Maus and the Nature of Regret

 (I use ‘Spiegelman’ when referring to the author, and ‘Art’ when referring to his depiction in the book)

What is Maus?

              In Maus by Art Spiegelman, he shows his father, Vladek’s experience in the Concentration camps in World War Two. It’s in the form of a visual novel, which allows for more visual metaphors and other things like that. But if you’re reading this, you probably already know this, so let’s get into it.

 

Context

              In the beginning of chapter 2 of volume 2, there’s this small intermission where Art talks about how his father died before he wrote this part and what happened in his life since the release of Volume 1. He then has an exchange with his therapist where he talks about his kind of survivor’s guilt, wondering if he should finish the book at all. Throughout this whole section, Spiegelman portrays himself at different ages depending on how he’s feeling. For Example, He looks like a child throughout most of the Therapist section because he’s feeling vulnerable but returns to full size at the end because he is ultimately a little better because of it. Then comes the part I want to talk about.

 

The Part That I Want to talk about

The next four panels (Page 47) are really what caught my attention while I was reading. Basically, as Art sits down to listen to recordings of him and his father, He gets smaller in the present (again, representing how he feels) and breathes out a sigh as his voice becomes bigger on the tape recorder. This really captures this sense of regret for me, as it shows how Art regrets never fixing his father and his relationship before his father died.  This also touches on the theme of trauma, as Art sees how he keeps pulling his dad back to the past, sometimes harshly, even when his father is talking about something else, like his wife. Ultimately, it feels like Art prioritized the information he could get from his father more than his father, and this is a sticking point for him. Anyway, that’s what I found interesting about it.