Passing on the Trauma

Living through a traumatic experience affects people differently and Maus really demonstrates that with the differences in personalities of Valdek juxtaposed to other survivors like Mala or their neighbors. I think that it is very understandable that an atrocity that has been lived through could very well alter the personality of a person. Unfortunately for Art, Vladek’s shift in personality became a burden upon his life and negatively affected his childhood into his adult years. A parent transfers their traumatic life experiences onto their children through their daily interactions. In many cases, the parent is only trying to teach their child how to survive, should their child ever find himself in a traumatic experience similar to what the parent went through. In Art’s case, whenever a sign of weakness was shown, like when he cried as a child because his friends skated off without him, Vladek reproached him. That would have been hard on any child. Art reveals in his therapy sessions that his father made him feel that nothing he did was ever good enough. This was probably because Vladek had to give his all just to stay alive, and Art was not in this same dire situation. I think that Vladek was trying to toughen up his son and not realized that he was being hurtful. Knowing that his father has survived one of history’s most horrific events plays a role on the trauma that gets passed down to Art. Art has survivor’s guilt and this affects his childhood. He has sibling rivalry with his dead and unknown brother. The traumatic loss of Richieu tailored how Vladek and Anja raised and reacted to Art. He could never live up to the imagined image of what Richieu could have been.