Suffering in Maus Essay

Suffering through memory

Two texts that offer different ways of understanding suffering are the graphic novel Maus, by Art Spiegelman and Viktor Frankls narrative, Mans Search for Meaning. The way suffering lives on through memory and negatively impacts ones reality is portrayed through the character Vladek in Spiegelmans Maus. While the impact of suffering produced by ones immediate environment is explored by through Frankls narrative. Both of these texts explore the impact of sufferingone in the present and the other in memory.

Through one's immdiate environment, one is faced with all aspects of realality, including those aspects of suffering.. Frankl shares his story of being in a German concentration camp, he emphasizes the one necessary aspect that commands everyone's descisions, survival. He explains the importance of hope and desire, critical for the process of overcoming fear, therefore overcoming suffering. He highlights the ideas of those who are trapped within the concentration camps, which include the desire to be free and how a man is driven to survice because he must convince himself that he will never give up hope. Frankl is an example of how the holocaust and similar experiences affect a persons physical, mental, and physiological well being. Frankl explains in his narrative, Mans Search for Meaning, how the hardships and abuse from these experinces affect your physiological perspective on virtually everything. After he gets out of the concentration camp, he decides to continue on with his neurology and writes a book about the physiological being of the camps inmates. I did not know what was going in the line behind me, nor the mind of the SS guard, but suddenly I received two sharp blows on my head (Frankl page 23). This statement reveals the cruelty and abuses the camps SS and Capo presented. These men took joy out of another man's suffering, however every single man in the camps, had to accept this suffering in order to survive. No inmate would even dare to fight back, for he knew the punishment would involve the highest degree of suffering imaginable. These men who suffered wished to stay alive, others could not take the suffering an turned towards sucicidal measures. Those who were strong, suffered, and those who were weak, were defeated. Those who were strong, often times gave what little they had to the weak, placing their commrads lives ahead of their own. "Thus the illusions some of us still held were destroyed one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly, most of us were overcome by a grin sense of humor. We knew that we had nothing to lose exexpt our so ridiculously naked lives" (Frankl page 16). This reveals how these men suffer to such a degree in these camps and how they give up hope in themsleves, for the execption of the very few. Those few are the strong, who do not give up hope and use their determination to help others who suffer. Suffering is found in every man's envirnment, in order to overcome this suffering, one must keep their proritys straight on whatever is to be accomplished.

Those who do in fact make it out of the camps alive are haunted by the once experienced suffering. In Maus, Spiegelman suggests that once a man undergoes the suffering of everyday concentration camp life, their mental state is permanently skewed, thus negatively impacting their reality. Maus, explores a concentration camp survivor who losses everything after the war. Vladeck, the father of the main character, who's son is writing a story about his is experinces from World War 2. He explains how the holocaust survivors suffer not only in the presence of the camps, but for the rest of their lives. In Vladecks case he never recovered from his beloved wife, Anja, death, whom died during the holocaust due to illness.Vladeck will soon find out that he will never emotionally recover from this. After Anja died, I had to make an order with everything....These papers had too many memories. So I burned them (Spiegelman page 159). He clearly loves her, but does not want to keep her detailed diaries of her lifes thoughts because they are too personal and to revealing of her thoughts and feelings. This is actually quite unusual, because often times when one has lost a loved one, they tend to keep and cherish all their belongings to remind them of the good experiences. But again, the process of going through this much grief for a loved one, especially after being in a horrid, concentration camp revelas that man suffers for eternity from certain experinces. Of course Im thinking about her anyway..Yes, you keep photos of her all around your desk-like a shrine (Spiegelman page 104).This explains Vladeck's attempt to remmeber his beloved wife because he keeps the photos of her, to remember him of her physical being. However he does not keep the diaries that withhold her deepest, most personal thoughts. Vladeck may never recover from the fact his wife died at a very young age, unnecessarily. With this they do not have the opportunity to grow old with each other. In some forms, suffering reminds a man constanlty of how their experince changed their life forever.

Suffering can be found in two forms, one's memories and one's environment. Suffering is a part of life, an experience everyone will encounter. Those who undergo a life altering negative experience will be constantly reminded of this because one can never overcome the feeling of their suffering. One may appear to have "gotten over" their greif and despair, however in reality, it stays with them forever and constanlty haunts them, creating a new perspective of life.