The reoccurring question that comes up in Art Speigelman's Maus II is, "Why all the detail about his interactions with his father?" He could just as easily have written exclusively about the horrors and harrowing escapes made by his father at the Holocaust, and he would have still created a truly great account of the tragedy. But by the time starts us on Maus II, the vivid stories of the Holocaust begin to appear secondary to his on-going struggle to carry-on a functional, healthy relationship with his father.
Spiegelman begins to expel so much time on his relationship with his father that the reader begins to wonder what is going on here with our author. In the early goings of the second Maus volume, he takes us to one of his actual therapy sessions. Ironically, things come full circle and by the end of the book, the written and drawn pages begin to resemble a session of therapy.
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I think it was an attempt to humanize his characters for both the readers and himself. Ironically though, he made his characters animals; perhaps to distance himself from the realization (read guilt) of what these people went through. Very interesting thoughts.
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