The repression of memories is a common occurrence for the human brain when it comes to terrible memories. While this event is rare, humans will still tend to shy away from bad memories, mainly by refusing to talk about them. This idea of hiding from the past is demonstrated in both the comic book Maus by Art Spiegelman and the novel Oxherding Tale by Charles Johnson. In Maus, Vladek is a survivor of the Holocaust, who he tries to block it from his memory. He often claims that no one needs or wants to hear about it, as if it was not a big event in his life, despite its most likely being the defining moment of his life. It is only when his son, Artie, wishes to write a novel about him that he looks into his part, but even then it is guarded.…show more content… The Holocaust is one of the worst events in human history, and the worst event in recent history. During the Holocaust, up to twelve million people were mass murdered, while millions more were sent to work at death camps. The horror of this event makes it understandable why survivors would look to avoid the subject. In the comic book Maus, Art Spiegelman tells the story about how he asked for his father, Vladek, to tell him the story of being a survivor and what his father’s story was. At the beginning of the novel Art is aware that his father and mother, who has since died, both lived through the Holocaust and went to the death camps, but not much more. However, desperate for a story to write, Art tries to pry the tale from his father. The immediate reaction of his father is that the idea is dumb and that no one wants to hear about his story. Vladek acts as if the Holocaust was not impactful or important in his life in any way. The fact is that this cannot be true, before even hearing Vladek’s story the reader knows that the Holocaust was impactful on…show more content… The concept of being reduced to property and having another human control every aspect of your life is truly terrifying. In Oxherding Tale, Andrew began his life as a slave, but due to his light complexion, he was eventually able to escape and pretend to be a white citizen. He quickly assimilated himself in the white community and attempted to remove his oppressive past from his memory. He was managing to do this well until he saw his old lover from when he was a slave, Minty, for sale and looking incredibly sickly. This causes the memories and feelings from his time as a slave to make him feel as if he is missing part of himself. This demonstrates that Andrew not only represses the memories of his past not only because they were terrible, but because thinking of them would cause him to have an identity crisis. The reason Andrew’s situation differs from Vladek’s is because Andrew is pretending to be something he is not, causing him to sacrifice part of himself. This means when the past comes back to him, especially in a way as strong as a past love, the piece of him that is missing becomes apparent, resulting in him to panic about his identity. Luckily for Andrew, he has a revelation with the Soulcatcher that helps him recreate his sense of identity. This shows that while Andrew is happier as a free white person than as a slave, but he feels incomplete and in order to prevent this feeling
