Culture In Night And The Perils Of Indifference

Culture is the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social groups. Culture shapes the way human society works, acts, and how individuals view themselves and others. It also influences the goals people set for themselves, such as striving to be hard workers, persevering despite hardships they might face, sharing their cultural stories, and standing up for what they believe is right. In the stories “Night” and “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel wanted to influence the world to never forget about the Holocaust and how they treated the Jewish population with indifference while being persecuted. In “Civil Peace” by Chinua Achebe, even though the main character’s life was

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, uses his culture as a way to educate the world on what it was like to be a young boy forced from his home, family, and friends, to be tortured for years, to watch his community burned into ashes, just for the rest of the world to remain indifferent to the horrors that the Jewish people were facing at the hands of the Nazis. In his autobiography “Night”, Wiesel tells the story of his life-changing experience as a child at Auschwitz. He describes how he will never forget how he felt as well as the things he experienced. Wiesel states, “The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded—and devoured—by a black flame (Wiesel par. 29).” This reveals that because of the torture he experienced, he was no longer himself but now a husk of what he once was. In “Perils of Indifference”, Wiesel addresses President Bill Clinton, his staff, and members of Congress to remind the world how inhumane indifference is, especially when they sit idly by while other humans are being mistreated and brutally killed. His identity as a Jewish man and a Holocaust survivor makes him feel obligated to educate the world on the horrors of the

Jonathan Iwegbu, the main character in Chinua Achebe’s story “Civil Peace”, has his life destroyed by a civil war in his home country Nigeria. Despite this, he and his family work hard every day even though their life became difficult after the war. For example, one night while he and his family were sleeping, thieves showed up at his home demanding his money. Even after this, he and his family began working the next day as if nothing happened. According to the text, “At the first sign of light as neighbours and others assembled to commiserate with him he was already strapping his five-gallon demijohn to his bicycle carrier and his wife, sweating in the open fire, was turning over akara balls in a wide clay bowl of boiling oil. In the corner his eldest son was rinsing out dregs of yesterday's palm wine from old beer bottles (Achebe par. 42).” This shows that Jonathan’s culture shaped him into the hard-working person he is and therefore his goals reflect his cultural identity. He works hard so that his family will be able to live comfortably. After he earned money from working as a taxi for officials and their families, he returned to his old home and spent his hard-earned money to fix it. In the novel, the author describes, “He got a destitute carpenter with one old hammer, a blunt plane and a few bent and rusty nails in his tool bag to turn this assortment of wood, paper and metal