I agree with the majority of the posts that point to this graphic novel as an unappealing set of characters held hostage in a mind-numbing emotional and cultural miasma. However, there’s a lot of decoding to be done here, much of it linguistic and psychological.
One point I’d like to bring up is the “human capacity to survive and adapt… [that goes beyond a person’s ability to contain the “memory of one particular event [that] comes to taint all other experiences, spoiling appreciation of the present.” Kolk, McFarlane, and Weisaeth discussed this in the “Traumatic Stress” article we read for Maus I. The authors conclude that extreme trauma is not necessarily indicative of a severe and prolonged psychological or biological response, what we now commonly refer to as PTSD.
Some individuals can integrate the damage into their lives without focusing their lives on the trauma and replaying it in their minds.
To me, knowing this assessment – that some people get over the same or worse damage as another person, puts a great deal of stress on the individual to deal with the suffering and get over it.
In a yellow-washed section of the book, towards the end, we hear a balding man with university degree on the wall behind him explain SSRI’s effect on neurotransmitters on the brain during pharmacological treatment. Does he complete this therapy? Does Santiago see this as a possible answer?
Omar appears to be survivor of childhood sexual abuse who was confused between fear and enjoyment, and was never able to sort out his feelings. Is Omar the individual who continues to relive the trauma?
In this respect, I think Santiago’s work succeeds as semi-autobiographical fiction. Omar drinks every day, he is insecure, he is obese, his personal relationships are shallow, and he dulls his conscious with full time television whenever he is alone. Yet, he is inventing his own strategy to deal with his depression. His nature of trying to survive even is his ‘nurture’ doesn’t have a clue.