The Experience of Maus The experience of being in the Holocaust is difficult to imagine. The physical pain and fear felt by a Holocaust survivor could never be fully understood by anyone other than another survivor. The children of survivors may not feel the physical pain and agony like their parents, but they do feel the psychological effects. Because of this, Artie and his father were never able to connect. The Holocaust built a wall between them that was difficult to scale. Artie tries to overcome the wall between him and his father by writing the comic strip Maus about his father's life in hopes of becoming closer to him and understanding him better, but he has difficulty looking beyond the habits picky and the hypocritical attitude of her father. Artie's father, Valdek, as he knew him growing up, was a miser. He was stingy with money, food, matches and even toothpicks. All the food on her plate had to be eaten, otherwise it would be served to her the next night and the night after that until she was gone. Valdek's obsessive behavior of not wasting anything aggravated Artie to no end. "He takes paper towels from the bathroom so he doesn't have to buy napkins or tissues," Artie told his mother-in-law. Once, Artie used an extra match and Valdek yelled at him for his waste. His life could never compare to Valdeks' harshness, and that bothered Artie. At the very beginning of the story, Artie is crying because his friends are leaving him when he falls off his skates and his father tells him, "If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, you'll see what it's like." . , friends!" Everything relates to the Holocaust for Valdek and this makes Artie feel guilty for not having had such a hard life and for this feeling of guilt, Artie becomes angry and moves away from his father . In Maus II, Artie talks to his therapist and confides in him: "I especially remember arguing with him and being told that I couldn't do anything as well as him. Such bitterness." built up inside him, further creating the wall between him and his father; it also created a wall between him and his past Artie's fathers' annoying habits somewhat lead to Artie's bad habits. a chain smoker. This relieves his tension. He is almost always seen lighting a cigarette when talking with his father. One scene in the story that really encouraged Artie to smoke was the event where Artie's wife. picked up a black hitchhiker. This really disturbed Valdek. He considered all black people to be thieves. Artie's wife, François, barked exactly what Artie was thinking: "This is outrageous! How can you, among other things, be so racist! You talk about black people like the Nazis talked about Jews!" Artie just glared at him, as if his wife was taking the words out of his mouth and grabbed a cigarette to calm his nerves. Valdek's obsessive acts of saving and having everything in its place were almost all Artie could stand, let alone his hypercritical attitude. Years and years of this have piled up on Artie. Perhaps this is the main reason why he was sent to the state psychiatric hospital. Shortly after returning from the hospital, his mother committed suicide. He was expected to take care of his father, who not only lost his wife, but also the person with whom he had shared the experience of the Holocaust and that was something he could not handle because he didn't understand it. To cope with his mother's suicide, Artie created the comic strip Prisoner on the Hell Planet, which allowed him to express and.