The Trauma and Guilt from the Holocaust Survive

Line of Inquiry: How does Spiegelman’s choice to frequently shift between his father’s

perspective and his own in Maus I & II affect the theme of demonstrating the intergenerational

effects of guilt and trauma?

Literary Work: The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

Word Count: 1536

Session: May 2021

IB Subject: Language Arts HL Essay

 During WWII over 6 million Jewish people were systematically killed by the German

Empire in an act of genocide. Families were torn apart and the old and young alike were the first

to be sent to the gas chambers. Only a few Jewish people (those who weren’t too old or young to

work in the camps) survived. Vladek, Art Spiegelman’s father, and his wife Anja were two such

survivors. In The Complete Maus spiegelman chronicles the journey of survival made by Vladek

and Anja through the holocaust, primarily from Vladek’s perspective. However, the graphic

novel frequently shifts to Spiegelman’s perspective in order to focus instead on the process of

writing Maus or parts of his life in which Vladek was involved. Spiegelman’s choice to

frequently shift between his father’s perspective and his own allows him to demonstrate how

guilt and trauma breeds distrust, isolation, and envy across generations.

The concurring perspectives between Vladek and Spiegelman highlight how guilt and

trauma can instill distrust even a generation later. In the very beginning of Maus I, Spiegelman

recounts a summer day when he was 11 years old and skating with his friends. He had been left

behind because his skate broke. As he dejectedly walked up to his father and explained how his

friends had left him behind, his father told him that “If you lock them together in a room with no

food for a week… THEN you could see what it is, friends!” (Spiegelman 6). Spiegelman is

recalling how Vladek made clear that friends are quick to abandon when one is in trouble. From

Spiegelman’s perspective, since a very young age, he had been taught to distrust those around

him. Interestingly when teaching Spiegelman distrust Vladek seems to lay reference to an event

that he lived through posing the ‘hypothetical’: “If you locked them in a room with no food for a

week”. Spiegelman develops this idea further but through the perspective of Vladek instead of

his own. When Vladek recalls how he was hiding with Anja from the Gestapo in a bunker he

stated “we just didn’t have what to eat” (Spiegelman 114). Thereafter he describes how a man
came to visit the bunker looking for food and how he thought that “he may be an informer. the

safest thing would be to kill him” (Spiegelman 115). However, they took pity on him and let him

go only for the man to reveal their location to the gestapo. Initially, Vladek was skeptical to trust

the man but did not give into distrust and eventually let him go. However, this left him scarred

and bitter as distrust would have saved him food and could have possibly prevented him from

experiencing the horrors at Auschwitz. All the people in the bunker could have potentially

survived as well. Thus, the trauma and guilt experienced during the holocaust worked to breed

distrust from Vladek’s perspespective as distrust could have saved him as well as others. As one

can gather from Spiegelman’s perspective this distrust was handed down a generation later to

himself as his father taught him to question trusting relationships like friends. Therefore

Spiegelman employs perspective in order to demonstrate how guilt and trauma that he wasn’t

directly connected to directly affected his upbringing by teaching him to distrust.

The perspectives employed by Spiegelman also work to demonstrate how guilt and

trauma can assist in creating isolation even a generation later. For example, in a “Prisoner From

Hell Planet” published in The Complete Maus Spiegelman describes, from his perspective, how

the suicide of his mother, possibly a result of the trauma experienced in the holocaust

(Spiegelman speculates this stating that “HITLER DID IT!”), forced guilt upon him (Spiegalman

105). A family member told him that “better you cried when your mother was still alive!”

(Spiegelman 104). The last few frames of the comic show how Spiegelman is left isolated in a

prison cell. He tells his mother, making use of apostrophe, that “you murdered me… and left me

here to take the rap!!!” (Spiegalman 105). Spiegelman was overwhelmed by guilt with family

members implying that he was in part responsible for his mother’s death because he hadn’t cried

when his “mother was still alive”. His mother’s suicide, possibly a result of the trauma and guilt
experienced during the holocaust, therefore forced upon him isolation like his figurative prison

cell. The trauma of the holocaust also led his mother Anja to seek isolation herself when she

anticipated news of Vladek’s death or surival. As Vladek details, “no sign came of me… so she

sat home even more depressed” (Spiegalman 294). Anja sought isolation after she was able to

reflect on the horrors of the holocaust and understanding the possibility that her husband Vladek

might be dead. Isolation had been nurtured in Anja through the guilt and trauma aqcuired in the

holocaust which fueled fears. These fears could have likely been, as spiegelman speculates, the

cause of his mothers suicide which instilled furthur isolation within Vladeks life. Thus the guilt

and trauma experienced by Anja as told through Spiegelman’s perspective as well as his father’s,

had instilled isolation in not only herself but her children as well.

Spiegalman also uses the perspective of his father and his own in order to establish how

guilt and trauma can create a sort of intergenerational envy. Vladek tells Spiegelman how he

entrusted Richieu, Spiegelman’s late brother, to another ghetto where a woman killed herself and

the small children she looked after (including Richieu) in order to prevent them from being killed

in the gas chambers when the Germans came for them in what Vladek describes as “a tragedy

among tragedies” (Spiegelman 111). The death of his son affected Vladek to such a degree that

he saw his death as a more impactful tragedy than that of the other events of the holocaust. This

likely created a sort of envy for the dead for Vladek brought about by the guilt of not having

been able to prevent Richieu’s death. As Vladek sees Richieu’s death as one of the greatest

tragedies in his life, if given the chance, he would have likely traded his life for Richieu’s.

Similarly, as presented through Spiegelman’s perspective, he too likely envies the death of his

brother in an act of bargaining. At the very end of the graphic novel Spiegelman recounts from

his own perspective one of the last conversations he had with his father where Vladek stated,
“I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough stories for now” (Spiegelman 296). Vladek had

mistakenly called Spiegelman by his deceased brother’s name. Spiegelmen was clearly affected

by this in some capacity because he chose to use the statement by Vladek in order to end Maus

II. Spiegelman likely feels a sort of twisted envy for his brother’s death. Likely he is engaging in

bargaining, wondering if he were to die instead of Richieu. He likely experiences this because he

has had the death of his brother hanging over him his entire life. Thus this concurrence of

perspectives between Vladek and Spiegelman serve to highlight how trauma and guilt, created by

the death of a family member, can create a sort of twisted envy for the dead resulting from

bargaining caused by grief.

In Conclusion, Spiegelman uses various perspectives, like that of his father’s, his

mother’s, in combination with his own, in order to demonstrate how guilt and trauma, in this

case created by the Holocaust, can instill distrust, isolation, and envy not only in the people who

directly experience it but succeeding generations as well. In the beginning of the novel

Spiegelman reveals how his father taught him how friends can be quick to turn on him in dire

situations which is later justified by Vladek’s experience in hiding from the gestapo which bred

Vladek’s distrust and thus a distrust in Spiegelman as well. The suicide of Spiegelman’s mother,

possibly caused by the trauma and guilt from the holocaust, caused Spiegelman to spiral into

isolation much like his mother did after coming to terms with the possibility that the holocaust

brought the death of her husband Vladek. The death of Spiegelman’s brother, Richieu, also

possibly bred a sort of twisted envy brought about by bargaining caused by trauma and guilt in

both Spiegelman and Vladek, even though Spiegelman had never met his brother. It is clear that

the trauma and guilt experienced by Vladek’s parents deeply affected him, even reflecting in

him. Thus these perspectives serve to show how trauma and guilt (especially trauma and guilt
caused by horrendous and massive crimes against humanity) can persist through generations

breeding isolation, distrust, and a dark envy created by bargaining. Even though in 30 years or so

no holocaust survivors will be alive the tremendous trauma and guilt caused by the holocaust

will survive through generations. The horrors can’t be erased.

 Works Cited

Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. New York, Pantheon, 1991, 2 vols.