I'd rather not hear all that again. Art's attempt to deal with his family's history is portrayed in several ways throughout the work. While chapter one depicts Vladek in mouse form arriving and struggling to survive at the concentration camp, chapter two depicts Art struggling cope with the very real horror's of Auschwitz. Through a series of panels, Art is shown shrinking in his chair from the media's questions until he is finally the size of a child. In this diminished form Art goes to see his psychiatrist, Pavel.
Art is shown gradually reverting back to adult size.
However, on the next page when Art returns to his father's tapes, he quickly shrinks again. Thus in a very visual way Spiegelman represents how he himself felt diminished by his father's tale. This competition was felt despite the fact that Richelu was rarely talked about and that his main presence was a blurry photo in Vladek's bedroom. Though Maus is really the story of Vladek and Art, it does offer glimpses into how other survivors dealt with the holocaust as well. Unlike the survivors featured in the Cyber Library of the Holocaust , none of the survivors in Spiegelman's work find it necessary to tell their story as part of the healing process.