Torn Thread Compare And Contrast With Night
Struggle For Survival
A normal Jewish family in the 1930’s and ‘40’s would start their day off by praying and then proceed with the day’s chores. Imagine a teenage boy doing this his whole life and then, in a single moment, his whole world turns upside down. The families in the Holocaust, the largest mass genocide attempt in recorded history, experienced such a dreadful thought. Night and Torn Thread tell about these families. Night by Elie Wiesel, takes place in Transylvania and Germany while Torn Thread by Anne Isaacs takes place in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Countries apart, the families’ struggles are similar, but yet, so different at the same time.
Night depicts a teenager, Elie, and his family, being separated by one of history’s most horrendous events. The roles of father and son seem to switch in the sense that Elie had to care more for his father than his father did for him. Elie began doing desperate acts to keep his father close to him and to keep him healthy. These acts included Elie giving rations to his father, not letting him get behind in the group when they were marching, and he really did all he could but ultimately for nothing because his father was to pass away before the liberation of his camp in Buna.
Torn Thread has some striking similarities with the book Night. The most obvious is the Holocaust. This was an uphill battle for the Jewish families. The main characters, Eva and her sister Rachel, also share responsibilities pertaining to parenthood. In this case, Eva acts as the mother for her sick sister as they are forced to work in a textile mill making contributions to the war effiort. Like Night, the main motivation for going through this was staying together in hopes of getting out alive and well. Both books share that will to live, trying to cheat their fate in the furnaces and gas chambers.
Even though resembling, these books have entirely different traits that make them more interesting to read....
View Full Essay