Response essay on the book MAUS by Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman has used many layers of himself in recording his graphic novels Maus I and Maus II so that I can be in a position of portraying various layers of emotions he does experience as he tells this story. It is through such layers that readers are capable of seeing how it was difficult for Spiegelman to be able to reconstruct a reality considered worse as compared to his “darkest dreams” (Maus II 16). Some of the examples that Art worry about the way he’s portraying his father are;

ü The reality of his father. Here Spiegelman uses his character in openly discussing the inadequacy he was feeling when writing something he had never wished to endure.

ü Spiegelman is also seen struggling to tell about his father’s in a proper way due to the strained relationship between them. Though history shapes the father, Spiegelman is not at ease to characterize his father as a stereotypical Jew due to the fact that father has many of such characteristics.

ü The strained relationship, continuous competitions well as inadequacy feelings also builds up between Spiegelman and his father. This is observed when Vladek informs Artie that he did burn Anja’s diaries and Artie refers to him as a murderer. This situation is a good example of how the current relationship between Spiegelman and his father dampens.

As a historian, in regards to the strained relationship between Spiegelman and his father, Spiegelman should have the wisdom and maturity of accepting that a writer has responsibility for past and current events. The Art’s technique to thread current events within past is serving as a perfect way to subtly hint concerning the fact that evil rooted from Holocaust should never be resolved using physical emancipation of the body. The understanding assists me to view trivialized topics in new angles. For example, Maus should not be about understanding what Holocaust did go through, or the problems between father and son, however, it should be about how a reader needs to deal with terms of our past and present events.