Parental Relationships and History

Relationships are often predicated on the historical context of human interaction. The Reader and Maus are stories about the way in which generational conflict is associated with the past. They also deal with the idea that exploration of cultural history introduces feelings of shame, guilt and blame. Artie of Maus is constantly in friction with the life he might have lived as a Jew in an anti-Semitic world and the one he lives as the …

…situations are quite different. The descendants of perpetrators try to run from the past by placing blame and forcing guilt on others, while victims tend to cling to the past by passing their guilt to ensure that their descendants do not take the past as well as the present forgranted. Over time past tragedies develop a distinct dynamic such that a faint cloud of guilt hovers all that try empathize with the history of man.