Analyze the relationship between Art Spiegelman and his father, Vladek, in Maus.

At the beginning of Maus, Art Spiegelman goes to visit his father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Rego Park, Queens. Spiegelman says of his father, "we weren't that close" (page 11). When Spiegelman asks Vladek to tell him his story of growing up in Poland and surviving the Holocaust, Vladek says, "No one wants anyway to hear such stories" (page 12). Vladek tells much of his story to Spiegelman, but Vladek also tells Spiegelman that he wants to keep his story private and not share it publicly. 

Vladek's memories are so painful that he wants to erase them, which is at odds with Spiegelman's attempt to record the past and, in the process, make sense of it. After Spiegelman's mother, Anja, commits suicide, Vladek destroys her diaries. Vladek later says, "After Anja died, I had to make an order with everything.... These papers had too many memories, so I burned them" (page 159). Therefore, while Vladek wants to forget the painful past in an effort to simply survive, Spiegelman feels that he must unearth the past to reclaim some kind of sanity and to make sense of his mother's death. Their relationship, filled with guilt over Anja's suicide, makes it difficult for Spiegelman to document what happened to his father. Vladek makes Spiegelman feel guilty and haunted for simply wanting to know what happened to his family in the past and to understand his parents' pain.

On which page in Maus is Art Spiegelman's relationship with his father described?

Descriptions of Vladek and Artie's relationship can be discovered directly and indirectly throughout Spiegelman's Maus. For most stories, especially in graphic novels such as this, indirect descriptions are mostly found through interactions among characters and in pictures. For example, Artie is easily frustrated with his father's compulsive hoarding and control tactics whenever he interacts with Vladek. The reader may infer that there is a lack of patience on Artie's part due to possible relationship issues from his past. Upon further reading, many family issues surrounding painful memories are causes for this dysfunctional relationship. As a result, Artie doesn't visit his father unless Vladek needs help with something important, such as health issues, or when Artie needs more information for the book he is writing.

More direct descriptions of this father-son relationship are seen when Artie discusses his father with his girlfriend, Francoise. For example, when the couple is driving to see Vladek, Artie says the following about his relationship with his father:

"Just thinking about my book . . . It's so presumptuous of me. I can't even make any sense out of my relationship with my father. How am I supposed to make any sense out of Auschwitz? . . . of the Holocaust? When I was a kid I used to think about which of my parents I'd let the Nazis take to the ovens if I could only save one of them . . . Usually I saved my mother. Do you think that's normal?" (174).

From the passage above, it seems like Artie is searching for normality because he feels as though his father (and relationship) certainly isn't "normal." In fact, Francoise answers him by saying, "Nobody's normal" (175). Artie also tells Francoise that he feels guilty for having an easier life than his parents and older brother had. This guilt is only one of many disconnecting factors between Artie and his father that creates a huge gap in understanding, but it is also a very direct description of his point of view of his relationship with his father.

One scene that also shows that Artie does not understand what his father went through during the Holocaust, and the subsequent PTSD felt years afterward, is when Vladek tells Artie that he threw away his mother's journals. Artie becomes so angry that he calls his father a murderer because he feels as though his father "killed" her memories. Vladek tells Artie the following:

"One time I had a very bad day and all of these things I destroyed. . . . After Anja died I had to make an order with everything . . . These papers had too many memories. So I burned them. . . ." (160-161).

Artie absolutely cannot empathize with his father's trauma because he never experienced the Holocaust himself. All Artie feels is the trauma produced as a result of his mother's suicide, which makes it harder for him to sympathize with his father's choices and behavior. Consequently, this disconnection between worlds creates tension and conflict for the relationship between father and son.