The Role Of Mala In Maus

which shows his problem with her are more than her as a person. The problem he has with Mala is simply she is not Anja. Vladek seems to want some kind of companionship, but he also seems to need to constantly remind himself and everyone that Anja is irreplaceable. He shows this in his attempt to have Art and his wife, Francoise, stay with him the whole summer when Mala leaves him (pg.177) as well as his suggestion that they move in with him free of rent to care for him (pg.262), but also his constant compliant and comparison of life with Mala to what he had with Anja (pg.69, 185). He cannot escape the present Mala represents to him no matter how much he clings to his memories of Anja, and it is in his attempts to desperately to hold onto his memories of Anja in the present, he merges the past and present and brings in some need for …show more content…
Still, in a novel so focused on the past, why did Spiegelman keep Mala in the story? He could have chosen not to include moments with Mala in Maus because after all, she was not a direct part of Vladek’s account of the holocaust. Yes, Vladek brings her into his story of the past through his comparison of Mala to Anja, but he if he removed her, the reader likely would not have known had he chosen not to include her. He could have chosen to discard his father’s comparisons and complaints of Mala to instead only to include conversations he had with her that directly added to Vladek’s