Identifying is experiencing
Vladeks personality has definitely been shaped by his experiences in the holocaust, especially his resourcefulness and how frugal he is. Vladek's business man work ethic is what helped him survive the holocaust and how good he was at saving everything he got his hands on. This has carried over to his modern life with his family, who sees him as cheap. Vladek loves Art he just does not realize that comparing Art to his dead son Richieu is destroying him and Art's relationship. Richeiu died when he was a toddler, leaving Vladek and Anja to speculate how great he could have been. Vladeks last words to Art involve calling him Richieu which was a final stand that showed the reader that Vladek was still living in the past. The opinion I got from Art is that he is very selfish, he wants his father to have to remember and retell these horrific stories from the holocaust but he does not want to care for Vladek when he is ill or in the hospital. Art is hurt by Vladek's comparisons to Richieu and probably feels like he is never good enough in his fathers eyes. Art was also very affected by the suicide of his mother in 1968, it left a big hole in his life that was never filled especially because Vladek destroyed all of Anja's diaries from the war. The reader can tell that Art has a high admiration for Vladek's survival of the holocaust but gets very frustrated with how cheap his father is. One can almost say that Art feels guilty his parents personalities were shaped so much by their time in Auschwitz and that his brother died but he had it so easy.
Honestly, it really does not matter if the reader agrees or identifies with any of these characters. I feel as though you cannot understand unless you were there in Auschwitz too and lived the same experiences. We can watch documentaries about the holocaust and read books but actually being there for a few years and surviving when all your loved ones and neighbors have died will definitely leave a strain of guilt on a person. Especially because back then there was not the same type of therapy and reintegration that people would have access to today if they were in a human rights crisis like the holocaust.
