Experiences

A few weeks ago we were talking about This is Water and how “there is no experience you’ve had that you are not at the absolute center of”. We talked about how everybody experiences life from their own perspective and puts themself at the center as the protagonist. We want to talk about how an event affected us, even if we were not the ones most greatly affected.
This concept reappears in the secondary storyline of Maus, about the relationship between Art and Vladeck. Throughout the story we see that both of them are greatly affected by the Holocaust, but they were both affected in drastically different ways. As much as they try, neither could ever understand how the other was affected.

 Vladeck was affected directly in the obvious way - he was a victim. Actually being alive and experiencing the Holocaust firsthand is something that no one could ever sympathize with. Art was affected indirectly, with something like survivor’s guilt. He feels “some kind of guilt about having an easier life than [his parents] did” (Spiegelman 16).  He is also traumatized by his mother’s suicide.

Vladeck could never understand how Art was affected. He may not even realize that Art was affected at all. From his perspective, this makes sense. How could anyone’s experience be as painful as Vladeck's and the other survivors’?


Even though these two individuals are suffering due to the same event, they are suffering in completely different ways and don’t fully understand each other’s pain. The moral here is that we can never really understand what others are going through. Sometimes we may think that a person is fine but in reality they are not. Like Wallace said, we need to change our innate sense of self-centredness and make our best effort to sympathize with everybody around us.


Comments

  1. KirstenOctober 15, 2017 at 4:14 PM

    I like how you related something from a couple weeks ago to Maus. Also your writing topic is super deep and makes me want to be more thoughtful in general. Nice work!

    ReplyDelete

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