Night and Dawn - A Comparison of Elie Wisels writings

Night and Dawn Night and Dawn, both written by Elie Wiesel, are two books that have changed the way people view life and death. Night is a story of the Holocaust that occurs in the time frame of the mid-1900s. Elie, the author and the main character of Night, tells of the horrific years he spent in Germanys concentration camps. During this time period, millions of Jewish people were shot by merciless Nazis. Dawn focuses on a young boy Elisha who is recruited into a terrorist organization after the Holocaust. He eventually finds himself caught in the middle of the war between the Jewish and the British fighting for freedom. Both of Wiesels stories involve poignant emotions. Night shows the reader the horror of being murdered. Similarly,†¦show more content†¦Wiesel wrote Night in an attempt to leave the reader feeling as if he were a Jewish citizen during the time of the Holocaust. The author achieves this through his vivid descriptions and emotional family affairs, such as the time where El ie is separated from his family. When connecting with a character, one understands the characters dilemmas, such as Elies questioning of his religious faith. In Dawn, Wiesels purpose was to make the reader see through the eyes of a murderer, and the difficulty of murdering without a reason in which he believes. Elisha struggles because he cannot find the answer to the question within himself: Why am I killing Captain Dawson? Both stories try to make the reader empathize with the main character. Both Elie and Elisha have a difficult time living in Night and Dawn. The author exaggerates this in Dawn by using the phrase Poor boy! to describe Elisha. In Night, the author tried to gain sympathy for Elie by putting him into painful situations. One event that represents this was the time where Elie was whipped by a Kapo, He took his time between each stroke. Only the first ones really hurt me. I could hear him counting (55). Going into more depth, Wiesel writes about how each character dea ls with his pain. Elie copes with loss through his belief in God and his strength; Elisha copes with his loss by communicating with apparitions of the people by which he has been influenced, and the people he has