Compare And Contrast Malcolm X And Night

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The books Night and The Autobiography of Malcolm X can be compared and contrasted in a variety of ways. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel and the autobiography The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X can be compared to one another. The theme and characterization in Night and The Autobiography of Malcolm X can be compared while the styles between the two authors can be contrasted. This essay will compare the books Night and The Autobiography of Malcolm X focusing on the similarities between the themes and characterization and the differences in the authors’ styles.

The theme of prejudice is present in both texts. Malcolm X recalls how police officers in Harlem used to try to plant Marijuana and other street drugs on him and other African …show more content…

Malcolm X also talks about how there were unofficial zones in both NYC and Detroit. There were poor, black, “ghetto” areas, poor, whites areas and there were rich, white areas. Though legally anyone was allowed to be outside in any zone, there were certain social rules, and blacks were not allowed to be in upper class, white neighborhoods at night. Malcolm describes an experience of a black man getting caught by a white cop in a rich neighborhood at night. “Suddenly we saw a police car round the corner, coming toward us, and it went on past us. They were just cruising. But then in the rear-view mirror, we saw them make a U-turn, and we knew they were going to flash us to stop. They had spotted us in passing, as negroes and they knew that negroes had no business in the area at that hour. It was a close situation. There was a lot of robbery going on; we weren’t the only gang working, we knew, not by any means. But I knew that the white man is rare who will consider that a negro can outsmart him.” (Malcolm X, 148). In the novella Night, Elie Wiesel describes the ghetto area that the Jews were forced to live in and how it was