Maus II Essay

Jose Lopez
Per.4
“Maus II”

In the Story “Maus II: and here my troubles began” by Art Spiegelman a young mouse named Art who is writing a book on his father’s horrific experience as a Jew in wartime Poland. Such experiences have caused this poor man, Vladek, to live a dreadful and irritating life. His past torturing experiences have blended into his current life and have molded themselves into the way he lives his life. It becomes clear that Vladek’s horrible experiences have kept him on a fixed path on which he only continues to hurt himself and maintain a torturing relationship with his son.
Vladek’s past has become his present through the way in which he acts, by doing so he only continues to hurt himself and those that care for him. For example, when Art is at his house Vladek says, “The salt here, it’s half full, and she [Mala] opened anyway a new one!” (spiegelman 19). Later on when Art begins to smoke he tries to use his father’s matches his father says, “Please don’t use from me my wooden matches. I don’t have left so many, and already to make coffee you used one” (spiegelman 20). Moreover, when Art talks to Vladek’s neighbors they talk to him about Mala and his father saying, “She had to erase a hairbrush from the bill because he wouldn’t pay for her personal items” ( Spiegelman 21). It becomes evident that Vladeks is letting his old life take hold of the current life he lives. He acts as a frugal, rude, and selfish person because those are the characteristics that kept him alive and he was faced to use while he was in the internment camps. Sadly, these characteristics that have been embedded in him are not removable, because they shape who he is and what he lives for, and by doing so he only brings to himself the hurtful memories and actions he had to live through. In addition, he is also only contributing to the fact that his close ones are becoming in a way his (cat) enemies. They don’t wish to help him because he doesn’t change, and they wish to emotionally rid themselves of his hostile presence. For example, when Art arrives at his father’s house, his father says to him, “you see how it is now, Artie. She took my money and she ran away” ( Spiegelman 17). It is evident that Vladek has only disturbed those who care for him to the point that they cannot handle his selfish personality. Even though that is the only way he knows how to live his life, he fails to realize that just as he was tortured by the life he led in his past, he is torturing the ones he now shares his life with by enacting the same personality. Hence, Vladek only creates a hurtful atmosphere for himself through his past, because he is living his past in the present and his is engulfing those in his present with the behavior of his past.
On the other hand in the book the author also makes a distinguished relationship between the Nazi’s and the Jews that helps to encourage the hostile relationship between father and son. For example when Art asks his girlfriend Francoise how he should draw her in his book she says, “A mouse of course” (Spiegelman 11). Such depiction by the author pushes the reader to make a mental picture in his head about the way Jews were depicted during this time of torture. By introducing the Jews as Mice they become the lowest of the lowest, he compares them to filthy animals of which people are not very fond of. By doing so the author is able to create a connotation between Jews and all these meager characteristics of mice. In this way the readers are in a way psychologically pressured into seeing these mice as weak, different creatures. Moreover, later on in the story the author further establishes the connotation he wishes to present to the reader as he presents the Nazi’s as vicious emotionless cats. Hence, the reader is compelled to make the connection that these ruthless cats are able to prey on the little weak mice. The author successfully makes a hostile relationship between these two animals. Cats prey on mice, and by depicting his characters as such the author is able to make the readers sense a bad connection between the two animals. This bad connection only helps show the hostility between two such groups, this powerful symbolism creates a tone of hostile relationships which later ties in to the relationship between father and son.
Just as the author has shown the bad relationship between mice and cats, he is able to make evident a torturing relationship between Art and Vladek. For example when Art is about to leave his father’s house, his father insists he take an almost empty box of cereal, but Art says, “Look, we don’t want any ok? Just forget it”, then his father insist that he can’t just throw it away so art says, “Then just save the damn special k in case Hitler ever comes back” (Spiegelman 78). Moreover, the difficult relationship between the two is further seen when Art tries to help his father prepare his bank papers and his father claims, “Acch, Artie. Again you made the wrong addition” and after Artie insist that they did the addition right his father says, “Always you’re so lazy! Every job we should make so as to do it the right way” ( Spiegelman 23). Furthermore, the lack of a meaningful relationship between the two is seen when Vladek calls Art saying he had a heart attack, but At later tells Francoise, “ he didn’t even have a heart attack… he just wanted to be sure I’d call him back” ( Spiegelman 13). Therefore through such instances it becomes clear that Vladek and his son hold a very irritable and annoying relationship between themselves. It almost seems as if Vladek has turned into the “cat” wanting to impose his ways on his son, while he son, the “mouse” literally, is trying to elude the influence of his father way of being. It is clear that both their personalities clash and such happens because Art cannot stand the way his father has recreated his past and made it the way he is now. Art’s touch with modern life have made him lead his life in one way, while his father continues to lead a life that is filled with frugality and remorse, it is inevitable that these two very different ways of life clash into each other. The two have become extremely distant due to their way of life, and it has come to the point that they cannot even call each other without being bothered by the other. Vladek’s lies just to get his son to call him back, and this solely shows the fact that it is almost impossible for them to have a connection whether it is emotional one or a physical one. Years of pain and distress have been embroidered in Vladek’s life, and such characteristics find a way fix themselves on the relationship between his son and him.
Overall, Maus II is successful in showing how dreadful past experiences can have ever lasting effects on those victims. Such effects can lead the victim on a life of constant bitterness, and can even cause the victim to lose those that are closest to him. Art Spiegelman is successful in capturing such consequences throughout his story, and he is able to make clear to the reader the power that rest in such horrifying experiences.