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Summary
The next time Artie visits, Mala tells him that Vladek’s temper and tight-fistedness make her feel like she’s living in prison. Artie is uncomfortable with the conversation but agrees that his father is too concerned with money. Artie suggests the war made Vladek so reluctant to spend money, but Mala argues that she and their friends who also survived are not the same as Vladek. Artie worries that he is depicting Vladek as the stereotype of a “miserly old Jew.” Artie shows Mala and Vladek the progress he’s made on the comic so far, and both of them think the book will be successful and important. Artie follows Vladek to the garden to hear more of the story.
In 1944, Vladek and Anja walk back to Sosnowiec, where their Polish friends and acquaintances, including Richieu’s old governess, deny their pleas for refuge. At the local black market, Vladek trades jewelry for food and money, and hears about a nearby farm where he and Anja might be able to secure lodging. The farm is owned by a woman named Kawka, who lets them stay in her barn.
Vladek travels regularly into town, and he uses the streetcar reserved for Germans and officials, instead of the car for Poles, because his confidence makes it easier to hide there. At the black market, Vladek meets Mrs. Motonowa, a Pole who lives twenty kilometers outside of town. She invites him and Anja to stay with her and her son. Vladek pays Mrs. Motonowa to keep them safe and also pays for the food they eat. When Mrs. Motonowa’s husband returns home from working abroad, they’re forced to hide in the rat-infested cellar for ten days with little food.
After nearly being found out multiple times, Vladek hears about smugglers who help Jews escape to Hungary and decides to find out more. He runs into a family that he used to know, and their nephew Abraham announces that he will attempt to travel with the smugglers first, then send a letter to his family if he arrives safely.
While waiting to hear from Abraham, Vladek goes to visit his cousin Miloch, who is hiding in a trash pit. Vladek tells Miloch that he’s going to Hungary and recommends that Miloch consider Mrs. Motonowa’s home as an alternate hiding place.
Abraham sends a letter in Yiddish to his family, alerting them to his safe arrival in Hungary. Seeing this, Vladek convinces Anja to join him in leaving with the smugglers. She agrees, but the smugglers betray them, and they’re arrested by the Gestapo outside of Bielsko. They’re taken to Auschwitz, where Vladek and Anja know that Jews are being gassed and thrown into ovens.
Back in the present day, Vladek admits to Artie that he destroyed all of Anja’s notebooks because they brought back painful memories. Enraged, Artie calls his father a murderer. Vladek scolds his son for being disrespectful, but Artie leaves, still muttering “murderer” under his breath.
Analysis
As Maus progresses, Artie’s depiction of his artistic process suggests that all history is subjective. The frame story’s discussion of Artie’s creative process highlights that the graphic novel itself is a work of art, not simply a factual history. In this chapter, Artie shows working pages of Maus to Vladek and Mala, who both compliment him on the work, and he depicts himself running off to get a pen to write things down before he forgets them. Maus depicts its own creation in these pages, allowing us to see what is required to create a work of history. But this is not a straightforward history, as demonstrated most clearly by human characters being drawn as animals. Though based on Vladek’s personal history, the story that we read is ultimately an artistic creation that has been filtered through Artie as its author. Artie actively questions his own artistic decisions, commenting that he is worried about presenting his father as a “racist caricature” but wanting, also, to present an accurate portrait of his father. Ultimately, the history and story presented in Maus includes the details that Artie chooses to include. Maus suggests that writing history is not simply a matter of recording facts but instead an act of interpretation. In other words, there is no such thing as an objective history.
As Vladek and Artie sit down to return to Vladek’s story, the comic book structure highlights the way the past continues to shape the present. On one page, Artie and Vladek sit in the garden on opposite ends of the page from each other without a black frame around them. Between them is a framed panel that shows Vladek and Anja walking toward Sosnowiec. As in past chapters, the present scene is drawn without borders and the past is framed. This suggests that the action happening in the past is a creation, like a piece of art hanging in a frame. But its position between Artie and Vladek illustrates how the events of World War II and the Holocaust stand between them, preventing connection. The Holocaust’s effects continue in the present in the way they prevent a closer father-son relationship between Vladek and Artie.
As Anja and Vladek continue to hide from the Gestapo, the role of disguise and masking grows more important. After arriving in Sosnowiec, Vladek is worried about Anja’s ability to hide because “you could see more easy she was Jewish.” One panel shows both Anja and Vladek wearing pig masks, but Anja’s mouse tail sticks out from under her coat, giving away her identity as a Jewish person. Anja’s ability to mask her identity is also compromised by her nervous temperament. Vladek demonstrates his confidence in his own disguise multiple times. He rides the streetcar for Germans and officials because he knows he is less likely to be questioned there. No one would believe a Jewish person would be bold enough to sneak into the streetcar for Nazis. Further, when children point and call him a Jew, he does not run away but instead walks directly to them. Vladek wears his confidence as part of his disguise because he believes acting scared will give away his true identity. Throughout their time hiding in Sosnowiec, however, Anja is so nervous she literally shakes, further compromising her already shaky disguise.
Chapter Six demonstrates the complex interplay between luck, kindness, and money when it comes to survival. Vladek and Anja are lucky in that they are not recognized as Jews the many times they walk through Sosnowiec. But equally important to their survival is the kindness of Mrs. Motonowa and the money Vladek pays her. Mrs. Motonowa appears to offer Vladek and Anja a place to stay out of the kindness of her heart. But she also knows Vladek from the black market, where he has money to buy goods from her. Vladek says directly that of course he paid her to keep Anja and him safe. Vladek sees no problem with this arrangement because Mrs. Motonowa also had to survive and protect her own son.
In Chapter Six we also learn that Anja’s diaries, which stand in symbolically for Anja the person, have been destroyed. Artie calls Vladek a “murderer” when Vladek admits that he burned the diaries after her suicide because he found them too painful. In this scene, Artie interprets the destruction of Anja’s diaries symbolically as an act of murder. Vladek says that one sentence he remembers from the diaries indicated that Anja hoped Artie would find them interesting. Thus, Vladek’s destruction of the diaries destroyed Artie’s inheritance from Anja. The pain of the Holocaust continues to haunt both Vladek and Artie, proving that pain is an enduring inheritance.
