The path of Artie understanding his father is smoother but at a cost. Following the success of Maus I, Spiegelman depicts a pile of dead Jewish bodies lying under the Artie's writing desk symbolizing how much the history his father has bled from that first volume has seeped into him. He is beginning to understand, but at the cost of emotionally and vicariously going through his father's experiences, for which he has sessions with Pavel, a Czech Jew psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.
Artie gets more perspective during these sessions with Pavel. He tells Pavel that as a child, he constantly argued with his father, who said that anything he did was nothing compared to surviving Auschwitz. Pavel refers to the psychological concept of transference: "Maybe your father needed to show that he was always right--that he could always SURVIVE-because he felt GUILTY about surviving. ... and he took his guilt on YOU, where it was safe... on the REAL survivor." The argument stands to reason. Vladek survived the death of so much family and friends, as well as the millions he never knew.
We learn more of how Vladek survived Auschwitz. He teaches English to the Polish kapo, who expecting the Germans to lose the war, wants to get in good graces with the Americans. Vladek is thus given better food, a better fitting uniform, and the tip to stand at the far left of the line of prisoners during the labour call. Improved health increased chances of survival and a better mental state.
Vladek has enough chutzpah in his tight-fisted but survivalist ways to exchange used groceries for new ones(!) While in the car waiting for him, Artie and Francoise discuss Vladek. Francoise says: "I'd rather kill myself than live through ... everything Vladek went through. It's a miracle he survived." Artie responds with "In some ways he didn't survive," which is key to the book's theme. Yet drastic saving is one way Vladek survived the war and camps. On the way back from the grocery store, we discover Vladek's racism towards blacks, an example of the victim becoming a victimizer.
Maus is a must-read for a personal instead of abstract, statistical look at the Holocaust. It also brings up post-war genocide. Pavel's contention that people haven't changed rings poignantly. Despite the vow of "never again," genocide has repeatedly happened "yet again": e.g. the Cultural Revolution, the killing fields in Cambodia, the massacre in Rwanda, and the ethnic bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps for racial harmony to become a human instinct, all people need to feel the same way, but the relativistic world of the twentieth and twenty-first century to makes that dream virtually impossible. Pavel's statement that a newer and bigger Holocaust is needed to change people grimly prophesizes World War III, meaning that unless we change, we will all die.
This book follows their story from when they enter the camp until they are finally freed by the Russians. This part of the story is also related in pieces as Art visits his father. Vladek was surprisingly resourceful as a camp prisoner and was continuously able to find positions where he was needed, helping keep him alive. Anna, on the other hand, wasn't always so lucky but she managed to stay alive. For both of them, much of what kept them alive was the hope of seeing the other person, which Vladek was amazingly able to arrange despite the men and women living in separate camps.
Eventually the war ends and they return, separately, to their hometown in Poland, though they have no knowledge of whether or not the other is alive. Thus, when Vladek, who arrives last, finally makes it home, it makes for a touching reunion.
My Comments:This second book is definitely more touching than the first, though this is probably in large part due to the suffering the Spiegelman's experienced. This book also does a good job of bringing the story closure, though it took quite a while for this book to be published after the first one was.
Once again, the author is critical of himself by illustrating a rocky relationship with his father rather than everything being rosy. This self-criticism leads to my final point. I think the allure of these two books is that the author doesn't try to dress things up in a pretty package. He does his best to present things as they actually were (at least, as they were seen by his father). The result is that you see things like children having their heads bashed in by Nazi's slamming them against walls and a son who only grudgingly helps his father but at the same time uses him for his story (that sounds a bit harsh as I'm sure the son was inspired to tell the story just to share it, but he also made money off of it, so he did use him in a sense).
As I did with the first, I would recommend this book. Keep in mind that the book makes no pretense to be an objective treatise on the holocaust - this is a survivor's tale and it is at the subjective, individual level of one person who made it through. It is compelling and hopefully a warning for future generations about the potential maliciousness humans are capable of forcing on other humans.
The second storyline, that goes on at the same time (they intertwine), is the relationship between Art's father (the 'survivor') and Art. This is shown in the parts where Vladek takes a break from telling Art about the war and we get shown the 'here and now' in the time the book was researched. The war may be long over but Vladek is still carrying the legacy ... in everything he does. Both mentally as psychically Add to it that Art isn't exactly the easiest, most patient person either and you'll realize conflicts aren't rare.
It isn't all good in this book though. Off course the illustrations aren't everything, but where they were enough to tell the story in the right mood in volume 1, they get rather confusing at times here. The panels don't flow into each other well either. Going from one panel to the other requires some thinking, to fill the hole Spiegelman leaves from your own memory of other parts of the book a lot of times. This doesn't exactly add to the reading experience. And the story itself is missing something as well. It's full of shock-value but the context in which it is placed misses detailing. It's as if the shock-value is mostly there only for the purpose of shock, not to add to the story (which it DID in volume 1).
In conclussion it still is a pretty good book to get, if you've also read volume 1. My criticism may sound a little harsh sometimes but take into mind that criticism is based on comparing it to book 1. It's a nice diversion from most other stuff that goes around in comicdom and the fact it really happened (although it's very subjective off course) adds to the experience. So I'd say you should get book 1 ("My Father Bleeds History") and if you crave for more after that THAN get this. But if you think it's enough after book I it's nice to know that the first part alone can be read as a self-contained book as well.
