MAUS

In the novel Maus, by Art Spiegelman, it ends without resolving all the tensions it had set up over the course of the entire novel. Art sits with his father, who has just finished telling Art about his reunion with Anja after they both survived Auschwitz. Art stops his tape recorder, and Vladek turns to bed, addressing Art by his dead brother’s name, Richieu. Does this “accident” mean that Art will never live up to Richieu, never equal Richieu in his father’s affections? Or does it mean that Vladek has finally accepted Art by letting him share his brother’s place? Art then finds out from Vladek that he had burned his mother’s diary’s and had never told Art the truth about his mother’s diaries. This infuriates Art, and he calls him murderer, for the crime that Vladek had done. This was a twisting ending, and I was left wondering at the end, what exactly Art meant, by calling his father a murderer, for simply burning Anja’s diaries. I believe that this was an appropriate ending, because I truly believe that not all stories must end happily. We are so used to the initial “happy ending,” when in reality, many situations never end happily. Stories don’t always end with complete understanding either. And in this case, Art wanted to leave us without a complete understanding, because he wanted us to think about what he truly meant by ending the book that way. I also like the fact that this ending was different from other books. It left you hanging, but at the same time, it drew you in more to the book. Of course we wanted to know more, but Art decided that he could no longer give us more information about his father’s journey in surviving the Holocaust, because once he found out what Vladek had done to his mother’s diaries, he was too upset at his father to learn more about his story. By the ending of this story, I am left feeling, sad for Art. I am sad for Art because, he was not only unable to know more about his father’s story because of the argument, but he was