Discuss how the trauma that Art Speigelman's father experienced in the Holocaust trickled down into Art's life as the son of a Holocaust survivor.

In the beginning of Maus, it depicts a young Art Spiegelman skating with friends. As he is passing his house he trips and falls, and his friends leave him behind. He goes up to his father and they begin to talk. After Art explains what happened his father replies "Put them in a room together for ten days with no food, then you'll see who the real friends are." Would you hear this from just any father? No. Only someone who has been through a traumatic event, such as the Holocaust. Another thing the book details is Vladek's miserly outlook on life. It is explained that he wasn't like that before the camps, and therefore it must have been the camps that changed him. Auschwitz set Vladek on a path where if he didn't conserve various things he would be killed. This affected Art's life in the way that he grew up with a father who would do anything to survive and a father who had been traumatized horribly in the camps.