Also, the memory of the Holocaust has proven to be unbearable as it has left long lasting mental effects on the characters. The Nazi government systemically attacked and persecuted the Jews with brutal violence and sent millions of them to concentration camps. As a result, Spiegelman’s family has been traumatized and has “children of holocaust survivors growing up with the simultaneous presence and absence of the Holocaust memory in their lives” (Kohli, 2012, p. 2). In fact, “Maus is not about one survivor or one level of survival, but instead about the varied layers and contradictory exemplifications of survivor and survival”, it is about the future generations constructing their identities in relation to the Holocaust (Kohli, 2012, p. 2,
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Throughout Maus, indications of strain between Spiegelman and his father can be observed at the beginning and end of each chapter, as the only direct contact between Spiegelman and his father happens when Spiegelman arrives to listen to his father and when his father ends his story. One indication of the strain is that Vladek reduces Spiegelman to the status of a child rather than an adult confronting his father about his life as the story being told by Vladek is not a typical bedtime story, it is the story that shaped Spiegelman’s life (Tabachnick, 1993, p. 156). The father and son relationship can be further analyzed through understanding the title of the Maus I, “My father bleeds history.” According to Hillary Chute, an English professor at the University of Chicago and a member of the university’s department of visual arts, “Vladek’s bleeding is Spiegelman’s textual and visual rebuilding” (Chute, 2006, p. 203). When Spiegelman asks Vladek about Anja’s diaries, Vladek admits that he has burned the diaries as they contained a lot of memories. Spiegelman then calls Vladek a murderer and brings up the fact that Vladek is more attached to worthless things than to valuable memories by saying: “you save tons of worthless shit” (Spiegelman, 1986, p. 159). As a result of having one source to tell the survivors’ stories, Spiegelman reconstructs his father’s story and organizes Maus using his “own language-comics-in frames and gutters interpreting and interpreting as he rebuilds” (Chute, 2006, p.
Throughout Maus, indications of strain between Spiegelman and his father can be observed at the beginning and end of each chapter, as the only direct contact between Spiegelman and his father happens when Spiegelman arrives to listen to his father and when his father ends his story. One indication of the strain is that Vladek reduces Spiegelman to the status of a child rather than an adult confronting his father about his life as the story being told by Vladek is not a typical bedtime story, it is the story that shaped Spiegelman’s life (Tabachnick, 1993, p. 156). The father and son relationship can be further analyzed through understanding the title of the Maus I, “My father bleeds history.” According to Hillary Chute, an English professor at the University of Chicago and a member of the university’s department of visual arts, “Vladek’s bleeding is Spiegelman’s textual and visual rebuilding” (Chute, 2006, p. 203). When Spiegelman asks Vladek about Anja’s diaries, Vladek admits that he has burned the diaries as they contained a lot of memories. Spiegelman then calls Vladek a murderer and brings up the fact that Vladek is more attached to worthless things than to valuable memories by saying: “you save tons of worthless shit” (Spiegelman, 1986, p. 159). As a result of having one source to tell the survivors’ stories, Spiegelman reconstructs his father’s story and organizes Maus using his “own language-comics-in frames and gutters interpreting and interpreting as he rebuilds” (Chute, 2006, p.