Maus Expository/Theme Essay

memories haunt forever-

Experiences make us who we are. The trials we undergo throughout our lives, big or small, help

carve us into the people we are today and the people we could be in the future. It could be said that most

times, especially with large scale events, the experiences of our past are more often than not carried with

us forever and can easily impact our present day lifestyles. Art Speigelman’s graphic novel, Maus,

provides several occasions in which this statement can be found true.

The author’s father, Vladek, is one of the main characters of this narrative and throughout the

story, we are introduced to various traits and habits of his, some of which seem slightly peculiar and

maybe even a bit extreme, through Art’s eyes. During a dinner scene, Art Speigelman reveals that,

“...Mom would offer to cook something [he] liked better, but pop just wanted to leave the leftover food
valdek-food concern
around until [Art] ate it. Sometimes he’d even save it to serve again and again until [he’d] eat it or starve”

(Spiegelman 43). Later on, in Maus II, Vladek’s resource habits concerning food are expanded upon even

further when he attempts to return unpackaged and half-eaten food to the store. When questioned, he

simply replies, “I cannot forget it...ever since Hitler I don’t like to throw out even a crumb” (Spieglman

78). Vladek Speigelman is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and had spent time in Auschwitz, one of

largest concentration camps and killing centers during that time. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Vladek

is very careful about conserving and not being wasteful with food, especially when you consider that the

concentration camps allowed and provided very little food and many suffered from malnutrition

(Lightblau, 2013). This is an active example of how our past can impact our present day lives, even in the

slightest of ways, because while Vladek has a perfectly stable home and source of income, he doesn’t

need to worry about not having enough food, he does anyways because it’s a habit and appreciation

installed by years of hardship and the knowledge of what it’s like to not have it. This habit, as well as

many others, doesn’t just affect him though.

The author himself expresses his own difficulties growing up, with the shadows and ghosts of his

parents’ past hanging over their family. In Maus II, Art Spiegelman goes on to explain parts of his
 childhood: “...I did have nightmares about S.S. men coming into my class and dragging all us jewish kids

away. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t obsessed with this stuff...it’s just that sometimes I’d fantasize zyklon

B coming out of our shower instead of water” (Spiegelman 16). Zyklon B was the poisonous gas used to

kill prisoners in concentration camps, women and children included. So many lives were destroyed or

taken during this time. In Auschwitz alone, one million Jewish people were killed or died in the killing

center (Waxman, 2019). This is another example where the past is shown to bleed into the present. Art

wasn’t alive during the time of the Holocaust and didn’t have to go through Auschwitz or any of the other

horrors that occurred during Hitler’s reign. And yet, as a child, the thoughts and terrors of what his

parents and other Jewish citizens had experienced still loomed over him in a series of what if’s. On the

other hand, the lack of experience haunts him as well. This is something we discover later on, when he

confesses that, “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving

Auschwitz'' (Spiegelman 44). Art Spiegelman didn’t walk the same road as his parents had to, but we can

still see that he carries some form of survivor's guilt over the entire ordeal.

Survivor’s guilt, or guilt in general, isn’t uncommon in situations like this. It’s another factor that

connects the past to the present, helping carve out the person . In a 2008 Ted Talk, Benjamin Zander

how discusses the story he’d learned from a Auschwitz survivor, who’d told him: “...and I walked out of
Vladick
was not Auschwitz into life and the vow was ‘I will never say anything that could not stand as the last thing I ever
able to
save his
say’.” The context behind this vow is that prior to her arrival to Auschwitz, she’d thoughtlessly scolded
family-tha
t guilt
her 8-year-old brother for losing his shoes, calling him names. Unfortunately, it’d been the last thing she’d

spoken to him as he’d died in the camp soon after. The old, weak, and very young were often selected and

sent to death first since they could not work as slaves in the labor camps (Calabresi, 2015). This story

shows how our past experiences, or more specifically, our actions, can affect who we become. The guilt

this woman had felt over her last words to her younger brother stayed with her and forced her to realize

the power behind it. Because of this, she swore to change, to be more careful with her words and

kindness, and that alone is likely a defining part of the person she grew into.
 In conclusion, you can see how our pasts, our experiences, can bleed into the present and are

constantly affecting our lives and the people in them. These events will always linger and can help build

people, whether it be through a man’s habits carved by trauma or a woman’s kindness forged from guilt,

or hang over and sway the lives of those around them as we see with Art’s childhood and mindset. The

Holocaust itself, took and destroyed the lives of so many and each of those survivors, each of the families

who lost something, are forever chanaged by the it even if on varying levels.
Citation Page

Calabresi, Massimo. “The Selection at Auschwitz.” Time, Time, 27 Jan. 2015,

time.com/3684757/the-selection-at-auschwitz/.

Lightblau, Eric. “The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking.” The New York Times, Mar. 2013.
http://www.hajrtp.org/PDFs/NYT-Holocast%20More%20Shocking%20Mar%201%202013.pdf

Waxman, Olivia B. “Why Auschwitz Plays Such a Key Role in Holocaust Remembrance.” Time, Time, 2
May 2019, time.com/5577552/holocaust-remembrance-auschwitz/.

Zander, Benjamin, director. Lessons from Auschwitz: The Power of Our Words - Benjamin Zander. TED-Ed,
2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBc2kw8aHRM.

Lessons from Auschwitz: The Power of Our Words was a short excerpt from Benjamin Zander’s
TED-Talk:

Zander, Benjamin, director. The Transformative Power of Classical Music. TED, 2008,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LCwI5iErE.