He had almost no control in the camps.

He was forced to do specific jobs, wear specific clothes, and go to specific places. This causes him to constantly want to do things himself after the camps.

EXAMPLES OF VLADEK’S CONTROLLINGNESS

-He climbs up on the roof to fix a drain pipe instead of calling a handyman to do it. He knew he was not in the shape to be doing something like that, but he still did it and got dizzy.

-Vladek refuses to get prescriptions from doctors because he does not trust them and believes they only give him junk food. He insists on putting his own vitamin and pill regimen together rather than getting a prescription from a doctor.

HE ALSO BECOMES CONTROLLING OF OTHERS.

-He threw out Art’s coat without telling him, even though Art is thirty years old and can decide for himself what clothes he wears.

OCD: anxiety disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts and behaviors that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over

EXAMPLES IN VLADEK

Pill Counting: Vladek counts the pills he takes for his heart and diabetes (obsession) every single day (repetition).

Bothered by Filth: Art drops cigarette ashes on the carpet and it causes Vladek to get upset. He compares the filth to a stable, which relates to how he felt dehumanized as a prisoner, so he keeps his house clean, unlike the dirty, overcrowded camps he was trapped in, to avoid feeling like that ever again.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml

PTSD: a disorder that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event.

Symptoms: may include irritability and flashbacks

The cause of Vladek’s PTSD: While in the camps, Vladek could never relax and was always anticipating what could happen next. This anxiety carried on to present time in Maus.

Vladek’s Flashback: Art tells him that his friends left him alone after he fell. Vladek is triggered and brings up being locked in a room with no food for a week with your “friends.” This is something that he actually went through while he was a prisoner; does it seem like that was a pleasant experience? Definitely not, by the mocking way in which he said it.

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd

https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/posttraumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/symptoms

He may have physically escaped the camps, but he was mentally trapped for the rest of his life.P

Being a survivor of the Holocaust had major psychological effects on Vladek.

Vladek appreciates food more than he did before the Holocaust.

The cause: Vladek had minimal food and water in the camps. He got watery soup and/or stale bread in portions just enough to keep him alive.

Vladek was intelligent and hid bread under his pillow when he was sick. Then, he traded it with another prisoner in exchange for help walking to a train because he was too weak to walk himself.

This saved his life.

In present time, he does not waste a single crumb. Vladek even returns an almost empty box of cereal to a grocery store!!! He always makes Art eat every single thing off of his plate, or he would save it and serve it over and over again until Art would eat it or starve.

Food is way more valuable to Vladek after the camps because he realizes how difficult it was to obtain it beforehand.

You all have probably went through something challenging in your life and it effected you in some way- for better or worse. People who survived the Holocaust witnessed many horrifying events and most likely lost some, if not all, of their friends and family.

Going through something this traumatic will effect you tremendously, even in the aftermath of it.

Vladek Spiegelman is just one out of thousands of survivors to struggle with psychological effects in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

WELCOME TO THE BLOG

Here I will give you my thoughts and information I have researched about a topic in the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. 

I will be writing about the author’s dad, Vladek, who is a survivor of the Holocaust. Some of his experiences in the past caused a change in the type of person that he is.

I look forward to exploring this topic with you! We will walk through it together.