Essay Example on the Holocaust's Lasting Legacy: Maus and Beyond

The effect caused by the holocaust still resides in the feelings of the historians, survivors of the holocaust, and the kids borne of the survivors of the holocaust. There is a lot of literature contextualizing and explaining the details of the tragedies. These are a massive library of tales and even memoirs written by different people after the holocaust. Art Spiegelman, who was affected indirectly by the Holocaust wrote Maus with the aim of reconciling the disturbing experience he suffered. He finds comforts of that through his art particularly the drawings in the Maus, which an engraving narrative of what his father went through in Auschwitz. Some people used photographs at the time of the holocaust to illustrate how hard it is to record the memory of the holocaust effect accurately.

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Spiegelman provides a particular angle in the book, which is that of a child borne to a holocaust survivor. The passing of trauma from the Holocaust is a process witnessed by psychologists for long after the world war II. The kids whose parents were imprisoned, mainly the Jews, are not to exhibit marching psychological responses to those of their parents, meaning that the trauma is inherited, and the memory is expressed in photographs, illustrations, and even stories.

A panel from page 41 of Maus shows Artie sitting in distress at his drawing table. The panel is a summary of the distressing situation that Spiegelman resides in a while constructing Maus. In the illustration, Artie is in a mouse mask while on his drawing table. Around him lays a pile of dead mouse bodies on the floor, and the flies circumnavigate around the bodies. While looking through the windows, there is a watchtower outside the corners of the camp. In this illustration of Maus, Artie has taken himself to Auschwitz mentally. The panel occupies almost half a page to indicate the huge amount of trauma that Artie must come to terms with. Shadow is used to highlight the eye of the man behind the mask. In the panel, Spiegelman has drawn a heap of bodies placed carelessly as it would have been in the camp during the holocaust. In that illustration, Artie reports that he was looking for his parents in their camp location, and many would identify with that situation being described.

Spiegelman employs text boxes to juggle the present and the past to show Artie's chain of thoughts in his memories and knowledge of the situation. The merging of the present and the past describes memory because memories are past experiences put in the context of the present. Spiegelman uses the text box instead of caption boxes to show the memories of Artie. Even though he did not see the heap of bodies or a watchtower, the panel depicts a reality in which he is taken nto his father's memories, a fact he did not choose, but he is supposed to make peace with. The means for this kind of transportation is comics. Spiegelman never witnessed Auschwitz but is able to identify with the scenario using drawing to be able to experience his father's memories.

Through drawing attention to the creation of Maus, Spiegelman shows the persistence of the holocaust across many generations. He explains the power that lies in memories using comics. It is evident that memory cannot be confined to paragraphs alone but also involves images and dialogue. In Vladek's memory, the matter is distressing, and Artie can identify with that looking at his posture. He aims to represent a view of the most horrible event in the history of mankind. Artie exclaims, "it's so presumptuous of me....How am I supposed to make sense out of Auschwitz?...Of the Holocaust?" (Spiegelman 14). Coming to terms with the Holocaust is quite hard and may not be accomplished. Artie's work does not necessarily mean that the problems resulting from the Holocaust will be solved but aims at reconciling with the trauma caused.

Vladek in Maus remembers how troops moved across Europe taking images of crimes against humanity for legal purposes, allegedly. The pictures were showing piles of bodies in crematoriums. Spiegelman did not experience that in person but illustrates it in Maus, showing what his father went through, which means the memories of the holocaust were passed down generations. He expresses comically, in second hand, the most significant human horror ever experienced through a physical memoir representation of his father. This is a way of coming to terms with the effects of the Holocaust. As much as the images lacked the details to show the exact extent of the holocaust, as people would love to get the experience, Spiegelman does not pretend that his art was present at the time of the holocaust. His work is only aimed at telling his father's story of the experiences of the Holocaust, and through that, he may be able to come to reconcile with the aftermath of the event.

Conclusion

In the comic Maus, the readers are subjected to the author's obsession with the Holocaust. He identifies how the holocaust has continuously affected his life. The obsession is rooted in the fact that he was not part of the trauma that his parents went through and that makes him feel guilty. The comic is set as two narrations, one showing the experiences of Vladek, who was the father to Spiegelman, in the pre-war era, and the other part narrates his experiences in the Holocaust as interviewed by his son. The comic has depicted the picture of what the Holocaust was like and the effect it had and how that effect has been passed down generations.

Works cited

Spiegelman, Art. Maus. Vol. 1. 1986.