Guilt is a feeling often associated with wrongdoing. I felt guilty whenever I wasn’t doing my homework over reading week. I feel guilty when I don’t talk on the phone with my sister at our regularly scheduled time. I feel guilty when I choose taking time for myself rather than doing things for other people. Guilt is important. It helps us be critical of our own actions and make better decisions in the future.
But… Guilt is debilitating. It can last for so long. Ultimately, feeling guilty should help us improve in the future, right? Right. However, sometimes, guilt can go too far. It goes beyond helping us and can actually make things worse.
An example of someone overwhelmed with guilt is Art Spiegelman in his comic MAUS. This graphic memoir is a personal account of Spiegelman uncovering the experiences of his father, Vladek, as a victim of the Holocaust.
Throughout the comic, Spiegelman conveys his own personal guilt in three particular ways- regarding his mother’s suicide, not being a firsthand survivor of the Holocaust, and the fact that he is profiting from selling his father’s story. In this blog, I am going to focus on a particular scene where Spiegelman shows us one of his past works about his mother’s suicide. To me, this scene is seeping with guilt, with emotion. While reading it, I feel guilty.
In this scene, he recalls the last time he saw his mother. She came into his room at night and asked him, “… Artie… you… still… love…. me… don’t you?…” (103) An insensitive Artie responds reluctantly and unconvincingly that he does love her. Artie is ashamed that this was his last interaction with his mother. He believes that he was in part at fault for her suicide.
Throughout the scene, Artie is constantly imagining others blaming him for his mother’s death. The text is filled with contrasted white and black stripes giving the impression of a prisoner’s uniform. Artie himself is in a uniform- starting and ending the scene in a jail cell. This allusion to prison- along with the thick, bold words on the pages- gives off an oozing image of guilt.
My grandpa’s mother, like Artie’s, took her life. My grandpa never talks about it, but I can see how it has had lasting effects on his life. My grandpa is an overachiever- and he talks about it a lot. He was the first person in his family to go to university, coming from a small town in the interior of BC. Despite barely scraping by financially in Vancouver, he managed to consistently be the top of his class in business school at UBC. He often tells us, his grandkids, stories about his success. I think the reason he does this is because he thought he was never good enough for his mom, and that’s why she killed himself. He has learned to emphasize his worth. His value. Why he is worth staying alive for.
It makes me really sad writing about my grandpa’s story. I think he is an incredible man who has done amazing things. He is a great grandpa and really emphasizes the role of family. However, I don’t think that he was born with the “bragging” trait because I don’t see that trait in my dad, my aunt, my sisters, my cousins, or me. I think he developed it as coping strategy for this tragic event that happened when he was 10 years old.
I see Artie’s storytelling in Maus as a similar strategy for dealing with guilt. We tell ourselves stories to justify our feelings or to trick ourselves into thinking something else. My grandpa was probably told a story that it was partly his fault for his mother killing herself. Perhaps this story was never explicitly said, but this was how he interpreted the situation. He turned this story around, and began to tell stories of how great he is to cover up the other one. By now, almost 70 years after his mother’s death, perhaps he now believes this new, more positive narrative. Or maybe he’ll never be able to rid himself of guilt.
Artie on the other hand, seems to be portraying his guilt through stories representing reality. By admitting his guilt and broadcasting this story to the world, does it reverse the guilt he is feeling? I think that is what he is attempting to do. Artie is telling himself a story about his guilt very visibly because he has written it down. He must have thought a lot about placing his feelings of guilt so plainly in Maus. His version of covering up his guilt story is by saying his story so explicitly that it “erases” any guilt he should feel.
Of course, both my grandpa and Artie cannot “erase” the guilt they feel about their mothers’ suicides. It will remain a significant, traumatic event and affect them for the rest of their lives.
To conclude, guilt can be a very long-term feeling. Overcoming guilt is no easy feat. Suicide is a particularly sticky and exceptionally sad topic. We like to place blame on people to understand the tragic event and reach justice. However, this has extremely long-lasting negative effects, especially on children. I cannot begin to imagine the hurt felt by children who lose their parents to suicide. I think their guilt is charged and sustained by this awful hurting.
To go back to my first sentence about guilt being associated with wrongdoing. Guilt does not equate to having done wrong. Guilt can sometimes be adopted without any relationship to wrongdoing, like in the case of my grandpa. My grandpa was a kid when his mother died. There’s no way he is at fault for her death.
Instead of finding fault and wrongfully making people feel guilty, we should focus our energy on the real problem- suicide and depression.
Post Blog Note
Check out https://crisiscentre.bc.ca to chat online or on the phone if you’re needing support. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of harming themselves, call 911.
