Artie's emotional Comic

In Art Spiegalman’s story Maus, the author tells the story of a mouse Arthur and his father’s experiences in the holocaust as repeated to him by his father.  His father tells him how he lived through wartime and the era of the Nazi’s and all the challenges that he endured as his son takes notes in order to create a comic he hopes to sell about the suffering faces by Jew’s during that historical period. During his father’s stories however, there generally seems to be a rift in tone between Arthur himself and his Father. At points it seems as if both of them are each on their own extremes as far as what they want out of their conversations with each other, where Arthur seems to simply want a story, and his Father seems to need company and someone to talk to. However much more of Arthur’s emotional side is revealed when his old comic “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” is found by his Father and Mala. As the comic is shown to the reader, it reveals the struggles that a character (seemingly portraying him) faces when having to cope with his mother’s suicide. This comic is very insightful to the character of Arthur himself in the story as it shows that despite the attitude that he takes on in front of his father, that he feels immense guilt at the death of his mother due to how he treated her the night before, as he stated he “Turned away, resentful of the way she tightened the umbilical cord,” and also how in his comic the voices in his head were given life under the form of other people that told him how it was “His fault” and how he “Had better cried while your mother was still alive.”