Survival
"No darling! To die, it's easy...but you have to struggle for life! Until the last moment we must struggle together! I need you! And you'll see that together we'll survive." (Speigelman, MAUS I,122) Valdek says these words to Anja, after they have found out about Richieu's death and she decides she wants to die. The sentiment they reflect is one that is present throughout MAUS, the need to believe in something and struggle for survival. Anja is not as strong as Valdek and he knows that she needs help in order to survive the bad times that they must endure. His experiences during the war are different that hers, and he is constantly looking for ways to lighten her burden. Art is always particularly upset in his conversations with his father that Valdek destroyed Anja's diaries. Art feels that these would provide a balance that his story lacks. Anja and Valdek survived in different ways, but they are both survivors.
In a session with his therapist, Art discusses how he feels about his father and the fact that he survived Auschwitz.
"So, do you admire you're father for surviving?
Well, sure. I know there was a lot of Luck involved, but he was amazingly presentminded and resourceful.
Then you think it is admirable to survive. Does that mean it's not admirable not to survive?
...I-I think I see what you mean. It's as if life equals winning, so death equals losing.
Yes, Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn't the BEST people who survived, nor did the best ones die. It was RANDOM!" (II.45)
The role of luck in survival is presented repeatedly in MAUS. Over and over Valdek tells Art, "I was very lucky to get such goodies!"(I.156), or "Nobody looked and I sat lucky the whole selektion."(II.67) As Valdek's persistent use of the word luck indicates, it was random that he and Anja survived as opposed to all those who died. He was resourceful, but in the end that alone would not have saved him. Valdek made the right choices at the right time and had the necessary skills to take advantage of situations. For instance if he had not been able to make shoes, he may have been taken to another camps much earlier than he was. In the same sense, he would not have been able to bring Anja into the barracks close beside him.
Anja's survival was different than Valdek's in that she did not have his special talents. Luck played a role in her survival as well. When Art asks his father how Anja survived, Valdek replies, "Mancie- the Hungarian girl what I knew there in Auschwitz-she kept Anja close by to her."(II.104) If they had never met Mancie, or she had been callous like so many others, Anja may not have survived. Mancie kept watch over her and brought her through to safety. Anja was weak and her survival differed from Valdek's. Even after the war she could not put the pain of losing her child and family behind her. While she and Valdek both made it through the war, only Valdek could find a life for himself once it was over. Anja raised another son, and tried to go on, but sometimes even the guilt of surviving becomes too much.
Art is conscious that the stories of his father and mother are not the only stories of survivors. In talking with Josh Brown, he expresses his concern that people will take his book as a how-to guide for survival. Speigelman is concious of the fact that "I have those two stories but I don't have the other five or six or seven million stories that could have gone alongside it...." On the same website, Art discusses the desire he reflected in MAUS to have his mother's diaries. This would have added depth to his narrative by showing another first hand account of the holocaust. His mother's diaries would have provided an account of survival different than Valdek's and illustrated the point that that no two stories are the same.