More Than Just Genetics Passed Down in Art Speigelman’s Maus: A Survivors Tale Traumatic experiences weave into the everyday lives of a person. Like destiny, these experiences shape and alter an individual greatly. These circumstances shape how people act in society and how they interact with others in their everyday lives. In Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivors Tale, Art and his father Vladek both experience traumatic events that change them forever. Some of these events affect one more than the other. However, the text brings out the idea of inherited trauma and how that leads into the passing down of primary witnessing of traumatic events to secondary witnessing of such events. The Holocaust was a terrible event in history that desensitised
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As a secondary witness he hears of the events second hand, meaning that they never actually happened to him but through verbal translation he’s able to gain knowledge about it. This is beneficial because the younger generation (Art) learns about the tragedies that occurred in the past, however, this is also a detriment because it results in a sense of inherited trauma. Inherited trauma is “trauma that is transferred from the first generation of trauma survivors to the second and further generations of offspring of the survivors via complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms.” (Wikipedia). The trauma Art faces as he’s recording his father’s experiences can be seen in his writing of the comic “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” (Speigalman, Maus I 100-103). This comic sheds a little light on how Art felt about the passing of his mom. The last time art saw his mom was one night, late, he was lying in bed and she came into his room and asked him if he still loved her, in which he replied “Sure, ma” (Speigelman, Maus I 103). Now this being the last time seeing his mom most likely would’ve left a bad taste in his mouth. Left him with a feeling of guilt, maybe wishing to have said more, maybe done more. “You put me here… shorted my circuits…cut my nerve endings… and crossed my wires!” (Maus I 103). This final quote in the comic shows just how much of an affect the death of his mother really had on him. “Pipe down Mac! Some of us are trying to sleep!” (Maus I 103). Hearing this in a time of need no doubt left Art with a sense of isolation, feeling as if he was all alone in the struggle, almost as if no one was there to help console
As a secondary witness he hears of the events second hand, meaning that they never actually happened to him but through verbal translation he’s able to gain knowledge about it. This is beneficial because the younger generation (Art) learns about the tragedies that occurred in the past, however, this is also a detriment because it results in a sense of inherited trauma. Inherited trauma is “trauma that is transferred from the first generation of trauma survivors to the second and further generations of offspring of the survivors via complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms.” (Wikipedia). The trauma Art faces as he’s recording his father’s experiences can be seen in his writing of the comic “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” (Speigalman, Maus I 100-103). This comic sheds a little light on how Art felt about the passing of his mom. The last time art saw his mom was one night, late, he was lying in bed and she came into his room and asked him if he still loved her, in which he replied “Sure, ma” (Speigelman, Maus I 103). Now this being the last time seeing his mom most likely would’ve left a bad taste in his mouth. Left him with a feeling of guilt, maybe wishing to have said more, maybe done more. “You put me here… shorted my circuits…cut my nerve endings… and crossed my wires!” (Maus I 103). This final quote in the comic shows just how much of an affect the death of his mother really had on him. “Pipe down Mac! Some of us are trying to sleep!” (Maus I 103). Hearing this in a time of need no doubt left Art with a sense of isolation, feeling as if he was all alone in the struggle, almost as if no one was there to help console