Post-traumatic stress disorder is defined to be “an anxiety problem that develops in some people after extremely traumatic events, such as combat, crime, and accident or natural disaster” (American Psychological Association). Art Spiegelman’s Maus: My Father Bleeds History (1980) and Maus: And Here My Troubles Began (1992) analyzes the effect of PTSD on individuals and their future generations through character interactions and dialogue within the graphic novel.
Well-known in his approach, Spiegelman reinterprets and develops both the comic and traditional methods of telling history to describe and relate the history of his father. Additionally, rather than simply repeating the story of his father’s life to the audience and adding onto the many collections of Holocaust survival stories, Spiegelman also explores the burden and legacy of traumatic memory on second-generation survivors in order to demonstrate how the past can pertain to the current present, having long-lasting effects of guilt and depression on those who have not even experienced it through their own first-person encounters.
Throughout Maus, the idea of trauma also coexists with the concept of blame and survivor’s guilt, as the existence of trauma causes individuals to criticize the present and those around them. Kohli states in his paper, “As Anne Karpf acknowledges, ‘It seemed then as if I hadn’t lived the central experience of my life—at its heart, at mine, was an absence.’ Maus portrays how these children, such as Art, possess a distinct sense of bearing an unlived trace of the Holocaust past within the present. As a result of being strongly marked by its legacy, many from the second generation construct their identity in relation to the Holocaust, exploring it through imaginative writing and art, attempting to fill and restore the gaps created by this incomprehensible void” (Kohli 3). Maus addresses questions of guilt and blame on two levels, the individual and the collective. On an individual level, Holocaust survivors must tackle and be able to face their thoughts with survivor’s guilt— their guilt over surviving those who had died in the camps.
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Similarly, their children experience the same kind of guilt, over not sharing their parents’ experience of the Holocaust and living a life untroubled by the same trauma. In various ways, Art feels guilty about the fact that while his parents were forced to endure the life through Auschwitz and the terrifying occurrence of the Holocaust, he was able to be born into a time period where he can live a comfortable and easy life. This was seen when Artie says, “‘I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through!… I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did’” (Spiegelman 16). While interviewing his father Vladek, Artie is seen to show signs of survivor’s guilt through his actions and behavior around other characters. There are rarely any frames in both Book I and Book II that did not portray him with a cigarette, a common habit practice for relaxation.
The trauma from the Holocaust had been incorporated into his family even generations after the catastrophe, becoming one of the reasons to why there is always a distinct barrier between Artie and his father, and also contributing to his anxiety around his family members. Elmwood states in her paper, “His nightmares and morbid fantasies while not necessarily symptoms of trauma per se, certainly reveal a child whose everyday imagination is haunted by events to which he has no direct connection. This lack of connections is compounded by Vladek’s fragmentary processing of his own traumatic experiences” (Elmwood 697). Moreover, when Art confides his emotions and feelings to his therapist Pavel, Pavel tells him, “Maybe your father needed to show you 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). Here, we can see the idea of survivor’s guilt from the perspective of Vladek’s.
The way he behaves around Art can now be explained through his feelings regarding survival, as this was what he had picked up on in order to live during the Holocaust, and not merely due to the fact that he considers his superiority over Art. Vladek is also shown to possess traits that demonstrate the effect of surviving through the devastating effects of the Holocaust, as seen by him displaying signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In addition to his obsession to ensure that resources are not wasted under his household, Vladek often counts and recounts his pills, money, and even his nails in his shed. At one instance in Book I, when Arty had spilled cigarette ashes on the rug, he is shown to be extremely agitated exclaims, “‘But look what you do, Artie! You’re dropping on the carpet cigarette ashes. You want it should be like a stable here?’” (Spiegelman 52).
However, Vladek’s OCD isn’t the only thing that demonstrates his trauma from the Holocaust, as his need to hoard everyday items is also a clear sign of his past inducing a strong effect on him. Tuttle writes in his papers, “Over the course of the two volumes, readers can track Vladek’s compulsions to repeat certain acts and behaviors in order to make sense of them. These repeated behaviors include hoarding seemingly unnecessary, random objects that might be of use later, and saving money to the point of being miserly just in case of an unforeseen emergency” (Tuttle 71).
What seemed to be an efficient way for survival during the period of the Holocaust is now considered an aftermath behavior of such a traumatic even in Vladek’s daily life, unconsciously hoarding useless items and saving money when he does not need to at all. Art further describes Vladek’s behavior in Book II when Vladek says, “The salt is here, it’s half full and she opened anyway a new one! I can’t eat on my diet any sodium. I don’t need even one container salt, and here it’s two open salts!… Please don’t use my wooden matches. I don’t have left so many, already to make coffee you used one” (Spiegelman 19-20). Vladek’s obsessive hoarding is a constant motif through the story.
Vladek continually had to scrounge for necessities during the war, as there was always a constant scarcity on resources, leading to the constant fear of not being able to light a fire or not having enough salt to keep food from spoiling. Consequently, even after the events of the Holocaust have long past, Vladek cannot stop his compulsion to hoard these items even though there is an abundance of them. On the other hand, Vladek’s obsession over hoarding and collecting inexpensive items can also be connected in some ways to process of recovering his memory from the Holocaust and also collecting a first-hand experience regarding the event. By collecting even the smallest of stories that were created during that period, the understanding of the Holocaust can be substantially improved and known by more people.
After Vladek’s death in 1982, Art is consumed with the guilt towards his father from his behavior to him in the past when he was still alive, demonstrating once more the effect of survivor’s guilt even on those who did not have a first-hand experience to the catastrophe. The initial purpose to publish Maus had been to alleviate these feelings of survivor’s guilt towards his father, but consequently, the publication of the graphic novel seemed to have only made Art feel worse regarding his father and his past. Art says this before his appointment with Pavel, “Sometimes I just don’t feel like a functioning adult. I can’t believe I’m going to be a father in a couple of months. My father’s ghost still hangs over me” (Spiegelman 43). Alongside to these lines, Art is seen to depict himself as a young mouse despite a huge success to the publication of Maus: My Father Bleeds History, signifying that in order for him to fully become the independent adult he strives to be, he has to come to terms with his relationship with his deceased father and live through the guilt within him.
The reality of survivors being greatly affected by the traumatic experience of the Holocaust can also lead to the possibility of those same people accusing one another for their survival or not helping another individual surviving. This was most prevalent through what Artie says to his father once he learned that Vladek had disposed of Anja’s possessions, “‘Did you ever read any of them?… Can you even remember what she wrote?… God damn you! You—you murderer! How the hell could you do such a thing?’” (Spiegelman 159).
Art’s anger at Vladek’s destruction of Anja’s diaries can be due to his father not discussing the decision with him, but also by some sense that Vladek contributed to Anja’s death by not being as sensitive and responsive to her needs. This obviously is not the case, as we see throughout both books that Vladek looks out for Anja’s best interest and values her more than a lot of his valuables and possessions. However, Artie’s care for his family also affected him, forcing him to unconsciously blame his mother’s death on his father for surviving, and labeling him as a murderer. Ironically, Artie also blames his mother for her suicide through his work “Prisoner on Hell Planet” as well. He writes, “‘Congratulations!… You’ve committed the perfect crime… You put me here… shorted all my circuits… cut my nerve endings… and crossed out my wires!… You murdered me, Mommy, and you left me here to take the rap!!!’” (Spiegelman 103).
In his graphic novel, Art illustrates himself as an antagonist in jail for the killing of his mother and having a contribution to her suicide. But in these last few lines, he criticizes and accuses his mother for murdering him and leaving him in prison in order to take the blame for essentially himself. This can be analyzed throughout various lenses: For one, Art can essentially be blaming his mother regarding her own suicide, lashing out at her and being unable to forgive her for taking her own life. Though the traumatic events of the Holocaust had an effect on the relationships within his family, Art may have been close to his mother and so was unable to accept her suicidal death. On the other hand, Art can also be interpreted to feeling guilty over his mother’s death as well, stating that his inability to help her is essentially a form of him killing himself—as seen in “Prisoner on Hell Planet”.
Art Spiegelman’s feelings of survivor’s guilt not only greatly affected his physical habits and behavior, but also contributed immensely to his mental stability and why he feels distant to his parents, especially his father. Kolar writes in his paper, “Throughout the whole work, Art’s depression arises from his feelings of incompetence, which only intensifies his feeling of guilt. He is convinced that he is nothing more than an imperfect surrogate of his brother Richieu who was killed during the war. Although he could never have met him personally because Art was born after the war, he knows he will never emerge from his brother’s shadow. Such a traumatizing impact of a killed sibling on somebody born after his or her death is not exceptional” (Kolar 231).
As seen in Book II, Art calls his brother as his “ghost brother” (Spiegelman 15), and is certainly troubled by the remnants and memories of Richieu. As a “replacement child”, Art sometimes feels inferior to his dead sibling, and strongly begins to question his own identity. Additionally, similar to the guilt he feels towards both of his parents, there are times when Art experiences survivor’s guilt when the topic of his brother is involved. He feels guilty for being unable to experience the traumatic experience that everyone else in his family had, leading to the various impacts on his physiological behavior as well as him psychological mentality.
In Art Spiegelman’s Maus: My Father Bleeds History and. Maus: And Here My Trouble Began, Spiegelman’s objective to focus on post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt throughout the novel allowed the audience to experience how both conditions impacted individuals who survived through the Holocaust, and even their children who may not have had the same experience. The idea of survivor’s guilt within this graphic novel is the result of how the Holocaust relates to both Vladek and Art. Maus centers around this concept of the past and present, and the effects of past occurrences on the lives of those who did not have any first-hand experiences with them at all. In Art’s and Vladek’s case, this concept is displayed as guilt for surviving the Holocaust, and also unable to relate to the other one’s past.
