Vladek Spiegelman Analysis

September 1st, 1939, German forces invade Poland beginning the deadliest war in human history. Fifty million casualties including six million of Jewish heritage in concentration camps. Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ would not only destroy the lives of many but also severely damage the lives of the ones still living. Vladek Spiegelman changes immensely throughout the novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. Comparing the two narratives in the novel it is evident the culture during the Holocaust has had an everlasting effect on Vladek Spiegelman. Spiegelman’s troubling relations towards his son shows the sensitivity and destruction of a family because of the war. The carefulness of his money and wealth is an outcome of the war. Furthermore, Spiegelman’s relationship

Mainly because Vladek’s father-in-law bought him a textile factory, and they were “very well off – millionaires!” (18). As the war went on Vladek would soon lose all of his assets including the textile factory, yet he still managed to make enough money to survive. When presenting his money to the family he even goes to only say he made half of what he earned because “otherwise they wouldn’t save anything” (77). Before and early stages of the war Vladek knew not only how to make easy money, but have the intelligence to save some of it as well. In later stages of the war, Vladek’s mentality of wealth and money flipped upside down. The majority of transactions made in Auschwitz were no longer denoted in dollars but in bread. People such as Mandelbaum would cry at the sight of a spoon and a piece of string, “he was so happy, he was crying” (34). Vladek would never be the same as he was after the war. Auschwitz forced Vladek to think that everything, even if some see just as trash, has value and is worth holding on to. Long after the war, we would see this effect on Vladek with his money. Artie always remembers growing up that “whenever I needed school supplies or new clothes mom would have to plead and argue for weeks before he’d cough up any dough” (130). Even going into the last years of his life “he [had] hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, and he lives like a pauper” (132). In Vladek’s mind,

Early in the novel, the reader sees how Vladek’s dating life is before the war. He is able to jump from woman to woman with little care at all. Vladek begins to pursue Anja while still being connected to Lucia. “He cares not about their feelings and doesn’t see that they have any importance to his life.” (Buchanan). Although, there is a shift in the treatment of women in his life when he and Anja become serious. Shortly before the war began, Vladek becomes a father to his first son, Richieu. This changes him immensely as Vladek no longer cares about anyone other than his own family. When his new wife Anja becomes ill, Vladek instantly drops everything to take her to a sanitarium, “right away, we went” (Spiegelman 32). This is the first evident sign that Vladek has changed for the better of his family. When Vladek and Anja are taken to Auschwitz there are many obstacles, but there is a motivation within Vladek to keep moving on. Vladek would risk his life countless of times to attempt to save not only his life but Anja’s as well. “I starved a little to pay to bring Anja over” (Spiegelman 64). Although catching Typhus in a train car, being beaten in Auschwitz, and many other odds stacked against his survival, he pushed through with the strength of his love for Anja. “We were both very happy, and lived happily ever after” (136). Although following the war, life was not