Quote 4
“But POP – It’s great material. It makes everything more REAL – more human. I want to tell YOUR story, the way it really happened.” (I.1.25)
Taking down his father’s memories and recreating them on the page may not just be a concern with artistic realism, but Art’s own attempt to connect with his father on a deeper level.
Quote 5
“WAIT! Please, Dad, if you don’t keep your story chronological, I’ll never get it straight.” (I.4.84)
By editing his father in this way, we lose some of the “real”-ness that Art wanted in Quote #2. We lose his father’s unique perspective, his unique way of dealing with his past.
Quote 6
“You always pick up trash! Can’t you just buy wire” (I.5.118)
Vladek’s obsessive hoarding is similar in some ways to the work of recovering his memories and, more generally, the work of collecting Holocaust testimony. Vladek’s story is just one individual’s story, easily overlooked when history deals with the “great men” – Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler. But collecting these individual stories are critical to our understanding of the Holocaust.