learntoquestion ltq discussions

Originally posted by onecreamtwosugarslightice on February 12, 2025 09:27

Spiegelman manages to illustrate and convey the horrors of the Holocaust while also keeping the reading digestible. The Holocaust was notably a horrifying event and it’s difficult to sugarcoat what had happened during it; that being said, it makes learning about it and understanding it rather uncomfortable. Maus allows readers to grasp the events of the Holocaust while also leaving a certain level of censorship to make it easier to comprehend. The formatting of the story, switching from the past and the present, builds a bond between the characters Vladek and Artie as we get to see how Vladek has grown and how Artie was raised with the trauma of the Holocaust behind them. The contrast between the violence and malice of the Holocaust and their current life shows how they are just ordinary people who had to resilience in order to survive and adapt. This time structure not only humanizes the historical trauma but also emphasizes the long-lasting psychological effects on survivors and their families.

Also, Spiegelman’s choice to depict different groups using animals (Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs), adds a layer of symbolism that showcases the power dynamics and dehumanization that was present during the Holocaust. Even though the images presented are simplified to keep the reading more digestible and comic-like, the raw emotions and horror of Vladek’s experiences are still present, making the story accessible without diminishing its gravity. It also makes it easier for younger kids to understand the Holocaust without being afraid or disgusted by the monstrosities committed by making it connected to something they know, like animals and the food chain. Cats eat mice, mice are pests, pigs are dirty and sloppy creatures. It shows the social hierarchy of the time without having to directly say it, which I feel is also why this book is so amazing. The way it manages to convey feelings without iterating it to the reader’s and the use of images and emotion to connect to people. Spiegelman doesn’t solely rely on exposition but allows his images to carry much of the emotional impact. The expressions of the characters, despite their animal features, convey their suffering and fear at moments. This choice makes the story feel more universal, ensuring that the Holocaust’s history and its lessons reach a wider audience.

Overall, I feel like this book is such an important book to show to people who want to learn more about the Holocaust or anyone really. It conveys an important POV of such a critical event. It serves as a reminder of the horrors of history and the importance of remembering the past so that such atrocities are never repeated. Whether someone is well-versed in Holocaust history or learning about it for the first time, Maus offers a compelling and necessary perspective that remains relevant today.

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I definitely agree that the time structure emphasizes the psychological effects of the Holocaust in the present day. I also think that it emphasizes how Vladek and Artie’s relationship was affected. We can see, for example, how Vladek was forced to hold on to any food he could during the Holocaust, and then after a time jump we would see how he’s still doing that even when he doesn’t have to, and how that affects Artie. I definitely agree that Spiegelman uses illustrations to convey things that words cannot, or that he doesn’t with words. I liked how all of the cats (nazis) were almost always depicted as having a shadow cast over their face, highlighting their immorality. However, I disagree with the idea that the drawings make it more accessible to young kids. I feel like a topic as grave as this shouldn’t be dumbed down/trivialized so that little kids can understand it, and I don’t think that was part of Spiegelman’s intention. Also, the book itself is so complex and has a lot of depth, so even though it’s a comic book, it’s not really suitable for young children to read, in my opinion. Also, you said that the images presented were simplified to make it more comic-like, I wish you had expanded on that a little more because I don’t really know what you mean.

Originally posted by littleprincess26 on February 11, 2025 00:09

Maus shows not only the devastating impacts of Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek as a result of the Holocaust but also how that trauma can be passed onto a second generation. The trauma is also not confined to one person, it can affect everyone around it. I think there is no singular answer to whether it is possible to move beyond this generational trauma or to acknowledge it and live with it. Everyone’s experiences are unique to themselves and everyone handles it differently, meaning that there is no single solution to coping with trauma. In Maus, Art shows his personal struggles with generational trauma as he finds it difficult to connect to his father. His father had obsessive behaviours and other things that were a harsh reminder of the trauma he faced. Although Vladek only picked these behaviours up from his survival of the Holocaust, Art isn’t able to fully understand why he acts the way he does, creating this barrier between them. He is torn between sympathizing for him or being frustrated with him. His depiction of himself as a “child of survivors” also shows his emotions and how the trauma has been passed down to him. He often expressed feelings of guilt since he didn’t experience it himself and couldn’t relate to his father. His dead brother also served as a reminder of the disconnect he felt from his family in general. He wasn’t able to move on past this trauma or shake it off. Vladek’s trauma is also not just representing himself, he represents a lot of aspects of trauma. He faced feelings of displacement, hopelessness, loss, and violence. These emotions are passed down to later generations and often can be seen through Art. Many children of survivors of traumatic events find it difficult to just acknowledge the events and move on because it causes them to consider the history and how that affects their identity. In “The Shadow of Past Time: History and Graphic Representation in Maus”, it highlights how the graphics allow readers to see the trauma in a visual way since it is difficult to imagine. The way the narration jumps from past to present can also be seen as the disconnect that trauma causes people to feel. The question of whether generational trauma can be overcome or not is extremely complex as I mentioned before. Maus is able to convey how there is no simple resolution for the trauma that has been passed down. Art attempts to understand his father in some ways but isn’t able to because he is also struggling with his own emotions and identity. He is an example of how one lives with trauma since he never was able to move past it. It seemed like he came to terms with it in the end and accepted it in a way. He doesn't seem to have forgotten about the past but he acknowledges the difficulty in trying to undo the trauma. The process of dealing with generational trauma is ongoing. In “Intergenerational transmission of trauma in Spiegelman's Maus”, Stanislav argues that the generational trauma is not permanent but actually a continuous process. It is argued that just because one isn’t able to overcome the trauma, it doesn’t show weakness since the trauma is so deeply rooted for generations. Although Maus is specifically about the Holocaust, this idea of generational trauma can be seen in many other wars and historical events. This goes to show how powerful the trauma can be, as it affects so many people over long periods of time. Although there really isn’t a resolution to it, there are ways to cope and it is different for each individual. Confronting the trauma is just the beginning of healing from it.

Excellent response, I agree with a lot of your points and I even had the same ideas too. Something you said that was really compelling was that trauma is very powerful and unique for people because of the many different ways to cope. I also believe that it is important to confront the trauma in order to heal because ignoring it only pushes you into more pain. I hadn’t exactly thought about Art’s perspective and why exactly he acted the way he did but you brought to light how he too is struggling with his own emotions and identity. At first I just believed that Art was doing it to get back at his father for the way Vladek acts, which has a lot to do with Vladek’s own trauma and experiences, but I hadn’t taken in consideration how Art is also struggling with his identity. He has a hard time navigating through the inherited trauma and those same feelings of guilt. Even though he doesn’t really understand the gravity and immense pain of the Holocaust since he didn’t experience the Holocaust firsthand, it still shapes his identity. He also struggles to connect with his father fully because of Richieu and Art feels that there is a lot of pressure on him to live up to an impossible standard.

Originally posted by iris_crane on February 11, 2025 13:38

Generational trauma is a term referring to the transfer of “the traumatic experiences of one generation onto subsequent generations.” Spiegelman depicts generational trauma and its impact through the lingering attachments that it has on Art’s father and thus affecting him in collateral. Art’s experiences in Maus depict his generational trauma mostly through his father, for Vladek’s own lingering sense of dread and obsessive behavior to save up. The trauma is not just a matter of direct experience but also a matter of how that trauma is passed on to children, who inherit the weight of their parents' suffering.

Generational trauma manifests itself in a myriad of ways, the most prominent being through Art’s relationship with his father, Vladek. As a survivor of the Holocaust, and someone who had basically lost everything to Nazi, Germany. Vladek’s own trauma influences his behaviors. This can be seen almost throughout the entire book, despite surviving, Vladek is unable to let go of that sense of survival, the need and consumption of draining everything that he has in fear that it could be taken away from him once more. From obsessing with using only the bare necessities to the anxiety of not ever being able to feel safe in his own body, Vladek holds this kind of trauma as seeing that he has to at least try to do better than his past. Be able to salvage a sense of security despite being in a place far away from his perpetrators. These traits however, are passed down to Art. Unable to understand his father’s own pain as well as his own issues surrounding his own identity. Art feels torn between his father’s past trauma and the expectations placed on him as a child of a survivor, constantly caught in the tension of trying to live a “normal” life while understanding the deep-rooted emotional wounds of his father’s history as this feeling of Vladek wanting to be able to control something in his life while Art wants to escape that sense of control and become his own self.

Generational trauma can also affect the wider community. Not only did Holocaust survivors lose family members, but their entire communities were destroyed, depicted especially through how when Vladek finally is able to leave his camp, he is left with nowhere to go or return to, family dead and his origin point infested with those who still would not hesitate to kill him in one way or another, it leaves Vladek stranded in a place where he is lost. The survivors’ experience was not just personal but collective, and the trauma of losing an entire culture and way of life is carried on by their children. Children of survivors grow up in a world where the repercussions of genocide and war are ever-present in their parents' lives, even if they weren't physically present for those events themselves. The weight of such collective trauma—being part of a group that has been victimized, dehumanized, and nearly annihilated—can feel like an inherited burden that affects the children's worldview, mental health, and ability to connect with others.

The concept of breaking generational trauma is extremely complex, however it is possible to be able to break the cycle of generational trauma, even if it were to take generations to come as it does not have to be something that is a constant forever. A person can heal from generational trauma and break the patterns in their own family while learning its cause and acknowledging its existence

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I agree with this response as a whole and see a lot of the ideas I had when reading the book. Even after the Holocaust, Valdek has a lot of trauma from being a survivor, never feeling safe as well as obsessing over bare necessities and being afraid everything will be taken from him once again. I also believe that the trauma he has and the way he acts puts pressure on Art throughout his life, from having a dead older brother, who he was constantly compared to, and also having to take care of his father, at the same time trying to understand his story, through creating the book, which he may never fully understand. Also the reason that the book connected so much to generational trauma was the fact that the Holocaust took away so many communities. Because of this, like you said, so many children like Art, feel disconnected from their culture, and are unable to see the same things their parents saw. Along with not being able to understand their parents lives, the mental burden of this is placed on them. From not being able to really connect to their parents, to also not being able to express their frustration about it since it is so hard to.

Originally posted by blank.image on February 13, 2025 10:12

While some may feel that a comic isn't serious enough to illustrate the Holocaust, I do believe Artie's use of the comic form draws in the reader and holds their attention while also effectively conveying the emotional and historical weight of it. I won’t deny that the book did move me at different points and I feel like in its own way the depiction of people, especially the Jewish, as animals was particularly striking. When we think of mice we may feel repulsed because they're "vermin" and not necessarily wanted in human spaces. We feel the need to get rid of them via extermination. The Germans being depicted as cats shows their "superiority" over the other people in the book, since we perceive them as the main predator of mice and they are typically shown more love and respect by people. The novel definitely is serious enough to discuss the Holocaust, especially for younger audiences or anybody who may not be ready to look at darker sources of information about it because while there are some parts that are shocking and upsetting, it’s still more tame than documentaries that may contain actual footage of occurrences during the Holocaust. The book doesn’t joke about the Holocaust and touches on real issues that people may not acknowledge as much such as survivor’s guilt, trauma, and the effect it had on the descendants of survivors. It’s a unique way to retell the account of someone who actually had to live through it and it gives the readers breaks to process any hard information they may have just taken in. In terms of educating people and getting information about the Holocaust out in general, the book being in comic form helps this sort of information reach a larger audience and I feel like the details stick with the reader more. I feel like the movement between the past and the present in the novel is a crucial part of what could be taken away from the book. At the beginning of the book we briefly start off in Artie’s childhood, and then move to the present where he first approaches his father about having him tell his story. From that point on we bounce between the retelling of his father’s story the present day. This snap back to reality typically occurs after his father finishes talking about a specific tragic occurrence and I feel that it reminds us that this happened to a real person and this is just one account of millions. We’re able to see Vladek’s face and emotion that he displayed as he told his story and this is important because it helps us understand that decades later, he was still heavily impacted. This is significant because a lot of people don’t understand how someone could still be impacted by something that took place “a long time ago” and believe some things are better off forgotten. We learn from Maus that even though some may be able to move forward in their lives prior to a traumatic event, everything they had to endure still sticks with them regardless of how much time has passed. Many who survived the Holocaust lost, if not all, the majority of their family members and were constantly facing death on a daily basis. It should be completely understandable without question if they haven’t “simply moved on” and this is a topic Artie conveys in the book.

I totally agree with you that Artie's use of the comic form is both captivating to readers as well as carrying the emotional and historical weight of the Holocaust. You made a great point about the novel’s design of depicting the Jewish characters as mice and the Nazis as cats. At first, I worried that the design of the Jews as mice and Germans as cats would feed into stereotypes about Jewish people and would insinuate that people are inherently inferior/superior, but after finishing the series I realized that it was to emphasize the dehumanization of the Jews and their vulnerability in Nazi Germany. I also agree with you that this design choice represents how Jews have been rejected and “generally unwanted” by many countries who want to scapegoat them. You made a great point about how Maus discusses things surrounding the Holocaust that may not necessarily be focused on in other sources, like centering the story on a descendant of a survivor. Through following the journey of the son of a survivor, readers learn about the realities of the Holocaust along with him, making the crimes of the Nazis even more disturbing and horrific. I also didn’t think before about how seeing Vladek’s facial expressions would aid our understanding of his experiences much better than just reading his words. Also—adding on to your point about how people cannot just “move on” from the Holocaust—Vladek was constantly being moved around the nation, narrowly escaping death, constantly on the run, and he was never able to go back home. With this in mind, his journey through the Holocaust never really ended. Art does an incredible job depicting the impacts of the Holocaust on his father’s day-to-day life, as you already described concisely!