MAUS

This paper is unusually usual among papers presented for this class. However, it is full of potent ideas and powerful stories within stories. At various points during this work, you will have the opportunity to write to me to express your opinion, positive or negative, and to link to sites on the web that I feel enhance my thoughts and ideas.

Try to think of a country that was considered the most civilized in Europe at the time. Think of a place that seemed perfect. Picture indescribably beautiful landscapes. Now picture a leader so charismatic and seemingly wise, that everyone seems to want to obey his every command. Now imagine that if, by an "accident of birth" you were condemned by your country, by your continent, from this apparent perfection, simply because you feel that God is a touch different than others do, or maybe even because your family feels this way. Time and time again, people have written volumes upon volumes about the tragedies of the Holocaust. As Art Spiegelman says in his book, MAUS, ". . . look at how many books have been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed. Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust." (page 45 Volume II) This shows how mundane the topic of the Holocaust has become, when it is such a powerful and poignant topic. The topic that I would like to address is surviving, living on, what happens next.

People fail to recognize that the survivors of the Holocaust survived, and live on. MAUS explores not only a survivor's history in Auschwitz, but his life after, how he dealt with surviving. This paper explores not only the dread of the Holocaust, but the dread of surviving and living the rest of a life you never thought you would have.

VLADEK

SAINTHOOD

Art Spiegelman taped hundreds of hours of his father Vladek's account of his time at Auschwitz concentration camp and the before and after of it all. This is not your typical Holocaust sermon, which is one thing which I desperately tried to avoid throughout this paper. Vladek's story is not a reverent, bitter one, but a matter-of-fact, completely frank portrayal of a life constantly in struggle, fighting to save himself from a pain worse than death: the pain of losing the will to live. Vladek is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a saint because he survived. He was a miser, an annoyance, a lonely old man.  This is the reason that this book is so incredibly memorable; we see a vision of the Holocaust, without feeling the guilt that follows hearing a tragedy. We see that Vladek sacrificed a lot of himself and others to be where he is, but he is not looking for sympathy or apology. The first volume of MAUS is called, "My Father Bleeds History." However, I think the bleeding comes not from talking about the Holocaust, but Art bleeding from listening.

Vladek shares with us his whole life, and yet shows no sign of bitterness or hate, but instead tells a straight story, factual and objective. His accounts of Auschwitz show the reader a side of the imprisoned Jew that few have seen. Not a righteous Jew, not a preaching Jew, not a dying Jew, but a strong-willed Jew, willing to find a way not only to live but to live a better life. The Nazis burned Vladek's entire family, but he did what he could to save himself and the one that he loved. A poignant part of the tale of MAUS for me was the end of Volume I. Art has been imploring Vladek to let him see his mother's diary from the war and after. But Vladek has thrown them away, burned them along with the painful memories of Anja(Art's mother). Art walks away from Vladek's house thinking, "Murderer...." But if Vladek had kept those diaries, he would have perpetuated the pity and pain he had inside of him. He would have remained a victim of the Holocaust; instead he is a survivor, who lives on.

This pushing aside of painful memories is a sort of meditation for Vladek. It is his way of dealing with the pain so that it looks as if he has no pain at all. The way Vladek speaks of the Holocaust resembles a teacher explaining the multiplication tables: simple and matter-of-fact. It is almost as if he never went through it at all, but is just an outside observer. This is apparent in a scene in MAUS, Volume II when Vladek finds no harm in exterminating a fly with pesticide, when he knows, unconsciously or consciously I don't know, that pesticide gas, Zyclon B, was what killed people in Auschwitz, how his family was probably killed. And yet he thinks nothing of exterminating a bug like that without hesitation. One a much smaller scale, he was on the other side of the coin. Another situation was also in the second volume, when Art, his wife, and Vladek were driving home from the supermarket. Art's wife, Francoise, decided to pick up a hitchiker, who happened to be black. Vladek lost it, claiming that all colored people steal, and making all sorts of other generalizations. How can one discriminate in that fashion when that is what one lived through for years of his life?

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TRADITIONS

The whole theme of MAUS is directly related to the title of this class, American Literary Traditions, because it demonstrates to the reader examples of typical American things, Literary aspects, and Traditional aspects.

AMERICAN

America has always been a country of new opportunity, a chance for those who were oppressed to rise above and find a good life. However, it has also been a country of struggle within itself. Those who succeed are those who have struggled. So i think that Vladek's story is purely American in that he struggled to survive and live to see a brighter day, but did not give up himself in the process. America is all about making your way up in life. Capitalism is the basis of Vladek's struggle. he did everything he could to get ahead, even if that meant sometimes watching your friends perish. Vladek's knowledge of handiwork helped him move up in the eyes of the Capos in Auschwitz, as did his English skills. He lived a relatively good life in the camps, compared to those who were not as skilled as Vladek. That is what America is all about, surviving, living, moving up, and living the best life that you can possibly live, under any circumstances.

LITERARY

Vladek's story, and more importantly, Art's story are an exceptional example of literature. I believe that literature is expression and mediation translated into a language that everyone understands and can empathize with. MAUS shares pieces of the lives of Art, Vladek, and,most importantly, of Art and Vladek's lives. We can feel Vladek's pain from experiencing this genocide, we can feel his anguish in ing what he went through, missing Anja, and living this American life. We can also feel Art's pain from hearing about his father's past life, his frustration in dealing with his father and his set ways, his anger that he cannot duly represent his mother in his works. And then there is the pain that both Art and Vladek feel together. The pain that Richieu did not grow up with Art, the guilt that Vladek survived while others perished, the pain that Anja is gone, and the pain that they knew she was going through. I think that the expression of these feelings is an example of literature that I will never forget. it not only made you sympathize, but it made you feel as if you yourself, as a reader, experienced all that Art and Vladek and everyone involved felt. This is an example of literature.

TRADITIONS

A tradition is something that people wish to preserve, a memory or thought that people never want to forget, so they make sure that it is commemorated somehow. The memory of the Holocaust is a tradition in some respects. The survivors of the Holocaust never want anyone to forget that it ever happened. Vladek's survival and that of others made this tradition possible. The traditions that we normally think of in America may be less morbid, but Vladek and others have kept the tradition of their faith alive through it all. The Jewish tradition Vladek maintained and never let go. Even through Auschwitz, Vladek believed that he would live to see a bright future. And that future sprung from his faith and belief in the Jewish tradition.

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The Holocaust, in general, is a reminder of the many struggles that people have endured throughout the years. MAUS was a good reading experience for me, in that it showed me a story of struggle against something that was too horrible, maybe too frightening to put into words. This reminded me of most of the books in this course. Beloved was the first book that came to mind, as it was the novel that struck me as a novel whose subject was ever unspeakable. That same theme is reflected in MAUS, as MAUS's main and underlying themes, such as (obviously) the trials of surviving Auschwitz, the trials of living with a survivor, or a trying to cope with an act or acts that, in normal circumstances, would be unthinkable, let alone unspeakable. Sethe is forced to make a decision that would haunt her forever: to kill a life which had grown inside of her, to end a life that had not had a chance to begin, because it was what she had to do. Vladek's sister did the same thing in MAUS. She killed herself and three children to save them from a pain that death could not compare with, and a life that would offer them no hope, only suffering and pain.

The Holocaust is all about speaking that unspeakable thing that happens in our lives. For Vladek, that thing was the death suicide of his wife, the struggle to stay alive while your family and friends die around you feet, the guilt of having survived. Sethe's pain is almost identical. She can never get Beloved to leave her, never get her to tell her that what she did was alright. "Her greatest fear was that Beloved might leave. . . " And that fear was because the unspeakable would never have been spoken had Beloved left before her time. Art was Vladek's Beloved. Art was the reminder of Richieu, of Anja, of everything that he loved in the world. Art made him speak that unspeakable thing, just as Beloved made Sethe speak it, as well.

I read the majority of the essays written about Beloved from those in our class, and the one that I identified with the most is Number 11, about memories and time. Memories do take on a life of their own, as with Sethe and Vladek and Art. For Sethe, Beloved became a permanent part of her life, almost the same kind of "part" that Denver was. On the same note, Vladek's past became a permanent part of his life, and Art and Richieu almost became one. They were the lost and found in Vladek's life. The memory became the life. But when the unspeakable is spoken, that life changes drastically. With Sethe, the life that she had before telling anyone what she had done was sheltered, cold, and dark, with no one but Denver to keep her company. With Vladek, there is no one to love, no reason to love anything until his spoken his story and before that which is unspeakable is spoken.

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