In Art Spiegelman's “Maus II” a series of three panels helps encapsulate a continuous theme throughout the two-part story. In these panels Artie and Francoise are in the car, driving to assist Artie's father who has just been left by his second wife. In the car Artie states that “I never felt bad for Richieu. But I had nightmares about the SS coming into my classroom… I wish I had been to Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they experienced” (16). Artie struggles with his relationship with his father, the death of his mother, his ghost brother, and trying to recreate the Holocaust in a comic book. All of these struggles tie back to his lack of common experience. He knows that because of the difference in their background, the difference in their upbringing, in many ways he is distant from his family, people he can't seem to fully understand. The series of panels mentioned earlier, along with the highlighted dialogue, capture Artie's inability to connect with his family and their history due to a significant difference in the lack of a shared history. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The Holocaust, for Artie, was something horrible and unfathomable that his parents had experienced and lived through. This part of his family history is not an element of life that connects him to his parents through lineage, but creates a gap in their relationship. He often worries that he doesn't fully understand their experiences, as he did in the car with his wife. Artie in asking his father about his story is attempting to understand, he wants to be able to capture his father's survival, his family's survival, and subsequently himself, in his art. However, many times throughout the graphic novel Artie reveals his desperation at failing in his task. Even after the publication of his first graphic novel about his father's story, Artie fears that he has captured his father inappropriately and that the work will never do justice to the experience. Additionally, Artie blames his father's personality on the Holocaust. His father is a miser with money, willing to live on almost nothing. He is demanding, crude and judgmental. As a reason behind his personality Artie states that his father's past shaped this character in him. That the Holocaust is the reason he won't throw anything away and won't do anything with the money except save it. He believes that the Holocaust is the reason his father is so grumpy, that surely his attitude is the product of his hard life. His father experienced a death trap, Artie can never live up to that, and he can never be as skilled as his father. This is what Artie believes, what he thinks, what keeps him at arm's length from his father. His lack of a shared history, his inability to experience the Holocaust push him to create a world in which he and his father cannot coexist in mutual understanding. In the car with his wife, Artie talks about his ghost brother and the impact he had on him. his life. Richieu was the first child, the boy who experienced the Holocaust, the boy who did not survive the Holocaust. His parents love the image of this son. They remember the memory of their son as the perfect boy he was. This perfection plagues Arties. He feels like he is constantly competing with a ghost for his parents' approval. His brother was only five or six years old when he died, which allowed him to be the image of perfection for his parents. Richieu wouldn't have chosen the life Artie had chosen,/10.1080/10408340308518311)