Finality of Maus

To me, the last page of Maus represented mixed feelings. In the panel where Anja and Vladek hug, the reader feels happy and relieved that both survived and were reunited after the war. Vladek and Anja are shown in the middle of a white spot while their surroundings are dark. This image ties back to the cover of the first volume of Maus in which the Nazis were shown in the white spotlight while the Jews were pushed aside into the darkness and shadows. After Anja and Vladek survived the war and the Nazis surrendered, the Nazis were no more in the spotlight and the Jews were able to return back into the spotlight; they weren’t being oppressed or in the shadows anymore. Anja and Vladek won against the Nazis.

In the same panel, Vladek narrates that both of them were very happy to be reunited and that both of them “lived happily ever after” (Spiegelman). However, both Anja and Vladek still had personal struggles that took away from their individual happiness. Vladek was still not able to forget the war and often suffered from survivor’s guilt and flashbacks of the war’s graphic images. Anja suffered from depression and eventually committed suicide. In Volume 1, Art illustrates a separate comic book in which image describes the death of his mother. He illustrates the doctor with having an appearance similar to that of Hitler. In a way, Art was holding Hitler responsible for his mother’s death as he likely broke Anja mentally and emotionally. Though Anja and Vladek survived one of the toughest parts of their lives, they were still haunted by the images of war that took away from their happiness years later.

In the final panel, Vladek calls Art his other son’s name: Richieu. Vladek is unable to forget Richieu as he was his first son who died in the war. Vladek attributes more pain with the war because he not only witnessed gruesome crimes at Auschwitz, but he lost his son. Perhaps another reason he refers to Art as Richieu is because he is guilty that he survived the war while Richieu didn’t.

The gravestone symbolizes how Art is finally able to understand a fraction of the reason his father behaved the way he did and finally accepts and experiences closure with the inter-generational guilt and trauma he experiences throughout the novel.

Although the last page of Maus brings some things in full-circle, a lot of it has no sense of finality.