Samrah's Stories

  At first, I thought this book was going to be another history book with some images. However, after I started reading, I began to enjoy it a lot and I ended up having a lot of fun reading this book. It has been a long time since I’ve read a graphic novel, and it was refreshing to read one again. Originally, I didn’t think much about to because like many others, I believed I had outgrown comics. Yet this book definitely changed my perspective, this book had countless deep meanings, and told a tragic story about the holocaust. I never really learned much about the holocaust and the toll it took on people, so a book with detailed images helped me get a good grasp on the atrocities Germany committed. Spiegelman did a great job in conveying Vladek’s detailed backstory as he trudges through tragic events in the holocaust barely scraping through each day. Every single battle he fights, whether it be physiological, mental, physical, all seem so real, even though he portrays everybody as an

  Through the book we have been seeing recollections of Vladek’s trauma and how it has evolved into generational trauma that seeps into Artie’s life. On countless occasions we see actions Vladek does, and symbols around him that allude to him surviving the troubling time of World War II, and how even to this day he can’t shake this off. An example of this is when Vladek picks up a broken telephone wire while Arite comments “You always pick up junk” (116). Spiegelman purposely does this to allude to the trauma Vladek had to adopt during his time hiding from the Nazis. While this scene happens, just a few pages back we see Vladek hiding from the nazis while practically starving to death.   His time during the war forced him to adopt this trauma that he can’t ever shake off. Similarly, we can see Vladek working with nails and other objects in the garage (98) keeping it organized because “It’s always something here I must do”. We see him constantly trying to fix the house to keep himself