Reply to Question 2
Maus demonstrates that Art Spiegelman, and more broadly, any other children of Holocaust survivors (or other historical atrocities), are incredibly shaped and impacted by their parents’ trauma. His relationship with his father, Vladek, and his own feelings about the Holocaust are impacted by his experience as a second generation survivor. Art’s father, Vladek, is traumatized from his experience in the holocaust, and this is reflected in his obsessive and often embarrassing cheapness. This is a point of conflict in their relationship, as Art often becomes frustrated with his father’s refusal to spend any money, like when Vladek goes to the store and returns half-eaten boxes of cereal, only after Art refuses to take them home with him. When Vladek admits, “Ever since Hitler I don’t like to even throw out a crumb” (Spiegelman 78), Art snaps back: “Then just save the damn Special K in case Hitler ever comes back!” Art is understandably frustrated with his father’s trauma response, and is angry that he seemingly can’t move on from it. To the reader, this seems hypocritical, because Art, despite not experiencing the Holocaust, is just as unable to move on from it as his father. He constantly forces Vladek to tell him the most gruesome stories from his experience, despite Vladek's clear discomfort. As Stanislav writes, “Art’s ‘inheritance’ of his parents’ trauma leads to his obsession with the Holocaust, although he is at pains to deny that it is an obsession” (Stanislav 232). The fact that this book exists in the first place, that Art wrote it, shows his own infatuation with the Holocaust. Art feels some kind of survivor’s guilt, because his brother, Richieu, died in the Holocaust, and he feels that he is like a worse replacement for him. His parents perpetuate this, by keeping a picture of Richieu in their bedroom and no pictures of Art. Art longs to have been in the Holocaust, literally having dreams about Auschwitz, just so that he would share his past with his parents.
It really isn’t possible to move beyond generational trauma, as evidenced by Art. He’s so unable to move past the trauma, he felt the need to write this entire book about it. It’s not necessarily better to live with and acknowledge it, but it is really the only option. The Holocaust seems to surround Art’s entire life and mental state, whether it be with his troubled relationship to Vladek, or his feelings of inadequacy with his parents, or his own fantasizing about being in the Holocaust. It’s not possible to simply ‘move beyond’ something like that, and the goal shouldn’t be to do so. However, acknowledging and living with the impact that the Holocaust has might help him to improve his own unhealthy feelings about it, and could have helped him improve his relationship with his father. In a sense, Maus was Art’s way of trying to do this. Throughout the book, we can see that the Holocaust was something that Vladek and Art could talk about without descending into an argument or passive-aggression. However, talking about these things doesn’t seem to bring them closer together in any way. Towards the end of the book, Vladek wants to live with Art, and Art vehemently rejects this. Although this is understandable, it highlights that throughout all of their discussion, they don’t seem to be any closer than they were before. In fact, at the very end, in the last frame of the book, Vladek, who is very ill and tired, mistakenly calls Art Richieu. Art’s choice to end the book this way shows that he still feels like he is unable to move out of the shadow of Richieu, even in Vladek’s death. He is unable to move beyond the generational trauma, and his father was never able to move beyond or cope with the first hand trauma.