frugality, paranoia, and emotional distance. These traits, while survival mechanisms for Vladek, become burdensome for Art, creating tension and guilt as he tries to understand and honor his father’s suffering. This is where the idea of second generation trauma survivors comes in-- the children of those who directly experienced atrocities often bear the psychological and emotional burdens of their parents’ suffering. Within communities, many experience similar things being in such close proximity, and in return, the next generation continues the same notions of yearning for answers. For Art, his expression of comics allowed him to find his purpose in building resilience with his father. However, the novel accounts for his obstacles with drawing the final piece because of the emotional disconnect. In a more general sense, many people do experience second generation trauma than they realize. Many have coined the term generational trauma, where the actions and trauma of a certain age gap is passed onto the next. It can be acknowledged only if the people that are affected by the trauma (multiple generations) are able to grow and bond over the past. Addressing this trauma requires acknowledgment and active healing efforts rather than repression. While some argue that moving beyond generational trauma is necessary for personal growth, others believe it is crucial to keep the memory alive to ensure history is not repeated. During the summer of 2024, I was personally put on a project that regarded the healing and resilience of a loved one. Hearing my dad’s story of fleeing to the United States, I didn’t think that his story after the trauma was truly over. It was then when I heard his story of living in the United States as a highschool student, that I understood the drive to be successful came from a secondary trauma stance. After interjecting my own experiences with my fathers, it finally clicked for me how my father and I could grow from the experiences we faced at those similar ages. Simply talking about the stories that mirror our lives is a possible way of moving forward, and this is what was seen in Maus. Ultimately, the past shapes us, but how we carry it forward—whether as a weight or a source of strength—depends on how we choose to acknowledge and understand it.

Hi crunchybiscuits! This is a great response. I really liked the last sentence you wrote, about how the past can be a weight or a source of strength, depending on how we choose to acknowledge it. Examining the past to understand it and have strength to understand and deal with the future is a main reason we take Facing History. In the case of trauma, people can grow wisdom and even strength from their traumatic experience. However, in the case of experiencing really traumatic events like the Holocaust, I don’t think it's ever possible to have it not be a weight in some way. History and past trauma doesn’t have to be either a weight to carry or a source of strength, but it is often both of those things.

I also thought it was a good point that you mentioned about how drawing comics is a good way for Art to process his generational trauma. But, the process is also a real struggle for Art (as he feels emotional disconnect to the Holocaust and talking to his father about his story brings up feelings of being compared to Richieu). This makes sense, because, as you said, facing trauma requires healing efforts rather than suppression. And of course, while necessary, healing efforts are often challenging and/or emotionally taxing.

Originally posted by Introspection84 on February 11, 2025 14:00

I do not believe the art form of comics ought to be dismissed on face as an inappropriate means of addressing the Holocaust and Spiegelman’s story as I believe art is an appropriate medium through which to express emotions, especially if it feels right to the artist. The visual style of Maus with its emphasis on linework and contrast between light and dark shapes, lends itself well to expressiveness and guiding the reader’s eye to the dynamic and broader implications of every panel, such as the bottom left panel on page 127, in which the obscuring of detail on the people, landscape and trees by darkness makes the shaping of the fork in the rode into a swastika unmistakable and likely the first thing readers will notice about the image. All this being said, I do believe that, despite the clear emphasis on emotions and creating a specific mood throughout the panels, the emotional landscape is diminished by the speed with which the story and medium progress. Although the telling of the story from the perspective of a survivor and the emphasis on his family in particular allows the reader to empathize uniquely by connecting to characters, each element of the story is afforded only a few panels of space, creating a very fast progression that did not leave me enough time to sit with the implications of the story and emotions I experienced. The reading experience felt more like a massive influx of information, memory and emotion that I could not sift through quite fast enough to take away as much as I think I could have during the reading itself. Artie’s pattern of bringing Vladek back to historical details and cutting off anything he deemed an unnecessary tangent compounded this feeling, as I think such tangents about the past, even if not directly taking place during the Holocaust, would provide invaluable insight into how a survivor experiences such painful memories and which parts remain the most tangible. I do, however, recognize that the speed of narration can be interpreted as a literary technique to leave readers with a sense of overwhelming emotion that may mirror even a tiny fraction of what Vladek and Artie were experiencing in the reliving of the past.

In terms of effectively conveying the historical gravity of the Holocaust, I think Maus does an incredible job as it does take readers out of the numbers and figures we so often get bogged down in and sharply brings into focus the true human impact of these atrocities. It feels, however, as though much of the emotional processing within the story occurs between character rather than between characters and readers, particularly as the comic form precludes some of the longer descriptions of thought and scenery that a novel might include. The additional layer of Artie interacting with Vladek and processing the memories of the Holocaust in more present times does add the nuanced question of how we interact with history that we did not live and the manners in which we may most ethically preserve it for future generations to understand. The graphic novel is among the best mediums to achieve this as it supports quick transitions that last only a few panels without unnecessary space given to transitioning the reader back and forth through time. Spiegelman simply must redirect the audience to the visual representation of the past or present through the setting of the panel, and even something as simple as the presence of Artie is enough to cement the shift. “The Shadow of Past Time”: History and Graphic Representation in Maus argues that Spiegelman makes these transitions in an even more nuanced manner by integrating visual elements from the past and present to communicate to readers the fluidity of memory and the narrative itself. For instance, towards the beginning of the book, we see Vladek pedaling in place on his stationary bicycle, acting as the binding between the past and present, Artie, a representation of the present, and a photograph of Anja from before the war, demonstrating how memories of the past bleed into the present and affect every aspect of our perceptions. Overall, I think Maus is an objectively successful historical representation.

You wrote very well, very clearly stated what you meant and provided the evidence to back it up. I was very impressed! I really liked when you brought up the “speed” of the comic narrative, even though I don’t necessarily agree, because everyone is absolutely entitled to their own interpretation of the story, and in regards to such a heavy subject, and it’s really fascinating to hear yours. I read it as the very fast narrative being a consequence of the accelerated timelines of events during the actual war, giving us a frame of rate and allowing for a fraction of that overwhelmed feeling to be acknowledged by the reader. That’s my take, which I was really surprised you mentioned, so kudos for recognizing an alternate point of view (it makes your writing very dynamic). I see that you also mentioned how the emotional processing occured more so between Art and Vladek rather than between them and the reader. Could this be a way to deny the reader that emotional assuagement, possibly as a comparison to the lack of emotional processing that many survivors faced, both during and post Holocaust? Could it be a method of separation between the people in the real-life story and the audience, even after previous methods of full engagement, and if so, why? I don’t disagree with what you said, I’m just curious as to your opinion and stating possible (maybe?) alternatives. That’s just some possibilities, though. I didn’t think you needed to change/improve anything, and overall, very well done. Thank you for letting me read!

Originally posted by SharkBait on February 11, 2025 07:24

Generational trauma, a term used to describe the “transmission of trauma and its legacy,” (APA), is demonstrated in Art Spiegelman’s Maus as Artie Spiegelman narrates the point of his life during which he met with his father on occasion and learned about his Holocaust survival, which Artie is hoping to turn into a novel. As Artie uncovers more of the previously-unspoken traumatic experiences of his father, one assumes that he is able to maintain composure and detach himself from any further connections to this horrific past given that he was not there himself. However, as Maus continues to explore the effects of the Holocaust in the present, past, and future, Spiegelman makes note of the cyclic feeling that such traumatic events can create for generations. These persistent feelings of guilt, fear, shame, and anger can be witnessed not only through Vladek’s temperament, but also through Artie’s feelings of envy towards the experiences of his family, as well as his frustration with his lack of understanding different aspects of the event including the death of his mother, brother, and the psychological changes of his father. Vladek’s continuous hesitance towards observing his trauma, in hopes to protect Artie on some level as well as himself, manifests in Artie’s inability to confront his own experience living as a member of the new Jewish generation. Spiegelman explores this idea of “postmemory” through Art’s internal conflict of isolation, which according to Hirsch, “[p]ostmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated” (Hirsch 1997: 22). Writer Kolar Stanislav continues on the idea of postmemory, evident in Maus, in his article “Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma in Spiegelman’s Maus:” “It is not coincidence that the concept of postmemory arose in connection with Holocaust studies because of the centrality of the genocide for the children of survivors who ‘remembered’ the events not lived through. Postmemory reflects the level of identification with the original recipients of trauma and is often characterized by the feeling of displacement, living in temporal and spatial exile, estrangement and the experience of a lack and absence which frequently leads to an identity crisis” (Stanislav 228-229). Despite Art not living through the events of the Holocaust first hand, he continues to feel the effects expressed through an identity struggle, as well as his frustration with his own father. One could view Art’s attempts at hearing his father’s story for his novel as exploitation, yet it could also be argued that Art truly seeks an understanding of his family and community’s trauma, and he hopes to give it justice in the form of literature. Throughout the novel, it is evident that Artie struggles with completely understanding the events of the Holocaust, which he so desperately wants to comprehend; in Maus II, chapter 1, Art opens up to his wife about his desire to fully know these events as he says: “I know this in insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! … I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an easier life then they did” (Spiegelman 16). Artie’s guilt felt by his survival is also expressed through his frustration and envy with his “ghost brother” Richiev, who had died during the Holocaust. Artie comments that the photo of Richiev in his parents’ bedroom “never threw tantrums or got in any kind of trouble…it was an ideal kid and I was a pain in the ass. I couldn’t compete” (Spiegelman 15). The shame felt by Artie in terms of his life, as both a survivor and a son, helps to express Spiegelman’s broader ideas of generational trauma, especially how it may manifest itself in ways that are not typical. One may dislike Artie throughout the novel due to his lack of attention to his father’s extreme dependence and his ignorance to some of his father’s demands, but it is important to recognize that Art is a flawed character and the secondhand trauma he felt evident throughout Maus is part of the lives of many others. Generational trauma is hard to overcome or avoid but recognizing that it is there and allowing those emotions to be felt is a significant step in healing one’s relationship with their trauma and finding identity outside of it.

Hey SharkBait,

I really like your ideas about postmemory and how it relates to Artie’s ongoing identity crisis. I don’t quite agree with your stance that Artie envies the experiences of his family. Yes he may desire to better understand why his father is the way he is, but I don’t think he particularly wishes he could go back and experience the holocaust alongside his parents. Furthermore, I don’t think that in talking to his father about his experiences Artie distances himself from the holocaust. I would actually argue that Artie becomes more in touch with his father’s motives and gains a deeper understanding of why he struggles to make connections. I agree with your idea that Speigleman’s usage of Richieu helps to convey the ways in which generational trauma can manifest in unconventional ways. I like that you included commentary about why a reader may or may not like Artie. I agree with your views; I believe the fact that Artie is flawed is exactly what makes him likable. If Artie were a more reliable narrator with a more put together life, I think the story would be harder to digest. Rather than telling the story of a flawed character working to understand himself, the story would seem much more exploitative: a perfect person exploiting his father’s trauma just because. As for mechanical notes, try to avoid run-on sentences; you have lots of great ideas going on, but they would be much more understandable if they were broken up a little more. Overall, really great response!

Originally posted by VelveteenRabbit on February 11, 2025 08:59

Yes, Spiegelman’s use of the comic form is effective in conveying the emotional and historical weight of the Holocaust. Comics are simply a medium, and although historically they are used for more light-hearted things, such as superhero stories, it is not the cultural stereotypes of the medium and thus Art’s subsequent rejection of those stereotypes are not his fault. I think that there is some validity in the claim that one must be careful to maintain the weight of events as heavy as the Holocaust, but art and expression cannot be limited to what the viewer feels is the best expression; the message loses its potency, relevance and perspective. Personally, I find the medium really engaging. The story instead is still, clearly very dark, but the use of animal characters allow Art to accurately portray the events without verging into nightmare territory. In my mind, it was the best way to maintain the story and keep the reader reading. I find that the argument that the medium lacks seriousness to be a little invalid; a medium is just that: a medium. It is meant to convey a message. A medium cannot be what its message is not. It is, simply put, the blankest of all slates, only invigorating the emotions that the story wants. That is not to say that there is not a difference between mediums, and some mediums tend to be more effective at communicating ideas, but the story comes down to the artist, not the medium. Art did not intend for this to be a light story, and it does not read like one. Take, for example, the movie Spirited Away. It uses the medium of animation (not genre, the medium, get it right, oscars), a medium that many people fallaciously view as pertaining exclusively to children’s stories, but it tells a story of identity, the supernatural, and growing up, and overall has very adult themes. There are also shows like Invincible or Bojack Horseman that still use the genre but are not meant for children in the slightest. Comics often do the same thing, Deadpool, or instance. Now, I hear what you’re saying: Isn’t there a big difference between portraying fictional gore and nudity and using the medium to tell a survivor’s perspective on an actual genocide, to which I would answer you: Yes. That is not what I am arguing, and of course there are differences and one of those is a significantly more delicate topic than the other; I am just pointing out how the limits of genres are constantly being pushed. The graphic format itself is VERY seamless in shifting between Vladek's past and his and his son’s present. The lack of space between the comics and stories themselves parallel the struggles of the past with the struggles of the present; how his story, his trauma seeps into the bones, the pages and his son. As Chute succinctly put it, “Throughout Maus he [Art] represents the complicated entwining of the past and the present by ‘packing’ the tight spaces of panels. He found an ‘architectonic rigor…necessary to understand to compose the pages of Maus,’ he explains (qtd. IN Silberblatt 33), and has commented: ‘Five or six comics on one piece of paper…[I am] my father’s son’...”. It is details such as these that really demonstrate Art’s mastery over the comic form.

I found that your argument was in favor of Spiegelman’s use of comic form to help bring the weight of the Holocaust. I thought that your discussion about the neutral tool to show the lighthearted and unserious form was well written. I really liked your comparison to “Spirited Away”, “Invincible” and “Bojack Horseman” helped build the idea and bring your point across about how mediums can convey deep and serious messages. I also really enjoyed your analysis of the shifts between past and present in Maus. How trauma can be brought into the narrative structure and the character’s experiences. The literary analysis that you provided was a great insight to how Speigelman uses the structure of the comic form and the past and present was helpful. I also really liked your passionate writing style. I thought that your writing was enthusiastic about the subject. This helps with bringing the topic and subject through clearly. I agree with your thought that the arguments can be used as artistic freedom and how “art and expression cannot be limited to what the viewer feels is the best expression.”. I believe that creativity should not be restricted by traditional expectations and Maus is a great example of this.

Originally posted by astrali_ on February 10, 2025 21:36

Generational trauma is transferring traumatic memories or events onto the following generation. This is shown with Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Maus II as he portrays the complicated and tense relationship between him and his father. Although the Maus books mostly cover Vladek’s account and experiences during the Holocaust, they also briefly display their relationship as a result of the trauma Art’s father has dealt with for much of his life. Generational trauma impacts children of Holocaust survivors as the personal experiences of those who had gone through the Holocaust creates a form of distance between them and their children. This is seen especially in Maus II in the chapter “Auschwitz (Time Flies),” where Art expresses to his therapist, Pavel, how he struggles to execute Vladek’s trauma into cartoons. He mostly struggles with this because he was not present at the camps, so he has no personal connections to the Holocaust besides being the child of a survivor. This means that his only connection and understanding of the Holocaust is through his father, who he already has a rocky relationship with. In Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma in Spiegelman's Maus, it states how this is something called “postmemory,” where the generation following survivors only remember an event based off of stories, tales/oral memories, and/or pictures. This results in the “understanding” of how an event like the Holocaust was bad, but never understanding what survivors actually had to endure, creating alienation and distance between survivors and their children. Keeping this in mind, Spiegelman likely transferred this distance to his works when creating Maus. Because Art was not there during the Holocaust, he wants to be able to tell his father’s story accurately and as realistically as possible while still separating himself from the event since it isn’t his own story he is telling, and he achieves this by portraying the characters as anthropomorphic animals. Therefore, generational trauma in terms of the Holocaust distances survivors from their children as they cannot personally connect a large part of their life and identity with their children in a way they can truly understand without having to be there to experience what they did. Another way generational trauma impacts the children of survivors is that the trauma experienced during the Holocaust affects how survivors interact with others and the world around them from that point onwards. One example of this is how Vladek would always force Art to eat all the food on his plate, stated in chapter 3 of Maus I. This was likely a sort of subconscious reaction of not wasting any food, since Vladek was always provided with very scarce or even no food. However, this treatment likely impacted Art’s relationship with food as well. Another example of this is how Art says throughout the books about how Vladek would always say that he should have done something without Artie’s help or how he makes everything a competition. Pavel makes good insight of how this was likely a way for Vladek to prove that he is capable of surviving because he was constantly on edge and fighting to survive and show that he is skilled enough to do so. Additionally, there is the factor of Art’s deceased brother, Richieu, who died during the war. He indirectly states how he viewed Richieu as competition because Richieu acted as a “phatnom” of Vladek and Anja’s old lives before the war. Since things were better before the war, it is natural to long for how things were prior to the trauma. This created a layer of trauma for Art because it made him feel inadequate in comparison to his brother, especially when he had no control over his brother’s death and its impact on his parents.Hello

Originally posted by pinkpenguin on February 10, 2025 17:20

Generational trauma, as defined by the APA, is “the transmission of trauma…in the form of a psychological consequence…from the generation experiencing the trauma to subsequent generations” being varied in reactions throughout generations. To speak to every person who experienced generational trauma from the Holocaust is impossible, but Spiegelman shares his experience with generational trauma through the subtle conversations he inserts in Maus I and Maus II with his father and their relationship. At some points, the tense relationship between Art Spiegelman and his father blurs the line between a typical father-son relationship, and one of “the transmission of trauma”. In Maus I, there is a particular scene where Artie eats dinner with his father, Vladek, and he says that he is full even though there is still food on his plate. Vladek tells Artie to eat what is on his plate (43). This seemingly mundane and insignificant scene shows the differences in generational experiences. Vladek’s response to Artie saying that he is done eating, indicates that he was not so lucky to always have food in front of him, so he pushes his fear of a lack of food onto his son. The horrors of everyday life for Vladek during the Holocaust are passed down in subtle ways onto his son.

Art Spiegelman clearly feels the impact of the Holocaust on his own life, as he shares through a particular panel in Maus II saying, “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz” (Spiegelman 44). Art’s feeling of constant inferiority to his father, even after his father’s death, because he didn’t have to go through the same horrors as his father demonstrates the internal battle of suppressing his own feelings, and allowing himself to view his seemingly lesser problems as valid. Art’s struggle with his identity separate from his father forces him to realize that a large part of his identity comes from the struggles his parents faced during the Holocaust. The title of Maus II, continues on with the subtitle, A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began literally addressing the struggle he seems to face identifying that Vladek’s survival caused some of Art’s struggles in his own life. Stanislav Kolář dives into this idea writing, “Art’s story confirms the assertion that generations which have never been exposed to a traumatic event can ‘inherit’ the trauma of their ancestors and that the most common channel of this intergenerational and transgenerational transmission is through the family” (Kolář, Stanislav). Art Spiegelman’s identification of his trauma is what allows him to move on, to a certain extent. It is important to understand that his identification of this trauma does not extinguish it from his life, but rather acts as a coping mechanism so that he is able to live with it with better understanding of why he feels the way he does. As previously mentioned, Art’s identity does not exist without his childhood experiences which were somewhat traumatic, and therefore Art’s acknowledgement of this allows him to create awareness on the topic of generational trauma.

This person has a very good way of describing how seemingly mundane things may perpetuate or be a result of Art’s generational trauma in his relationship with his father. I also enjoyed the fact that this person made it very clear to the reader that Art, throughout the course of writing Maus, has realized the presence of generational trauma in his life, but also emphasizes that the simple recognition of it is not a way to remove oneself from it entirely. In my opinion, the fact itself that Art is coming to terms with his generational trauma is not a coping mechanism, instead, his writing of Maus is a coping mechanism; Art writes Maus partially so that he doesn’t feel inferior in comparison to his father. Although Maus is not written solely for this reason, Art and Vladek’s relationship portrayed in this way becomes increasingly present, especially going into Maus II, when Art speaks with his therapist concerning his own relationship to Vladek’s experiences during the Holocaust. Although Art continues to feel inferior in comparison to his father, his writing of Maus helped him to come to terms with why and in what way his generational trauma manifests itself in him.