Maus 2 Reaction Paper

Leah Mancuso
1/11/12

How would you evaluate...how the Holocaust affected Artie and Vladek’s lives together? While Vladek was the one who had to physically go through the Holocaust, it’s apparent that it had strong effects on even Artie as he grew up. It’s debatable who felt the effects worse, however. Some could argue that Vladek had to actually go through the horrors of the POW and concentration camps, while Art just had to hear about it. On the other hand, just hearing about it could be as bad or even worse for a child growing up. Two ways we can evaluate how it had an effect on their lives is in Art’s writing and Art and Vladek’s relationship and personalities.
You can see a strong connection with growing up as a “child of the Holocaust” and the way Art writes and draws. His drawings, black and white cartoons of mice, have often dark and graphic undertones. This is most prominent in Maus 2, Chapter 2, where it starts off with Artie undergoing the weight of the media and it’s pressures. The way he draws himself shrinking and shrinking, and then eventually to himself on a pile of dead bodies, really shows the dark side of his mind. The fact that he had to endure his parent’s pain and suffering over the Holocaust throughout his whole life, really shows in his dark writings and the way he so accurately represented succumbing to pressure. The effects of the Holocaust on Artie are obvious in this sense.
Another way you can see how the Holocaust affected their lives together was in their relationship and personalities in the last years of Vladek’s life. Throughout the books, the story switches from a “present-day” Vladek and Artie to Vladek telling Artie the stories of the Holocaust. In the parts where you can see Vladek and Art together, their relationship shows. They bicker a lot and over almost everything. Vladek’s personality is also a big indictor of how the Holocaust affected him overall because he is rather grumpy, needy, and articulate. He is constantly trying to “run away”, in a way, and is very particular about quantity. These qualities show how experiences in the Holocaust remained in Vladek throughout his life. Art gets easily frustrated with Vladek, which also shows a connection to growing up under the influence of Holocaust survivors. He talks about living under Richieu’s shadow, which can show why he, in Maus 2, finds himself crumbling under all of the pressure. All of these traits that Vladek and Art carry in their lives and their relationship show a vivid connection between the Holocaust and it’s later effects.
After evaluating different ways the Holocaust and it’s horrible events has a connection to the way Vladek and Art’s relationship was, you can see that it is a good argument for who “had it worse”. The answer is really, it’s hard to tell, because they both went through very different situations, but in the end, they were essentially the same.