Anja's Death In Maus By Art Spiegelman

The book Maus by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel that portrays the true story of Vladek and his wife Anja’s experience throughout the Holocaust. Vladek reminisces about that dark time for him and his wife for his son Artie, who wanted to write about his father’s experience. The initial reason Artie wanted to learn more about his father’s experience is so he could learn more about his mother, who killed herself years after the war. The death of Anja causes both Artie and his father Vladek to be emotionally stunted. They both have their own ways of wanting to cope with the loss of their loved one, but in doing this it puts a stain on their own relationship.
Anja’s death causes both men to be emotionally stunted and unstable. It’s as if after
The coping mechanism Artie used was to learn as much about his mother’s experience throughout the Holocaust as he possibly could. In doing this he began seeing his father daily, which led to daily sessions of his father talking about the experiences he had in the Holocaust. During one of these sessions, he discovers that his mother had kept diaries throughout her life. After discovering this Artie begs his father to find the lost diaries. Artie felt that if he was able to read his mother’s diaries he will find a sense of closure, and he will finally understand why his mother committed suicide. After several sessions of badgering his father about the diaries, Vladek finally admits to Artie what happened to them. “After Anja died I had to make order with everything…these papers had too many memories. So I burned them.” [pg. 159]. The truth completely shatters everything Artie had been working towards. Vladek’s way of coping is completely different from Arties. Vladek doesn’t want to drudge up the past because he believes that if he doesn’t speak about the past it’ll eventually go away and everything will be ok. After some heavy convincing on Artie's part, Vladek does finally open up. During his sessions with Artie, Vladek would occasionally jump from one year to another. So much happened to Vladek and Anja that it was sometimes difficult for him to keep everything straight, part of this is due to his old age, but the other part is just remembering all of the traumatizing events that he went through. When Vladek finally tells Artie about the diaries he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he did because that was the way he had chosen to cope with everything that had