Towe 1

Kristen Towe

Literature

Mrs.Gray

9 May 2018

Maus Literature Analysis

With Anja, Vladek was incredibly more loving while he always finds something wrong

with Mala. Vladek did everything he could to make Anja happy, showing us how much he

worked to keep their relationship steady considering the circumstances they were put through.

Anja’s death left a complicated situation in which there was no divorce or disagreement to stay

together, at least in that sense he could get over her comfortably knowing she didn’t feel the

same about him anymore. Sadly the marriage ended in a cruel surprise with no note, a note to

have the answers Vladek has been asking in his head for years after her death. Vladek even

admits he is “thinking always about her”(p106) before we find out he still has pictures of her all

over his desk. With no goodbyes it’s easy to say Vladek never did let go of Anja, how could he?

Vladek had been through so much with Anja whom he expressed love for from the start, and was

expected to somehow move on from something so valuable. There is so much tarnish in his

marriage with Mala since his feelings for Anja is so much to compare up to, especially how Mala

wouldn't make him happy despite ever meeting Anja. The heated relationship with Mala resulted

from anguish from the war and Anja’s heartbreaking death.

At that time Jews had to do what it took to survive and keep their family’s safe, in that

case it was better to make the illusion of hating on their own people by being associated Jewish

police and their behaviors. Humans are naturally and understandably selfish in order to survive,
 Towe 2

and that's exactly the position they were put into. They need to be cruel to their own kind in

order for their lives to be spared from the dreadful torture they knowingly witnessed. Vladek said

the Jews were ”just like the Germans”(p108), connecting their brutal behavior no different from

the ones who made their life's a living misery. That brutality was fueled by the hope they

wouldn’t one day be in their dire circumstance. Although the Jewish police actions shocked Art,

there is still no denying they did that to their own people for no apparent reason.

The purpose Art had writing this graphic novel was the matter of the guilt felt growing up

after the war his parents had experienced. Telling their intriguing story for people to understand

along with himself, portraying it through how he knows best, art. Feeling guilty was

understandable, but he had doubts thinking he was “inadequate”(p176) attempting to piece

together a reality that wouldn’t even be in his “darkest dreams”(p176). These doubts showed us

how he had the luxury to not go through what his parents did, because of that he feels that lack of

involvement. Yet ironically his inadequacy pushed him to construct something that would create

an assimilation for himself and the readers.