A Second-Generation Survivor’s Tale: Maus’ Self-Reflexive Narrative as Problematizing Representation, Guilt and Survivorship

Alec Leibsohn

Professor Laurie McNeill

English 474

27 March 2014

A Second-Generation Survivor’s Tale: Maus’ Self-Reflexive

Narrative as Problematizing Representation, Guilt and

Survivorship

While the Holocaust is one of the most horrific genocide in

history, it is not one that can or should be forgotten. Its

literary representations are vast and complex in their portrayal,

especially the subject of this essay, Art Spiegelman's Maus. Not

only does the graphic novel archive the horrors of the

concentration and death camps, it also displays the enormous

difficulties of second-generation Holocaust survivors in finding

a way to come to terms with their parent’s trauma. Stephen

Tabachnick’s division of Maus into three narrative layers is a

useful framework for analyzing Maus as a story of the second-

generation of survivors. According to Tabachnick, the first layer

is Vladek’s story of his hiding in the ghetto and survival in

Alec Leibsohn 1

Auschwitz. The second layer focuses on Artie’s1 relationship with

his parents and the effects their Holocaust experience has on his

own life. At this layer, Maus problematizes the image of the

traditional Holocaust survivor to suggest something more complex,

unique to how they are seen through the eyes of the second-

generation. The third and final layer narrates the problem of

Maus’ production, focusing on Spiegelman’s concerns about the

difficulties of representation, authenticity and imagining an

event that he never experienced (as summarized in McGlothlin,

181). For this essay, I will pinpoint how the language of comics

is used to fluidly integrate the 2nd and 3rd layers as defined by

Tabachnick, with an integral focus on the psychological

complexities of second-generation survivors. The comic form plays

a pivotal role in making the synthesis of these three layers come

alive. The physical juxtaposition of frames on the page calls

attention to the basic language of comics as a process of

selection. While all media do some form of selecting and framing,

the comic form makes this process literally exist on each page.

The versatile language of comics allows for a complex portrayal

1 I will refer to Spiegelman’s fictionalized version of himself in Maus as “Artie” (vs. Spiegelman the author and cartoonist).

Alec Leibsohn 2

of these three separate but interconnected Holocaust stories:

Vladek’s story of survival, the effect it has on Artie’s own life

as a second-generation survivor, and the self-aware creation

process depicted in Maus. Through the combination of both image

and text, Maus achieves a self-reflexive and therapeutic

narrative, ultimately allowing the reader to better understand

the psychological complexities of being a second-generation

survivor.

In a psychohistorical study published by Robert M. Prince,

twenty children of survivors were interviewed in-depth about

their parents‘ and their own experiences relating to the

Holocaust. According to Prince, these children of survivors were

acutely aware of their parents‘ survivorship from an early age.

Even without a vivid memory of their first experiences of their

parents‘ stories, they state that they had always known of their

parents‘ Holocaust legacy. Prince writes, “Subjects indicated

that their present motivation to ask their parents questions

involved a desire to understand better their own identity through

understanding the forces that had affected their parents and,

indirectly, themselves” (45). As a result of being strongly

Alec Leibsohn 3

effected by its memory, many members the second-generation

construct their identity in relation to the Holocaust, exploring

it through artistic outlets, attempting to fill and restore the

gaps created by this complex void. Marianne Hirsch terms this

process as reflective of “post-memory,” the second-generation’s

response to the trauma they have inherited through their parents.

Hirsch argues that “post-memory is a powerful form of memory

precisely because its connection to its object or source is

mediated not through recollection, but through representation,

projection, and creation” (8). James E. Young contributes to

Hirsch’s definition of post-memory, adding that since the

majority of children of survivors were born after the Holocaust,

they seek to represent the actual process of transmission when

recording their parent’s narratives, as well as their own process

of understanding these events. Concerned less with accuracy and

historical truth, “post memorial writing employs narrative to

acknowledge the impossibility of fully grasping what happened,

even as it ventures to construct a story about the Holocaust”

(670). The work of the second-generation thus illustrates a

process of dual and removed memory: “instead of trying to

Alec Leibsohn 4

remember events, they recall their relationship to the memory of

events...It becomes memory of a witness’s memory” (670).

According to both Prince’s observations and Young’s definition of

post-memory, post-memorial work performs a dual role by recording

the personal and historical trauma caused by the Holocaust, and

by enabling the rehabilitation process of the second-generation

to its unlived past through this work.

Through the complexities of the comic form, Spiegelman is

able to archive his “memory of a witness’s memory” in a self-

reflexive and therapeutic way by incorporating the tense

relationship with his parents - the 2nd narrative layer as

defined by Tabachnick. Vladek’s survival is never sentimentalized

nor is the tension between father and son ever unacknowledged. A

pivotal moment of this tension comes when Artie learns that

Vladek accidentally read his underground comic "Prisoner on the

Hell Planet" in which another fictionalized version of

Spiegelman, this time in human form, addresses his feelings of

guilt and anger toward his parents. In the comic, he blames his

mother for “killing him” with her suicide and resents his father

for his religious traditions. He depicts Vladek as weak and

Alec Leibsohn 5

pitiful. Art, instead of praying for his mother in Hebrew,

"recite[s] to [her] from the Tibetan Book of the Dead" (I, 102).

Artie’s is unable to deal with his feelings and does not know how

to respond to his parents and their complicated personalities as

a result of the concentration camps, at least during the time

period portrayed in “Prisoner of the hell Planet” and at this

point in the narrative of Maus.

“Prisoner of the Hell Planet” is an excellent example of how

the comic form allows the reader to see Holocaust survivors

through the eyes of Artie, a second-generation survivor. As

readers, we witness Artie reading an existing comic that was

released in 1973, in Short Order Comix #1, before the creation of

Maus. Further distorting chronology, the actual events of the

comic take place in 1968. The meta aspect of this time-space

distortion comes to fruition when the reader notices Artie’s

thumb at the bottom-left of the page, mirroring the reader’s own

thumb holding the physical novel in our reality (I, 100). This

convoluted narrative-within-a-narrative is best achieved through

the comic form and calls the reader’s attention to the process of

post-memory generation. Like the function of the real photographs

Alec Leibsohn 6

included in Maus, “Prisoner of the Hell Planet” directly calls

attention to the creative process of merging history, reality and

fiction. “Prisoner of the Hell Planet” also raises the question

of Anja’s representation in Maus. This is the only time we as

readers are able to view Anja after the events of the Holocaust.

At the end of the first book, the last frame is Artie walking

away calling his father a "murderer" for destroying Anja's

diaries (I, 159). For Artie, Anja’s diaries were the only

possible source for her side of the story. In destroying these

documents, Vladek in turn destroys the ability for her memory to

be properly represented in Maus. Thus, Anja is only represented

through Artie’s memory – like “Prisoners of the Hell Planet” –

and Vladek’s recollection of the past. Much like the earlier

scene in which he calls his mother a murderer, Artie at this

point in his past is unable to understand and handle the effects

the Holocaust had on Vladek and what may have compelled him to

destroy the diaries. Through Anja’s representation and the effect

her suicide has on Artie, Maus not only implies that the image of

the forever hopeful and optimistic “survivor” is wrong, but also

Alec Leibsohn 7

suggests that such a history can have psychologically negative

effects on the identity of the parent and child.

Bleeding between Tabachnick’s 2nd and 3rd narrative layer,

Spiegelman also problematizes Artie and Vladek’s relationship by

choosing to include the misgivings he has towards his father’s

stingy and obsessive behavior. Artie attributes this as a by-

product of surviving the concentration camps: “I always thought

the war made him that way” (I, 131). Artie does not understand

why Vladek behaves the way he does because he has not suffered

the way Vladek has. Artie feels that if he had, that he would be

able to understand. A large aspect of the 3rd narrative layer of

Maus takes the form of what Rakoff, Sigal and Epstein defined in

their 1966 study as “children-of-Holocaust-survivors syndrome”; a

phrase derived from the psychological process of “survivor’s

guilt” suffered by the 1st generation (as summarized in Prince,

42). First-generation survivors who struggle with survivor’s

guilt ask themselves, “Why did I survive, while others died?” and

“Did I really deserve to live?” Children-of-Holocaust-survivors

syndrome has been passed on to the second-generation as a

survivor’s guilt where the child is forced to take on the burden

Alec Leibsohn 8

of having to not only fulfill their own developmental needs, but

they must compensate for the unrealistic expectations of their

parents due to their sense of worthlessness that has formed due

to their lack of survival experience (Prince 43). Artie’s

question would sound more like “Why do I deserve to live if I

haven’t suffered through the Holocaust like my parents?” Artie

calls attention to these emotions in the text, choosing to

incorporate his complex feelings of guilt: “Now this is insane,

but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I

could really know what they lived through…I guess it’s some kind

of guilt about having had an easier life than they did” (II, 16).

This quote represents Artie’s inherited feelings of survivor’s

guilt as two-fold; not only does he wish to have lived through

the Holocaust in order to better represent Vladek’s story for his

Maus project, but also as a way to fulfill his parents’ legacy

of survival for himself. While Artie’s current Holocaust

connection is only secondhand, adopted through his connection to

his parents, experiences of his own would solidify this

connection and give reasoning behind his own vicarious sense of

suffering. Artie’s feeling of inadequacy and desire for first-

Alec Leibsohn 9

hand experience is applicable to many second-generation Holocaust

survivors. According to Prince’s work, these children became

victims of the Holocaust who had never been inside the walls of

an extermination or concentration camp. They want to be

victimized “precisely as their parents were, not because they

want to be victims, but because they want to understand familial

history and thereby anchor their own identity” (Prince 43).

Artie’s desires to have suffered and survived because it would

allow him to accurately represent an experience already so

pervasive in his life and simultaneously live up to his parents’

legacy of survival. But Artie realizes that no matter how hard he

wishes he had been at Auschwitz to experience the horrors first-

hand, he is unable to do so. Committing his thoughts and emotions

to a written narrative is the best course of action for him,

especially since it allows him to combine his story with his

father's and its self-aware creation process.

In what Tabachnick defines as the 3rd narrative layer of

Maus, Artie addresses the daunting task of adequate

representation in his portrayal of Vladek’s memory and the

horrors of the concentration camps. In discussing the creation of

Alec Leibsohn 10

Maus II with his wife, Artie admits to feeling “so inadequate

trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest

dreams...and trying to do it as a comic strip...there’s so much

I’ll never be able to understand or visualize” (I, 16).

Spiegelman incorporates his struggle with his own adequacy in

representing the holocaust in a complex sequence where Artie

regresses from a cartoonist to a child wearing a mouse mask. In

the second chapter titled “Auschwitz: Time Flies,” a group of

businessmen and reporters ask Artie intrusive questions about

Maus that he is unable to confidently answer. As the questions

become more pervasive, he literally begins to shrink down smaller

and smaller each panel, eventually taking the form of a crying

child (II, 42). His regression to a small child coupled with the

invasive questioning is another way Spiegelman portrays that he

does not have the ability, nor pretends to have the ability, to

represent the totality of the Holocaust and its deep

complexities. Here, Artie does not see himself as having all the

answers about the Holocaust or having the ability to portray the

Holocaust for all that it was. Through the pictorial element of

Alec Leibsohn 11

the comic form, Artie is able to use metaphor to better convey

his complex feelings during the creation process of Maus.

Young’s comments on post-memory inform the use of image and

metaphor in second-generation Holocaust literature: “‘What

happened at Auschwitz’ is important historically; indeed it is

the substance of Vladek’s narrative; but the implication here is

that the father’s story is important because of its effects on

the son, and not because of ‘what happened at Auschwitz’” (676).

Young acknowledges that memory concerns itself with something

besides historical accuracy. The memory of the Holocaust, in

order to communicate the reality of an unimaginable occurrence,

must employ figures and metaphors that transcend the confining

boundaries of fact. Through the comic form, Spiegelman is able to

manipulate metaphor through image, offering a perspective unique

to the second-generation’s process of post-memory creation.

McGlothlin adds further analysis to the donning of animal masks

as a metaphorical comment on Artie’s self-aware process of post-

memory generation: “Rather than allowing the reader to immerse

[themselves] comfortably in the mouse-and-cat universe, Artie's

wearing of the mask, which from the front looks authentic and

Alec Leibsohn 12

only from the side and back is revealed as a mask with strings

that attach it to a human head.” She goes on to state that this

effectively “ejects the reader from the complacency of the animal

metaphor and points to both its artifice and its effectiveness as

a normalized aesthetic device” (183). Candida Rifkind builds on

McGlothlin by analyzing Artie’s child-like appearance in terms of

representation in comics: “He shrinks so that his outward

appearance matches his internal feelings…Spiegelman highlights

how comics can unite content and form in ways quite different

from those of prose auto/biographies…Spiegelman’s shift to an

aesthetic of smallness in these confessional panels illustrates

the burdens of the collaborative project for the multiple selves

of both father and son” (407). I’d like to add that beyond

disrupting the reader’s comfort in anthropomorphized animals and

Rifkind’s analysis of externalization, the choice to depict Artie

wearing a mouse mask is significant as a metaphor for troubled

identity. Narratively, this scene takes place after the creation

of Maus I as well as after Vladek’s passing, but during the

creation process of Maus II. While Spiegelman the cartoonist is

the human behind the mask, the fictionalized Artie in Maus I

Alec Leibsohn 13

always appears as an anthropomorphized mouse. Thus at this point,

a masked, child version of Artie is metaphorically balancing his

identity as cartoonist and creator with the fictionalized

identity he has created in Maus.

Remaining in this child state, Artie goes to see his

psychologist Pavel, a Czech Jew and concentration camp survivor.

Here, they discuss Artie’s guilt in having professional success

juxtaposed to Vladek’s guilt in having survived the camps.

According to Rifkind’s analysis of this scene, “The psychiatrist

is a symbolic father, helping Artie to work through his

psychological and artistic dilemmas with the very idea as well as

with the real tensions of fatherhood” (407). Extending Rifkind’s

analysis of Pavel as a symbolic father, he is also a stand-in for

Artie’s self-reflexivity; Artie is able to reflect on the root of

his inherited survivor’s guilt and further discuss the

complexities of representing survival. In an instance of deep

self-reflexivity, Artie engages in a question threaded throughout

the entire work: are those who survived the Holocaust

automatically superior to those who died? Pavel denies this

sentiment: “Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the

Alec Leibsohn 14

victims are blamed. But it wasn’t the best people who survived,

nor did the best ones die. It was random!” (II, 45) This

conversation exemplifies Artie’s struggle with just

representation in the creation process of Maus and connects back

to what Tabachnick defines as the 3rd narrative level. Throughout

the novel, Artie doubts his right to negative reactions and

feelings towards Vladek compared to the trauma they faced. Prince

observes: “[Second-generation survivors] saw [the Holocaust] as

affecting their interactions with their parents, which in turn

affected the development of their character. As such, the Second-

generation is left with a deep and resonating inability to

separate their lives from genocide and their parents‘

experiences” (76). According to Prince’s observation in

conversation with Pavel’s response, Artie can and should portray

Vladek as he truly sees him; survival does not exempt him from

his shortcomings, the moral questions of his survival process or

Alec Leibsohn 15

the psychological impact his experience has had on Artie.

This scene culminates s in a self-reflexive moment that

aptly sums up the question of representation Artie has been

struggling with in the creation process of Maus. Pavel poses the

idea that maybe there shouldn’t be anymore Holocaust stories

created because “the victims who died can never tell their side

of the story.” In addition, this line recalls Anja’s (lack of)

representation in Maus, the absence of her side of the story,

another facet Artie has struggled with. Artie, in partial

agreement, quotes Samuel Beckett: “Every word is like an

unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness” (II, 45). The panel Alec Leibsohn 16

that follows is a highly significant instance of self-

reflexivity, only achievable through the language of comics;

there is actual silence. No words exist on or around this panel.

As readers, we are asked to mirror Artie and Pavel’s silent

reflection; is Maus just a stain on silence? The fact that

Spiegelman does not require words to convey this emotion shows

how powerful and evocative imagery can be as a tool of self-

awareness, simply through the omission of text. This panel of

denies the concept described in Beckett’s statement, using image

instead of words to convey powerful meaning. Smoke from Artie’s

cigarette and Pavel’s pipe lingers to remind the reader their

reflection is rooted in the horrors of the Holocaust and those

who can no longer speak for themselves. This panel is a turning

point in Artie’s self-aware and self-reflexive creation process

and fully conveys his struggle with representation. Ultimately,

Art answers his own question after this moment of silent

reflection: “On the other hand, he said it!” In order to for

Beckett to convey his message, he still had to physically speak

those words. In the same way, Artie knows he still has to express

his complex feelings towards his father and the Holocaust. Pavel

Alec Leibsohn 17

offers a solution: “He was right. Maybe you can include it in

your book” (II, 45). Not only does Art follow Pavel’s advice and

include Beckett’s quote, but also the conversation and self-aware

process that led to the inclusion of this quote, and by

extension, this entire spread. Thus, the reader interprets this

scene and Beckett’s quote as commentary on the Artie’s struggle

during Maus’ creation process. Through his conversation with

Pavel, Artie comes to the realization that this self-reflexive

creation process must be included in Maus II in order to avoid

feeling like his work is just a “stain on silence.”

While the complicated questions Artie poses about survival,

representation and guilt are not necessarily given clear answers,

the inclusion of these ideas in the 2nd and 3rd narrative layer of

Maus engages the reader in the complex psychological issues that

second-generation survivors face. Furthermore, the inclusion of

Artie’s self-reflexive process as highlighted in his conversation

with Pavel further calls attention to Maus’ own process of

creation, never letting the reader settle on a neat

representation of the Holocaust, survival, Vladek, Anja or

Spiegelman’s fictionalized self (Artie). This is best

Alec Leibsohn 18

accomplished through Spiegelman’s preferred language of comics,

creating meaning between text and image, exemplifying the meaning

created between father and son through post-memory. The result is

a self-reflexive and therapeutic narrative that informs the

reader of the difficulties of it’s own creation process; it is at

this level that the psychological complexities of second-

generation survivors can be best understood. Maus is not merely a

narrative of the Holocaust, but also a story of human suffering

and struggle, not just after a devastating experience like the

concentration camps, but also afterwards; not just of one

generation, but also of succeeding ones.

Alec Leibsohn 19

Works Cited

Hirsch, Marianne. “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and

the Work of Postmemory.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 14 no. 1

(2001) 5-37. Web.

McGlothlin, Erin. ‘‘No Time Like the Present: Narrative and Time

in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.’’ Narrative 11.2 (2003): 177–98.

MUSE.

Prince, Robert M. The Legacy of the Holocaust: Psychohistorical

Themes in the Second-generation. New York: Other Press,

1985. 37-78. Web.

Rifkind, Candida. “Drawn from Memory: Comics Artists and

Intergenerational Auto/biography.” Canadian Review of American

Studies 38.3 (2008): 399-427. MUSE.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon, 1986.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began. New

York: Pantheon, 1991.

Alec Leibsohn 20

Tabachnick, Stephen E. "Of Maus and Memory: The Structure of Art

Spiegelman's Graphic Novel of the Holocaust." Word and Image 9

(1993): 154-62.

Young, James E. “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art

Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’ and the

Afterimages of History.” Critical Inquiry 24 no. 3 (1998), 666-

699. MUSE.

Alec Leibsohn 21