In the novels, Night by Elie Wiesel and First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, we can see a common theme of pushing on and persevering even when situations are seemingly hopeless. Both Elie and Loung lost a great amount and experienced the worst of their different genocides, yet they still found different and similar ways to survive in situations most Americans would give up on. In Night, Elie is a Jewish boy living in Sighet, who wished to draw closer to God, and had a father that he was not too close with, and lived with his mother and three siblings. Elie, at only 14 years old, saw brutality, and unfairness. He watched people turn on each other from the start. After losing her children, Madame Schachter went crazy, so it seemed the others …show more content…
They all begin to look malnourished to the point where Loung steals some rice from the family and feels great guilt. As months continue, she watches as rations decrease and her brother, Kim, steals corn from the Angkar soldiers’ fields until he is caught and beaten. Loung has great anger for the Khmer Rouge and the Angkar guards at this point, especially after the disappearance of her Pa. By the end of the book, she has lost a great deal of her family. Keav has died from dysentery, then Pa because the soldiers have found him out and taken him away. Later, after Loung is sent to a camp, she comes back to visit Ma and Geak only to find that they are both dead. After the death of Pa, Loung continues to see him in her dreams, and they talk. Whenever Loung does not dream of her family, she has nightmares. Khouy and Meng, at this point, are off to another camp together and Chou is at the previous camp that Loung was at before. Each death that Loung has watched her family go through has sparked a great deal of anger inside of …show more content…
In the new camp that she was transferred to after leaving with Kim and Chou, she attacks a girl that insults her, yelling at her to die, and that she’ll kill her, which gets her moved to a camp for training. Loung is no longer the wide-eyed, innocent and curious girl she once was. What lies in a girl that has become rather violent and vigilant, is the little five year old girl that was robbed of her childhood, just as Elie