On page
109 in the first book of Maus, Vladek tells Artie the story of how his first
Son, Richieu, dies. His sister in law, Tosha, poisons herself, Richieu, and her
two other children when she hears they will be taken to Auschwitz. The row of panels
shown below illustrates Tosha’s difficult decision. The entire background is black
and as the panel proceeds from right to left the image of Tosha enlarges in
each frame. It is like a dramatic close up seen in movies. The focus is completely
on Tosha in order to emphasize the drastic decision she is making. It is not
only the final decision of his life, but also the most important. Her legacy is
defined by this difficult final decision in life. The focus on Tosha also
represents her power in the situation, because she doesn’t allow the Nazi’s to
take complete control of her and her children’s live. The Nazis want to
torture, exploit, and kill the Jews themselves, but they fail when it comes to
Tosha. For this reason, people may view Tosha’s choice as wise because she didn’t
allow for the Nazis to torture and kill her and her children. However, there is
a sad irony accompanying Tosha’s power. Her action that exerted her power was
done out of fear of the more powerful Nazis. The sweat that is seen on her head
represents the paranoia and terror she and every Jew was burdened with. Sweat
originates inside you, but it finds its way to affect the outside of a human
body. Thoughts and emotions are similar
to sweat because the abstractly reside inside a human but their effect is shown
through visible human action. Fear is the emotion that controls Tosha’s final
action: the merciful murder of herself and children. Extreme fear is not an
emotion unique only to Tosha during the Holocaust. Her paranoia serves as a
representation of all of the Jews during this dark time, and the horrible
decisions they shouldn’t have had to make.
