Rebecca Faison Post #3

       The effect of the Holocaust throughout the generations is beautifully illustrated in Art Spiegelman's "Maus," Specifically, Maus II. The more telling of the effect on the first generation is Vladek's words "I cannot forget it… Ever since Hitler I don't like to throw out even a crumb." (Spiegelman 78) This habit saved Vladek's life many times in the Holocaust, but greatly harms his life later on. Art gets frequently frustrated at Vladek over it as well as Mala, Vladek's second wife, who left him over it. For Art, the Holocaust effected him indirectly on different levels. The Always - present ghost of his parent's past lingered on his mind, especially as a kid: "…I did have nightmare about S.S. men coming into my class and dragging all us Jewish kids away… I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived though… I guess it's some kind of guilt about having an easier life than they did." (Spiegelman 16) This surely had an effect on him as a child. In Maus I, spiegelman states that he was in a State Mental Hospital, illustrated in the comic Vladek finds. (Spiegelman 100) This comic Art wrote, he focuses on his mother's suicide, for which Art blamed himself. (Spiegelman 102) In Maus II, Art shows himself in present - day, still going to a shrink, where the shrink suggests that his father "needed to show that he was always right - that he could always survive - because he felt guilty about surviving. And he took his guilt out on you, where it was safe… on the real survivor." (Spiegelman 44) In this scene, Art is depicted Small, like a child. This suggests how little he understands about his parents, what they had to go through, and how it effected them. Children are thought of as innocent, of taking things at face - value. The habits and trauma his parents had obtained translated into the child Art, but he also saw the outside world, and what it was like with parents who didn't have trauma, which may have resulted in some of Art's issues. Even though Art didn't go through the Holocaust, the effects it had on his parents greatly effected him.