Compare And Contrast Briar Rose And Night

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The novel Briar Rose by Jane Yolen and the autobiography Night by Elie Wiesel are both great depictions of what the Holocaust was like. Both novels had a way of making the reader connect with the book and realize what life was really like during the Holocaust. Although both books had the same goal in mind, both books took a different approach to the way they showed the Holocaust. Briar Rose took a fictional route and had a fairy tale theme. Within Night, readers saw a nonfiction side and rather a vivid, real life, experience. Night was more powerful and more effective as a narrative of the Holocaust.
The structure of Night was one of the main drivers of its effectiveness.It was much easier for readers to connect to. Night was a much more …show more content…

In Night, readers build up more sympathy and are able to connect with characters such as Elie of course, Elie's Father, Juliek, and more. These characters allowed the reader to get emotionally invested in what was being said, for example when Juliek died and when Elie’s father died. In Briar Rose, readers are able to connect with the characters, but not on as large of a scale as Night. In Night, Juliek had a short-lived but important role in the book. An example of this was in this quote, "It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as if Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings -- his lost hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again.” (N, pg 95). This quote withheld a great amount of power. It showed Juliek doing what he loved and was forbidden to do and he was doing for the dying Jews around him. Briar Rose did not really have this kind of power within how it used its characters.The characters in Briar Rose are harder to connect with because they are not real, like the characters in Night. Another reason they are harder to sympathize with and connect with is because readers know that none of the things these characters went through really happened. They were based on real events but, none of these characters actually …show more content…

The strategy used in Briar Rose is effective at keeping the topic family friendly and is not as serious as in Night. This strategy is good at toning down the gruesome, the ugly, and the horrendous happenings of the Holocaust. An example of a rather inappropriate comparison is within this quote “Fairy tales always have a happy ending. ‘That depends.’ ‘On what?’ On whether you are Rumplestiltskin or the Queen.” (B pg 106). This quote compared the Jewish people and the Nazis to the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin and the Queen. The comparison is inappropriate because something as serious as the Holocaust should not even come close to something as light as a fairy