Themes

Tim O’Brien’s writing carries many different kinds of themes. One that really struck me was the fear of shame used for motivation. O’Brien was greatly impacted by war because he was a part of it. He talks about how when you are a soldier you become a different man. You do things you wouldn’t normally do. He wrote specifically about a dead boy that was found, kicked and messed with by the soldiers. One soldier even cut off his thumb for good luck. That’s messed up. In another instant the soldiers and O’Brien were being shot at. After the attack each soldier tried to brush it off. They do anything they can to keep their fear hidden.  No one wants to be seen as a coward. Some soldiers who couldn’t handle being a part of the war would go to extremes to go home, such as shooting a toe or a figure off. Personally I think I would do the same. War is not for every one. The men left behind would mock those who did such a thing. “Pussies, they’d say. Candy-asses.” Another theme evident in his writing is physical and emotional burdens. Every soldier carries something different. All physically carry objects for battle as well as personal objects. Some of these objects can seem silly. The medic carries M&M’s or a soldier carries condoms. When is he planning on having sex? “They carried all the emotional baggage of men might die. Greif, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. Physiological weight and burdens are most definitely carried throughout the entire war. O’Brien’s themes are carried continuously throughout the book.

Writing Exercise

July 2012 will forever be marked in my memory as the matriculation day at The Citadel, one of seven senior military academies and reputedly the sharpest and most infamous. There were approximately 800 of us descending on that campus, everyone carrying nearly the same thing. Hygienic supplies to last for the next 6 months, undergarments, shoes, and things necessary for cleaning, ironing, and maintaining military uniforms and standards of living. Everything was standardized, everyone's shoes were the same, we all had white briefs, white t-shirts, white towels, no one dared be different. Some tried to sneak in contraband, that was a mistake they wouldn't understand the gravity of until later. Some had a laptop, cellphones, watches, all of which were confiscated. One person asked where his laptop would be stored, he found out the next day after he elected to leave the academy. Some people had their family help to carry everything to their rooms, the rest of us just carried everything ourselves. As was the case with my roommate, his mother was there to help him- something he resented and abhorred. You see, his load was much heavier than mine. His brother was a respected alumni as were other male members of his family.  The pressure was unbearable, for him, The Citadel wasn't a choice, it was a four year sentence. He lasted two weeks before I found him trying to slice his wrists with his door key, he was doing a pretty good job and wasn't anxious to give me the key either. When I finally got it away from him, I had to bring in our cadre. They took it from there. Ironically, his story ended being carried by paramedics. I lost touch with him, the last thing I was told was that he was much better. When I found out I had to withdraw because my scholarship fell through with the Navy, I carried resentment, anguish, and heart break to my commander's office. The difference was, on my last day, I carried all the same generic crap I brought in with me back to my car, but I had a much lighter weight than when I first went in. I knew that I made it, I made memories I won't forget, learned some extraordinary lessons, and met people I will value for a long time to come. All that in one month, it's truly amazing how irrelevant time is in certain situations, and how fatal it is in others.

O'Brien's Themes

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a running theme of roles that people play appear throughout the stories. For example, O’Brien speaks at length about how the soldiers are terrified of being shamed. Since so many of the men had no control over being drafted and sent to war, they resist showing fear out of desperation to regain some control of their situations. O’Brien himself faces a harsh internal battle between safety and pride in “On the Rainy River.” When he gets drafted, the news is enough to terrify him into driving to the Canadian border so as to escape. When he gets there, he begins to have excruciating second thoughts. He begins to think of all of the people who will notice his absence, and deride him as being a coward for it. O’Brien imagines “all those eyes on me – the town, the whole universe – and I couldn’t risk the embarrassment… Even in my imagination, the shore just twenty yards away, I couldn't make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that's all it was.” He ultimately decides to go to war, playing a role to escape the judgment of others.

Roles are also prevalent in “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” A soldier named Mark Fossie has his girlfriend Mary Ann flown into Vietnam, but things take a turn for the unexpected. Mary Ann, a cheerleader back at home and the spitting image of a virginal girly-girl, is morbidly fascinated with the war, the land, and the destruction. None of the men in the unit expected such a reaction from her. As Rat Kiley puts it, “What's so impossible about that? She was a girl, that's all… You got these blinders on about women. How gentle and peaceful they are.” While at home, Mary Ann seemed to be conforming to the role expected of women. She was meek and mild and peaceful, just like women were expected to be. However, once in Vietnam, she is allowed to let her true colors show. She was in love with the place because it allowed her to be free from her role, and become “caught up in the Nam shit” like her male counterparts.

The Things Wolves Carry

     It was the end of summer. Just about two weeks after my 18th birthday. In my mind I carried anxiety, curiosity, excitement, and doubts. The anxiety of entering an academic environment I'm not used to. An environment with completely different people I had never met contrasted to the all the years I had been around the same group of peers; not being able to make connections with new people. The worry that my unknown roommate would be a party animal that always smells like alcohol and would not understand the meaning of personal space or property. I carried the curiosity of the experiences I would encounter in my college days. If college classes would actually be interesting or would they just an excuse to assign a ridiculous amount of papers with unrealistic requirements. I held curiosity about the types of people I would encounter, what their personalities would be like. I carried excitement of being accepted into Loyola, for the opportunity to see if I have what it takes to make it through college; for the chance to transform into a new person that would contribute to the world. However, in my mind and heart I carried the doubts of my own success and future. If I would be able to keep up my expected academic achievement or even measure up to others academic achievement at Loyola; if I would fail everyone that expected me to succeed at Loyola. Also, in my heart I carried my apparition of art and being able to access it so easily by living on Loyola's campus. I carried my desire try my best. Most importantly in my soul I carried the love and admiration of loved ones.
     It was the most refreshing experiences of complete restlessness.

Mary Anne Bell

Mary Anne Bell is probably my favorite character because she is a powerful representative of the potential that woman had in that time period. Since it took place during the Vietnam war, it was a time of real revolution, men were being drafter which left many women without their husbands, boyfriends, brothers, and sons. I feel like it was a crucial time for woman to show not only their roll in society but the fact that they had a voice and opinion on the war because they saw what was going on through the broadcasting in their own homes so they really had concrete reasons to stand up against the war. Mary Anne comes into the story as a very underappreciated character that really seems have little to no value to them other than her physical attributes. The fact that she becomes so well acquainted with the lifestyle in the camps among the men. She proves to be extremely helpful and active which catches them all off guard and she soon completely changes into an almost war hungry person that gets complete thrills from the day to day hustle in the camp. I feel like this is not only used to illustrate how going off to war can affect someone psychologically but also as a commentary on what woman were doing outside of the camps. Woman were protesting against the war and showing their strength instead of just awaiting for the return of the soldiers. Though Mary Anne does become obsessed with the war and ends up becoming a 'shadow belonging to the jungle' she shows the capacity that was just starting to be seen in woman. I think that in a weird way Tim O'Brien was trying to show how even though it was still a very sexist time in history and woman were still seen as lesser and more as objects than actual human beings, this was a time where major changes were being made in how not only men and society saw women but women themselves realizing what they were capable of and were not limited by the current social norms of their time.   

Theme in The Things They Carried

Throughout The Things They Carried, one can see the theme of the loss of innocence being portrayed through the characters. The soldiers that were sent to fight in Vietnam were young men in their early twenties.  In the chapter “Spin,” we see Azar attaching a bomb to Ted Lavender’s puppy. When asked why he had done it, Azar did not respond with a solid answer instead he stated: “What’s everybody so upset about? I mean, Christ I’m just a boy” (35). O’Brien often states that the soldiers acted childlike because they were so young and innocent. They were not prepared for the different things they were going to experience during war, which in the end took away their innocence. In the chapter “Sweetheart Song of Tra Bong,” the loss of innocence is evident in the case of Mary Anne. Mary Anne was a young girl that was snuck into their military base to be with her boyfriend. As she spent time with the boys, she began to learn their ways. She helped around the base by aiding the soldiers that were trying to save the lives of the injured soldiers, who were transported to their base. Mary Anne soon became one of the guys. She did not wear any make up nor did she care about her appearance. Mary Anne went as far as participating in ambushes with the Greenies. After having discovered the surrounding area, Mary Anne felt as if she was part of the jungle, and did not want to leave. Mary Anne no longer opened up to her boyfriend or the other soldiers, instead she seemed distant and uninterested in what they had to say. O’Brien states that she was only seventeen: “Just a child, blond and innocent…” (100). Mary Anne lost her innocence; she no longer wanted to be the ordinary teenager with a boyfriend, instead she chose to become one with the jungle. Mary Anne became addicted with the “hunt.” She was so consumed into her new lifestyle that she would risk her own life in instances where the Greenies would refuse. Mary Anne was changed by her war experiences.

Creative Writing Exercise (in the style of The Things They Carried)

     I carried everything in a small backpack that I brought on board the plane. The backpack held a Macbook, a small sketchbook, pens, pencils, skittles, yarn, and a size D crochet hook. It also carried the ticket that would take me from Dallas to some airport in central California. She was waiting there for me. She had gone a month earlier to study watercolor from her grandfather. When she left, she cafrried a Macbook, a few pounds of yarn, and a felted squid named Limbs. She carried hooks and needles, and ambition. She carried a distaste for home, and she left me behind. We weren't together anymore, but I wanted us to be. She saw me more as family than anything. She carried loneliness unimaginable. She carried a fear of sirens, a love of poodles, and she carried schizophrenia. While she had been gone, I think she felt bad for me. You never know how insanity will express itself.
     Later at her grandparents' house, Poppi taught us watercolor painting. He gave us professional grade paints and paper, and a first-hand view of his process. He was a master. He told me that I was a natural.
     We were carrying our tables into the garage to let the paintings dry when he called me closer. He had cochlear implants to allow him to hear, but they were still being calibrated. He wanted to know more about me. He asked about my music, my plans for college, and I told him that I was planning to study music performance at Loyola University. He smiled and nodded approvingly.
"That's great," he said. "I know you'll do well. You're talented."
I thanked him politely.
     Then he said,
     "You know you and her are going to have to go your own ways eventually, right?"

The Things We Carried

It was May 28, 2010 and my sister and I were on our way to Vietnam. I was 16 and she was 13 and we were traveling by ourselves to a foreign place. I’m not quite sure who thought it would be a good idea to have to young people traveling by themselves, but we were excited to see some of our family in Vietnam. The flight was 16 hours long and who would of thought that airplane food was actually tasty. We both didn’t know how to speak Vietnamese so we carried the fear of getting lost and not knowing what to do when we landed. We were finally there and we carried our backpack and our carry on luggage off of the plane. It was so nice to get up and walk again. We walked with confidence and took big strides towards the man who would check our passports. He didn’t smile and told us to go on through. We then walked to the luggage claim to get a few boxes that carried over some food and clothes for our family there in Vietnam. There were four big boxes that weighed 50 pounds each. So we each carried in our carts a backpack, luggage, and two boxes. We walked towards the glass windows and walked outside. There were many people standing outside also waiting for their loved ones. We didn’t have the phone number of my grandparents, so there was no way to contact them. So we walked back and forth outside the terminal carrying so much stuff until finally we found our grandparents and the rest of the family carrying welcoming signs, flowers, and some food for both my sister and I. Then we finally carried tears because we were finally there. 

The Truth in Storytelling

The “truth” in storytelling is one of the many prevalent themes that arise in The Things They Carried. For example, in “How to Tell a True War Story” and the “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong,” there are many instances where Tim O’Brien blurs the lines between reality and fiction, which in turn makes the reader question whether or not the story or parts of the story are true. Before Tim O’Brien begins the story, he often mentions that it’s true. We see this in “How to Tell a True War Story” when O’Brien specifically writes, “This is true” in the first lines of the story, and in the “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong,” when Rat Kiley said he personally witnessed the event and swore that the story he was about to tell Mitchell Sanders was true (64). However, as the story progresses O’Brien (or Rat Kiley in the “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong”) begins to constantly interrupt the story with his personal thoughts or perhaps change or add certain details surrounding the story that seem unnatural, which arguably makes the reader wonder whether if there is any truth to the story at all. So is there any truth to the stories that Tim O’Brien, Mitchell Sanders, or Rat Kiley told? I personally think that the answer is both yes and no, or that the answer lies somewhere in-between the two. First and foremost, many of the details that are told within the stories are fiction, and if true are heavily exaggerated; however, what is true about the stories is not the objective truth, but rather the subjective truth. Second, while the story itself may be untrue, the raw emotions, experiences, memories, and feelings that are conveyed are definitely real. For this reason, the O’Brien believes that, “A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe” (74). He feels that nothing is true unless one feel that it’s true. It is also for this reason that we see the storyteller continually interrupting the story to input his personal thoughts to show how he really wants the readers to believe the story, as Rat Kiley did when he told Mitchell Sanders the story about Mary Anne because “he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt” (85).

Poor Mary Anne

     One of the many themes in The Things They Carried is the youthfulness of the soldiers. The first time this appears is in the first story, “The Things They Carried” when Lee Strunk has to crawl in the tunnel. Lieutenant Cross cross goes to inspect the tunnel and then his mind unwillingly wanders to thinking about Martha, the girl back home. O’Brien writes, “[Lieutenant Cross] could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-four years old. He couldn’t help it” (11). Here, O’Brien introduces the idea that many of the soldiers are not full-grown men and, perhaps, too young to be fighting this war. O’Brien does not hold Cross truly accountable for allowing himself to become distracted because he simply cannot help it. The theme of entering the war young and innocent is even more prevalent in the story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”. Rat Kiley tells the story of when one of his fellow soldiers, Mark Fossie, flew his girlfriend, Mary Anne into Vietnam. Kiley finds it very important that people get the details to his story correct. For example, Kiley argues that he never called Mary Anne dumb, just young. The only thing different about her from the rest of them was that she was a girl. Kiley continues, “I mean, when we first got here -- all of us -- we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit...” (93) This story is especially important in showing how the war changes people and corrupts that innocence. At the beginning of his story, Kiley makes a point to note how similar all of the soldiers were to Mary Anne and that she really was not different from them. As the story progresses, Mary Anne becomes more and more enthralled with the war. When the story ends, Mary Anne’s whereabouts are unknown, but there is suspicion that she “ had crossed over to the other side. She was part of the land” (110). Mary Anne’s initial innocence and naivety are representative of those of everyone before going to war. She is not dumb, she picks things up quickly. But Mary Anne literally gets lost in the war and never comes back, symbolic of how the soldiers lose part of themselves and their youthfulness to the war.

They Carried Their Reputations

When reading “The Things They Carried,” the eponymous chapter of Tim O’Brien’s narrative on the Vietnam War, I could not help but compare it to the last war novel that I read: Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which details the German side of trench warfare during the First World War. Both books are written with a beautiful command of the English language. Though both books are similar, they feel different. Particularly, I noticed the different ways that each story approached the issue of bravery in the face of war.

In All Quiet, the main character, Paul Bäumer, makes it no secret that war is terrifying and that being afraid is perfectly natural. He even reacts with complete understanding and sympathy when a young recruit soils himself during an attack. The soldiers, he noted, were carried on by duty and obligation to Germany. When they died, it was tragedy wrought by a pointless war waged by faceless higher-ups. In The Things They Carried, however, O’Brien seems to offer a different perspective. According to him, “They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.” These men seem not to be carried by a loyalty to the United States, but rather out of a sense of wanting to appear brave and in control. They do not want to let this war get the better of them, because they feel that that would make them weak. They belittle cowardice, when in fact fear dwells within them all.

It is also important to consider the backgrounds of both wars when comparing these two works. The soldiers of World War I did join the army out of a sense of duty to the nation. As time went on, they began to grow disillusioned and ask why they must fight men that they had no personal qualms with. The Vietnam War, however, was unpopular from the start. Men who never even dreamed of being in the army, men who did not even support the war’s aims, were drafted into the military and shipped away to fight. They were disillusioned from the beginning. This might explain the alternate attitudes toward the war.

A Spin on Time

     In Tim O'Brien's passage "Spin", he provides different situations he may or may not have experienced in war. His writing style is nonlinear, he jumps from one incident to another and attempts to give an explanation as to why he does so. O'Brien mentions, "You take your material where you find it,... at the  intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary [in your head]...soon imagination flows [to create] a thousand different streets... all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride"(33). Although he is forty-three at the time, he cannot help but imagine the details of Curt Lemon's and Kiowa's deaths as he sits at his typewriter. He writes as different parts of his memory reveal themselves to him; possibly because living in the actual time of his traumatic experiences and remembering his experiences feel the same. In war, time was broken, therefore his resurfaced memories are broken like glass. Also, when he proclaims that he his about to talk about one topic like war not being all bad, yet mentions something sad after instead of just talking about what he said he would."Sometimes things could almost get sweet"(30). After that he talks about a boy with one leg that wanted chocolate and mentions Azar's comment about running out of ammo. The most peaceful things he mentions that did not end in a horrible way is the game of checkers and the old man helping them survive; everything else in the chapter is either a difficult situation or a happy situation that turned sour, such as, the murderous boredom or Lavender's puppy being murdered. It seems as if he is trying to say that no matter what past experiences do not change, just like war; if you try to change it all you can do is make it interesting.

Spin

In “Spin,” O'Brien recalls several memories from his experiences in the war. His memories seem scattered and unchronological. He jumps from one story to another, without fully disclosing the purpose of the first story, which suggests the way his war experiences are fragmented in his memory. O'Brien also jumps from the past to the present when speaking with his daughter Kathleen. Kathleen wants her father to write other stories rather than his usual Vietnam stories. O'Brien responds to his daughter, “But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present” (33).  O'Brien scattered memories and his commentary of the present, provide readers with a first-hand interpretation of the war. In “Spin,” we are introduced to O’Brien’s actual war experiences with other soldiers. We see the way the soldiers pass time and the ways they act around each other. Since the area in which the soldiers had to walk around often had mines, a man nicknamed old poppa-san, would lead the soldiers through the Batangan Peninsula mine fields. The soldiers created a rhyme, “Step out of line, hit a mine; follow the dink, you’re in the pink,” to chant while crossing the mine fields. The soldiers found ways to keep themselves entertained while in war. In this chapter, we also see a negative experience of soldier interaction. Ted Lavender, one of the soldiers, had adopted a puppy and carried him around his rucksack until one of the other soldiers, Azar, had a slight meltdown. Azar strapped the puppy onto a mine and ultimately killed the puppy. Azar blamed his outburst on him just being a kid/prankster, but we can see that this outburst was from the stress of the war. The war memories O’Brien described in “Spin” depict the soldier interaction and the stresses of war experienced.

For the Sake of the March

In The Things They Carried O’Brien really sets the stage, so to speak, for the rest of the book. His style is as equally dramatic as the content of his writing. His poetic form and repetition sets the tone beautifully for the detailed, intimate, yet dry description of the Vietnam War. It’s a really thrilling sensation that the narrator is invested in telling the story, but not emotional. 

Which is in stark contrast to what he’s writing about. From the way Lieutenant Cross idolizes and daydreams about Martha to the moment Rat Kiley is killed and Kiowa ponders dumbfounded over the way he fell to the ground. The material itself is emotionally charged. In every situation where O’Brien portrays what the soldiers are carrying, he does so in a elegiac  way. When he talks about the gear everyone carries, he makes sure to include the weight to emphasize the burden, he talks about the keepsakes the men have to comfort them and serve as a solemn reminder of a life they left behind, even to how he describes their physical condition as carrying disease and Vietnam itself; the dirt and the grime. 

He doesn’t really introduce his characters in a conventional way where the narrator tells us who they are. O’Brien instead chooses to throw the character into the story and just lets the reader learn about the character based on what’s going on in the story and allows us an omniscient perspective into what the men are thinking.

Readers have so much insight crammed into a few paragraphs that they’re immersed in the story without even realizing it. I found myself constructing a simulated environment for the story to unfold, one in which I knew what the individual characters were afraid of, how they planned to hope, and even what they’re plan for survival was. 

"Spin"

“Spin” is a collection of arbitrary memories of the narrator’s experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War. The memories are brief and not told in chronological order. In addition to this, O’Brien occasionally brings the reader back to the present when he repeatedly states he’s a forty-three year old man and the war has been long over, and so forth. While some might consider the narrative jumping from the past to the present a syndrome of PTSD, O’Brien argues that this disconnection of short stories within the narrative joins the past to the future. Consequently, the readers are faced with short, fragmented memories of Tim O’Brien, while at the same time seeing the narrator jumping from the past to the present. The memories convey to the readers that there are moments that occur in war that we the readers might not necessarily perceive of. They show us that war is not all horrible. For example, O’Brien tells us about relatively funny moments that he recalls during the war such as when Azar hands a chocolate bar to a limping boy, or the time when the platoon played “follow the leader” through the rice paddies filled with land mines. Tim O’Brien’s memories also show us that in war, everything, even the smallest things, becomes noticeable. For example, Tim O’Brien remembers the quarter moon rising over the nighttime paddies, the stench scent of an empty body bag, and even the long waits in boredom that gave him horrendous stomachaches. Tim O’Brien writes, “What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end” (34). From this line, it’s evident that O’Brien believes that when we remember things, we often don’t remember the entire event from the start to finish, but in small fragments that sometimes makes no sense. 

On the Rainy River

     In “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien admits that this story still makes him squirm. O’Brien is still ashamed of the choice he made when he was younger. Initially it seems that O’Brien would be ashamed of trying to run away from home to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War, but the very end of the story confirms practically the opposite. O’Brien says, “I survived, but it’s not happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war” (58). O’Brien is ashamed that he did not stand up for what he believed to be morally correct, to avoid the war. Instead, he caved to the fear of being embarrassed. O’Brien is ashamed of giving other people’s opinions of himself so much power over his decision. O’Brien writes, “It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was” (57). Throughout the story, O’Brien’s moral compass is at odds with his younger sense of entitlement. This tension gives the story more weight than it would have if O’Brien just presented the story simply as something that he did as a young man before the war. O’Brien’s critique makes the reader feel the burden of his shame. O’Brien further brings the reader in as an active participant in the story with an authorial intrusion. O’Brien says, “Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it... What would you do? Would you...” (54). O’Brien commands the reader’s full attention by calling them to insert themselves into his position. This is a very interesting writing choice for him to make. It stands out because it is not common of his writing in this book.

He was a soldier, after all.

     The Things They Carried is like an exercise in variation of style, with poetry and prose side-by-side blending with one another. Tim O'Brien more than lives up to the title by telling us not just what physical objects these soldiers are carrying, but the weight of those objects, and the Weight of it all. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from Martha back in New Jersey. These letters were not love letters like you might think. They weighed 4 ounces and were signed "Love, Martha," but she didn't mean Love as in "I love you," and those 4 ounces felt more like a thousand pounds on Lieutenant Cross' mind.

     O'Brien goes through exceedingly meticulous laundry lists of the standard load of gear a soldier could be found hauling in the "late war," but the gear was of little importance. What was important was the weight it put on each soldier, physical and mentally. O'Brien uses normal prose to tell us all of these things. He tells us the story of what happened in this way, but when he finally gets to the meat of what they're really carrying--emotional baggage-- it reads more like spoken word beginning with "They were tough." on page 20 and ending after the first paragraph of page 22.

     O'Brien is talking about real Weight and it's so important for him to say it, so important that he gets to the real Truth, that there's no time to breathe. There's no time to stop until the reader, someone, anyone finally gets it. The Weight is the secret fear that each soldier has-- people killing and dying because they were embarrassed not to. It seems so simple and petty of a fear, but it speaks to all of the things wrong with the idea that killing is heroic or that going to war is something honorable, or desirable in any way.  And the story returns to First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and all of that fear and guilt and Weight is shut away. He was a soldier, after all.

Valdek Spiegelman, one of the few Holocaust survivors, will be in an eternal battle with his psychological trauma from his experience. The Holocaust was a brutal and inhumane massacre of people. It is nearly impossible to comprehend exactly what Valdek had to go through. Unsurprisingly, Valdek’s son inherits some of the trauma of the Holocaust because of his father’s survivor’s guilt. Arti, Valdek’s son, is constantly being guilt tripped by his father. Not only does Valdek make other people feel guilty, he himself is a difficult and stubborn person. Maybe it’s because Valdek feels guilty for living through Auschwitz when so many of his loved ones did not. His beloved son Richieu is one of those who did not make it. Even his wife Anja ends up killing herself after the Holocaust ended. Art is really the only person Valdek has left, which puts a lot of pressure on Art. Personally, I don’t know how I would be able to handle such horrifying events. Trying to be “normal” or live a normal life after these kinds of tragedies would be difficult. By making Maus into a graphic novel, Art Spiegelman can expand the expressions and emotions of Valdek’s and Art’s relationship. In regular books, a duo’s feelings towards one another are not as easy to interpret. Because Maus is a graphic novel it portrays exactly how the characters feel about each other. Graphic novels are more personal and give the reader much more information and insight such as body language. The frustration Art was dealing with Valdek could be clearly deduced. Though both Art and Valdek love each other dearly, the long lasting effects of the holocaust continue to be prevalent in their lives. 

The Traumas of the Holocaust

Vladek passes the traumas of the Holocaust to Art through the use of guilt. Vladek holds a strong sense of survivors’ guilt from making it through the Holocaust while many of his friends and family die. His survivor guilt quickly becomes pushed onto his son, Art, through his stories and general interactions. Specifically, Vladek expresses how he is an expert at everything, which leaves Art thinking that he is inadequate and can’t compete with his father.  Art feels insufficient because his father had struggled through the Holocaust and held so many more horrific experiences.

Instead of comforting or supporting his son during his life, Vladek displays little sense of understanding or sympathy for the problems in his son’s life. Vladek lashes out at everyone, however, not just his son. These attacks can be seen as a way to cover the survivor guilt he holds from the Holocaust and the pains he feels after his wife’s suicide. Vladek also fails to recognize how his son may also be affected by the Holocaust. Art is effected as he has lost almost all of his family and in a way his absent father as a result of the Holocaust.

A graphic novel was definitely the best way to portray this story as the emotion and relationship between Vladek and Art can be better seen through images. Viewing Vladek’s experiences visually also may help the reader understand his cold disposition towards his son and his internal struggle with survivor’s guilt. Although Art did not have these experiences firsthand, he does a great job of illustrating these events from listening to his father’s stories.

Parental Perspectives

Each and every experience that we have, from the moment we are born and forward, are what shape our view of the world and form our perspective. Every struggle that we are able to overcome is a lesson learned. With this said, parents teach their children things through the knowledge that they have gained through their own personal experiences. It is clear throughout the book that Vladek has a very particular personality and that Art, though has become used to it, is still bothered by it. Though Art knows that his father's unique personality comes from his struggles that he had to experience while surviving the Holocaust, he does not think that it is an excuse for it at all. This shows that traumas of the Holocaust can be passed down from generation but not fully understood like the people who actually lived through it. As a child of two immigrants, I have learned a lot about the struggles that they had to go through to succeed in the United States, though I myself never had to go through any of those experiences myself, but I know that I will never be able to fully grasp all aspects of the lessons they learned. I am aware that the struggle of the Holocaust survivors and immigrants are not comparable because they are two extremely different experiences but I use this as an example to show that parents will always want to teach their children to see things in a certain way because of the things that they, themselves, experienced throughout their lives.

Writing this story in the format of a graphic novel was effective because of the way that it showed complete transparency. From the moment that he shared the love affair between Lucia and Vladek,  and even told us that his father explicitly asked him not to add that part in his story, we are able to trust that he is not changing anything that is being told to him to make it seem a certain way; he has no agenda. Also, the way that he narrates the story gives us the opportunity to understand the person who told the story so that we can see where the perspective is coming from which makes the reader able to get a better grasp on the story itself. 

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

How does one walk away from something like the Holocaust? When unspeakable events occur, what do the survivors do afterward? There is no real answer to these questions, but it is rarely an easy thing to do. The psychological strains of being a survivor are illustrated in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, in which Art details his father’s experiences during the Holocaust and its subsequent effects on their relationship.

Art does not have the best relationship with his parents, Vladek and Anja. Readers learn that Anja had committed suicide before the start of the novel. She appears to have suffered from clinical depression, judging from a stint in a mental institution before the war after having a breakdown and her language about life and her weariness towards it throughout the novel. Readers also learn that Vladek and Anja had a son named Richieu that did not survive the war because of an easily preventable wrong decision on their parts. Most of Vladek and Anja’s families were then exterminated in the camps. By the start of the novel, Vladek has lost most of the people he held dear in his life. He had remarried another Holocaust survivor named Mala after Anja’s death, who leaves halfway through because she cannot stand his stinginess. Vladek is characterized by being very tight-fisted with money and “radiating tension.” Scenes featuring him are often very tense as he makes those that he loves around him uncomfortable with his rather overbearing ways. His staggering thriftiness seems to be a holdover from the war, where saving any little thing could mean the difference between life and death. These characteristics about Vladek suggest that his experiences during the Holocaust have left him with a sense that those who love him are going to betray him, as so many of the ones he cared about were either killed or left. This prevents him from fully allowing himself to be loved or get to close to people like Art and Mala. Art remarks that he feels incredibly guilty being the son of Holocaust survivors, as his life was so much easier than theirs. The graphic novel format is optimal for getting the full effect of Vladek and Art’s relationship as the reader is able to see expressions and body language along with the characters. It softens the image of a rather discomforting and tragic relationship, and helps the reader to maintain a proper sense of empathy for both Vladek and Art.

Familial transmission of trauma and guilt

In Maus, it’s likely that Vladek suffered from PTSD as a result of his traumatic experiences during the Holocaust. For example, Vladek is a particularly obstinate person when it comes down to how he to spends and use things, and he still retains many of the traits that helped him survive the Holocaust, much of which drives his son and second wife crazy. One can argue that although Art did not experience or witness any of the tragic events during Holocaust, the traumatic events that his father experienced during the Holocaust had been passed down to Art in a form of guilt. In the beginning of the book, it seems that Art felt indifferent towards his dad and only wanted to talk to his father about his father’s Holocaust journey to obtain material for his book. However, as the story progressed, we see that Art begins to expressed some form of remorse for not helping his father and later survivor’s guilt after hearing his father’s traumatizing experiences during the Holocaust because on one occasion he states, “I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through!” 

By conveying his father’s story with a graphic novel rather than an ordinary novel, I believe that Art is able to effectively keep the readers more keenly aware of story and with the use of pictures and comics, Art is able to add another level of details that one could have not possibly have done using an ordinary novel alone. For example, with comics, Art is able to depict characters as different animals, which is done to help the readers quickly characterize different groups of people in his book. In another perspective, by using a graphic novel we the readers are able to seen things directly from an author’s standpoint. 

Son of a Holocaust Surviver

     There are a number of possibilities as to how guilt is passed from Vladek to Art. One reason could have been the way Vladek treated Art growing up. At the very beginning of the book the audience sees how Art's father reacts when he cries because his friends leave him behind; instead of comforting Art or simply telling him that real friends would not leave him behind he talks about a more extreme scenario from WWII. Art was only a young child when his father told him this, of course there would be many more times Vladek does this because even when Art is writing his book his father brings up how ridiculous and impractical Art's actions are compared to a how he had to live during WWII. Generally, people are likely to feel guilty or ungrateful if they complain about a small announce, such as, cold coffee and then are reminded that there are many people that are homeless. Just imagine how guilty Art when his life is being compared to Vladek's life during the Holocaust. It is also possible he feels guilt because he survived and Richieu did not. He even mentions a couple of times how he thinks that Vladek wishes Richieu were alive so he can have a better son that Art. He may feel that he is a waste of life that should have belonged to Richieu; that Richieu would have been everything he was not, instead of being a cartoonist with little compassion and tolerance for his father, Richieu would have been a businessman or physician who visited Vladek more frequently. Also, he might feel guilty because of the way he treated his mother before she committed suicide; not only does he have to deal with the idea of him being the last thing to cause her to break completely, he also has to deal with the extra guilt of Vladek going through more traumatic pain after being through the Holocaust. Another reason could be because he is pushing his father to give him detailed stories for the sake of his book, even though he does not want to do anything for his father in return. The guilt could even be a result of collective unconsciousness.
     A graphic novel was an effective way to portray this story because it allows the readers to view the events of WWII as if it happened in a glass case. It allowed the readers to "see" the memories of Vladek and observe his present life. As a result, a reader gets to see the cruelty and craziness during the war, while also seeing the affects of that chaos on the people involved even after years and years later. Also, the pictures allow the author to represent feelings or details while telling the story. For instance, in Maus II when Art is listening to the tapes of his father and he regresses to the size of a child or when all the people are trying to talk to him about his book they all wear masks on top of a human face. This allows the reader to actually see how small or childish he felt because he only cared about his book when he forced his father to tell him about WWII and that the mask on humans represent how at that particular time period things had changed from seeing people of different races as a different species to an acknowledgment of all races as human, however still recognizing there were differences because of national background. 

Like Father Like Son

I don’t know how I would handle losing my first born son and finding my wife in our bathtub with her wrists slit, in a pool of her blood. If the Holocaust wasn’t traumatizing enough, those two events alone are horrifying. Vladek obviously suffers from his past and he seems to embody his trauma by harboring very deep trust barriers with everyone, especially the people he’s closest to, Mala and Arthur. When Vladek lashes out at Mala, I see that as him lashing out at Anja more. They made it through the war, then she commits suicide and leaves him behind. I would never say that a tortured mind like her’s was being selfish by taking her life, however I would understand if Vladek harbored anger along with his grief. I suppose it could be deemed a betrayal of their marriage. I don’t think Vladek dislikes Mala as much he leads on. Similar situation with Arthur, I think Vladek resents himself for what happened with Riecheu. 

Vladek’s attitude and behavior towards his family only perpetuates the misery. His hostility and aloofness make it difficult for his wife and son to attach to him as if he were a normal husband and father. For Arthur, not having that paternal relationship can create a type of trauma during childhood. Coupled with Vladek’s experiences in the Holocaust, Arthur- who already has a tumultuous, disconnected relationship with Vladek- may experience survivor’s guilt from the perspective of not having endured the hardships Vladek and Riecheu had.

Telling the story as a graphic novel I suppose offers the reader a similar imaginary experience to what Arthur is picturing in his mind as his father recounts his experiences. Allowing us almost a voyeuristic look inside the story itself and Arthur’s life. 

War Traumas

The relationship between Vladek and his son Art seems very distant. Art does not enjoy spending time with his father because of his father’s character. The traumas of the Holocaust affected the way Vladek acts. For example, he is always rationing items, and collecting things that he will one day use. In Maus II, we see Vladek going back to the grocery store to return food that had been opened but not eaten all the way. After arguing with the manager, Vladek received six dollars worth of groceries in exchange for the food he returned.  Art was very embarrassed by his dad for acting cheap.  Vladek experienced a lot of loss in the Holocaust which in the end made him feel guilty for to having been one of the few survivors in his family. Art did not get along with his dad, but that did not stop him from feeling hurt about their relationship. Vladek felt guilty for surviving and Art felt guilty for not having gone through harsh experiences like his father, “I know this is insane, but I wish I somehow wish I had been in Aushwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through…I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did” (176).  Although the relationship between father and son was not the best, they both felt guilty. The guilt of the holocaust survival affected Art even though he wasn’t necessarily a survivor. A graphic novel is an effective way to tell the story because it helps to see the way events happen. When reading a novel one often pictures in their head the way they see the events occurring. Graphic novels allow the reader to have a face associated with a character. With a graphic novel, you get the author’s interpretation of events, which makes the story a lot more interesting and believable.   Also, with the pictures the author’s point is interpreted directly, there is no confusion since one is able to see exactly how things occurred.

Traumas of the War

In The Complete Maus, Vladek’s trauma from the Holocaust is passed on to his son, Art. Throughout the book Vladek tells many stories about the horrors of the war and his struggle to survive. The stories that he tells give the reader an insight to why Vladek acts the way he does. The war has conditioned him to hoard things because they might come in handy later. For example, when Vladek is walking in the streets with Art, he picks up the wire and says that he can use it for tying things. Art responds by telling Vladek, “You always pick up trash! Can’t you just buy wire?” Throughout the novel, the audience sees how aggravated he gets with his father. The story suggests that Art and Vladek didn’t have a good relationship possibly due to the fact that Vladek has psychological damage due to the war, which affects how he interacts with Art. This graphic novel is an effective way to tell a war story because it’s a war story not told by a survivor but by a survivor’s son. This novel shows how the traumas of war can be passed on from father to son. Even though Art didn’t experience the war, he feels the affect of it because of the stuff his father has to deal with after the war. The guilt that Vladek feels is something that even Art has to deal with. The struggle Vladek has is due to the fact that he lost his wife and son and basically the rest of his family. I really enjoyed this book because it was an interesting way of writing a war story with a twist.