Introduction The camp was dark to some, but a playground to others. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel (2006) and the film “Life is Beautiful” (2000), two sons lived to share how they survived the brutality of a concentration camp in the midst of genocide better known as the holocaust. Although the survivors have two different perspectives on life in the camp and how it had affected their life since, several aspects of their stories are the same. Each of the stories show similar and different effects of a strong father and son bond, an overlying mood that encompases their experiences, and divine provisions throughout. Father-Son Bond In both of these reflections, a strong bond between the father and son is evident, and it serves as the primary …show more content…
In Elie’s encounter, the God provided in the form of a french woman. The woman, who was secretly a jew, calmed Elie down by saying "bite your lips, little brother…Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now…Wait. Clench your teeth and wait" (Weisel, 2006, 53). Furthermore, a divine provision was the ability for the son to maintain his innocence despite the obstacles he was faced with in the camp. An example of this would be when the boy stayed in the hiding place during the gunfire, but he thought he just won the game. Elie saw hope in the encouragement he saw in the woman who he still remembered all these years later. Moreover, hope was found for the boy when his father made the camp into a game, and the worse the situation got, the more fun the game became until he eventually won. Divine intervention played a large role in both of these stories because it gave hope for the survivors when there was none to be found, and it had a lasting effect on them to this …show more content…
Firstly, the strong bond between a boy and his father created the idea of perseverance, and gave the survivors someone to rely on. Next, while the two accounts have very contrasting moods, both are affected by the narrators outlook on the situation. Lastly, God’s provisions in the hopeless circumstances of the camp made a lasting impression on the survivors in the moment as well as after the liberation. These two stories compare and contrast the experiences of the sons who made it out of the camps, and they allow for others to see both the positives and negatives of the