Lea's Reviews > Maus : preživjeli priča

Such a creative and innovative way to write a memoir. Loved the animal metaphor with mice and cats but evermore I adored the writer's honesty about his father's personality and its effects on his mental health. Even though his father was a Holocaust survivor, even before such trauma it is very likely he had what we call personality disorder, and the graphic novel does the raw unpacking of emotional pressure that Spiegelman grew up with having the kind a father he had; rigid, adamant, neurotic, demanding, stingy, always deeply unsatisfied. Spiegelman has a clear distinction of what is an aftermath of the trauma and what were his father's personality traits even before tragic events. The reflection on his relationship with his father and the way it affected him in later life I find as being as valuable part of the story as the recollection of his father's memories of the Holocaust. The world isn't black and white and victims in one situation can be the same people that deeply hurt others. This graphic novel shows the transgenerational suffering, of both Arts parents and him as their child, dealing with his mother's mental illness (view spoiler)[(and later suicide) (hide spoiler)] and his father's personality being even more distorted as a consequence of trauma. I applaud Art for his courage to speak about these sensitive subjects and hope that writing his father's memoir with autobiographical elements had a cathartic effect for him.