Trauma

The traumas of the Holocaust are passed down from father to son through their interactions.  Art is concerned and bothered by his father’s war stories.  He is affected deeply, as anyone should be.  Vladek tells his son these stories in hopes to enlighten him, and to open his understanding of what Jews had to go through during the Holocaust.  Because of the stories, Art experiences certain feelings of distress and guilt, both of which are hard for him to get rid of.  Art’s outlook on certain people and places are forever changed because of his father’s detailed stories. 

The graphic novel is such an effective way to tell this tale because through the pictures, the reader is able to get better insight into what is actually occurring.  From the art, the reader can see important details like facial expressions, or how the background of the scene appeared to be.  Facial expressions in the story are important because they show how distressed, angered and somber some of the characters were.  Each character’s emotions can be expressed in one picture. This is so effective because normally each character’s emotions or actions must be described by separate sentences. Sometimes, as showed in Maus, it is easy to portray how an action occurs through a picture rather than through words.