The Effects of the Holocaust

Maus A Survival’s Tale is a two volume graphic novel that artist and writer Art Spiegelman wrote about his father’s time during World War II. It is written in two different time periods. It is written in Art’s father’s past during the Holocaust in World War II and his more present life in New York. These two volumes cover all sorts of themes such as guilt and race and class, and they cover quite a bit of emotional content. The use of both the past and more present tense helps to further show the emotional impact that the Holocaust had on both Vladek and his son Art.
In the very first panel of the first chapter, the reader is introduced to Art and Vladek and is told that they aren’t very close. It had apparently been almost two years since they last saw each other. This sets the emotional tension of the story which continues to build up as Art gets his father to talk about his life. It then switches to Vladek’s life before he meets Art’s mother, Anja.  As the story progresses, the reader is shown the very first stirrings of the anti-Semitic views of the Nazis during the second chapter’s flashback which shows Vladek and his family’s life getting a bit tougher with their business being robbed, and then Vladek being drafted into the army. The story continues in much of the same fashion where the reader sees Art and Vladek interacting in the present day and then switching over to Vladek’s life during the start of the Holocaust, and the tension slowly builds as the story starts to unfold. A pivotal moment where the emotional impact of the Holocaust has affected Art and Vladek’s relationship in the present day can be seen in chapter 6 where Vladek admits to burning Anja’s diaries because they had too many memories, and Art gets angry and accuses him of murdering Anja. 
Another source of emotional impact due to the Holocaust is seen through Vladek’s personality and relationship with those around him. He is forces Art to eat all of the food on his plate which is probably due to the fact that during his time in World War II he had to survive off of what little food he could get. He also mentions later on in volume two of the story that ever since the war he just can’t seem to throw things away, and he is constantly trying to give Art some of the leftovers, though Art always refuses them. Vladek is also very stubborn, and his relationship with his second wife is rather tense for many reasons. One of those reasons happens to be because he refuses to give Mala more than fifty dollars a month because he’s afraid she’s trying to steal all of his money. He seems to be very stingy when it comes to his possessions which is probably due to the fact that he didn’t have many possessions during his time at the concentration camp. It seems as if Vladek himself isn’t a very amiable person because of his experiences which causes him to have a rather strained relationship with those around him.
One of the main sources of emotional impact due to the Holocaust comes from Art when he feels guilty about having an easier life than his parents. He explains to his wife, Francoise, that he would sometimes wish that he could have been with his parents at Auschwitz, a German concentration and extermination camp, simply so that he could understand what his parents went through. In the same chapter, he also explains his sort of resentment against Richieu, the brother he never met because he was poisoned by his aunt, Tosha, who would rather them be dead than them being sent to Auschwitz. He explains that he always felt in competition with his dead brother simply because Richieu died at the age where he could do no wrong and was the perfect child (Spiegelman, Vol. 2 Chapter 1). This sort of tension that Art feels is directly related to his parents’ experiences during World War II. He couldn’t get out of his dead brother’s shadows, and he couldn’t fully understand what his parents went through, so he had to deal with conflicting feelings towards his dad. 
Due to Vladek’s time spent in Auschwitz and having to live through World War II Poland and Germany as a Jew he and his son have been rather effected by the disturbing and emotional impact of those experiences. They have a strained relationship with one another, Vladek is rather stingy and stubborn due to his experiences, and Art feels guilty about not knowing what his parents had to go through as well as feeling like he’s in a competition with his dead brother. They both struggle to deal with these issues, and the reader gets to see how they are both affected by these events. Overall, Maus is a tale of a father and son who have to deal with events in the past that affect their lives every day.