bhong

Vladek's story comes to an end in chapters 4-6. We learn more about Vladek's story and its resolution. What seperates Maus I and Maus II are the references to the war. Although Maus II is as much about the Holocaust as Maus I there is more about Artie's relationship with Vladek. The second novel begins with an introduction about Artie and his wife in the park talking about Vladek. The title of chapter four is "Saved" and thats what happened, living conditions slowly got better, the threat of life or death wasnt as serious, the polish nazzis were in fear of the Americans and their punishment for killing any jews, things were finally coming together. There were many new things i learned about the Holocaust even in these last chapters. In chapter four i didnt know it but there were also french prisoners in captivity to the nazis. The French were represented as toads. I understand that they were treated similarly but in many ways much different. Another characteristic of the Holocaust are the diseases that prisoners were suseptible to such as typhus. Vladek explains the great number of deaths that the Jewish faced from typhus and the spread of typhus due to captivity. Even after the war in America Vladek was diagnosed with typhus and diabetes. America also had "camps" for the Jews but of course a much different kind, here the Jews could get their papers together and create lives for themselves.  One of the things that Vladek tells us is that they were allowed to recieve packages from the red cross. To me the end of the book involves Vladek's past in the Holocaust but a lot of it is about Artie and his father, i think this is what Art is trying to tell his readers about. Vladek and Art really bond and Vladek shows Art photos of his finally and here we can really get a feel of the end of the book. We as readers already know the result; Vladek dies of a heartattack in 1982. It is easy to feel Art's guilt in the entire process of the end of the story as Vladek travels from hospital to hospital. As the end of Vladek's past comes to a happy conclusion, Vladek's present slowly comes to an end. In his past Vladek finally meets with Anja once again and they live together. Vladek tells Art about all his lost family members and the tone of the book is a little more seroius, and sad.

Art and Vladek's relationship seems so different to all of us but in so many ways is very similar. The father-son relationship where the stubborn father is upset at his son for all the wrong reasons and the son does not feel as good as his father, Art doesnt really know how to connect with his father and seems very distant to him until he wrote this book and spent a lot of time with him. I feel as though Vladek only agreed to letting Art write this book so that he could spend more time with Art, Vladek really loves Artie and for Art seeing his father die is very sad. During the process of writing the novel Art Spiegelman's father dies and most of it is vaguely explained in chapter two of Maus II but Art feels extreme guilt of his father's death, he feels he didnt appreciate his father during his life. This is part of the message Art is representing in the novel.