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Similarities Between Night And First They Killed My Father

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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

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1061 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the book as well, he mentors and consoles her aching heart. The next step, Crossing the Threshold, I interpreted as when Loung arrived at a village in Ro Leap. She is unfamiliar with the new conditions of the village. In addition to being treated differently by the base people. Loung doesn't understand why they hate her.

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Throughout the book the characters Loung and Chou demonstrate persistence by the struggles they overcome The first struggle that Loung is faced with, are her suicidal thoughts. The author describes when Loung had an overdose, “I pop four pills into my mouth. But the pain is still there. I pour out another handful.

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Similarly, in ‘First They Killed My Father’, the significance the father had on the narrator can also be examined. On page 47 of ‘First They Killed My Father’, Loung, and her family have reached a checkpoint where they would need to be questioned by the Angkar. Referring to her father, Loung quoted “He reaches down and puts his hand on top of my head. It stays there as if protecting me from the sun and the soldiers. After a few minutes, my head feels cooler and my heartbeat slows''.

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During a time of war and crisis, there are only two types of people: people that live or people that die. Both Night, by Elie Wiesel, and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah, are set in a time of war and crisis. The theme “hope and fear drive human behavior” best fits these two novels. During tough times, such as war, many people get into a mode of self-survival; fear can be a great motivator and has the ability to take away one’s humanity and to turn a once loving human being to a selfish monster. During the book Night, Elie faces many life changing challenges and is endeavoring to survive in the Holocaust.

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For most of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie was determined to remain with his father, after being separated from his mother and sisters during the early years of the Holocaust. Elie’s father, his only remaining relative, was all he had left. Determination to keep them together very well may have been what kept him alive. Eventually, his father’s willpower deteriorated along with his health, making him more of a burden than a tether by the end of the book. Although he still loved his father, Elie no longer needed him.

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Loung vented the feelings and emotions she was feeling after her overdose. Doing this made her stop thinking about Cambodia and was therapeutic. Loung was able to overcome the obstacles of her depression through writing about her trauma and perseverance, which forever changed her life from almost killing herself. Lastly, the last obstacle Loung overcomes

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Loss damages humans emotionally and sometimes spiritually but it is loss that makes us grow as members of a society. The need to prevent others from suffering as well overwhelms us and we become advocated against whatever has hurt us so much. In Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical novel Night, he suffers along with his family through the Holocaust. He watches people suffer and wither away, including his father. During his time of just under a year in concentration camps, Wiesel grew into a very mature and emotionally strong person.

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In fact, he only way to be prepared for the moment that these hardships come is to have courage and a vallor mindset. In Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night’, Elie faced obstacles in the concentration camps that he had never before experienced; yet, he stayed courageous and determined to stay alive. While at these camps, Elie was living off of a slice of bread and chunky soup, he was beaten for no reason, and he was emotionally scared beyond belief. Near the end of Elie’s journey, his father, with whom he had put all love and affection, died before him. However; Elie

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‘I don’t know’, he says sadly” (109).Loung still misses her family and that she wants to see them again, even though it's been so long, showing that Loung misses her family. And yet through losing her family, Loung became stronger on the inside, even if it was not right away, which shows that even through what is most likely her greatest struggle, she still prevailed, and so can

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Phuong is silent and relates to her country in that she lets others make important decisions for her. He does not recognize individual lives and instead he is only focused of instigating certain principles to the country’s civilization as a whole. The Vietnamese people only see their need of food and shelter rather than this political concept of democracy which Pyle is striving to put into practice. Pyle does not see Phuong as a person, but as a possession to change and protect; "a delicate

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This shows that Loung idolized her father and these special moments between Loung and her father were things that she held onto in order to survive the atrocities that she experienced. Loung’s father not only provided provided physical protection by moving his family to places where they would not be in so much danger but he also provided emotional protection by giving Loung hope that she would survive these hardships even after he has

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First They Killed My Father is a memoir written by Loung Ung and her account of the Cambodian government overthrow by the Khemer Rouge. The account begins when Loung is five years old, as she recalls living in Phnom Penh with her six siblings, Meng, Khouy, Keav, Kim, Chou, and Geak, her mother, and her father. While living in the city, the Khemer Rouge storm the city and overthrow the government, while forcing all people in Phnom Penh to evacuate. After evacuating their home, Loung and her family are sent to labor camps where they are punished and starved for four years. In her memoir, Loung reflects on the people she lost and the hardships she endured, while at the same time showing her family’s unbreakable love and courage.

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The novel First They Killed My Father has a vast collection of themes that were prevalent throughout the course of the story. The theme that is the most prominent is Family can help you endure all. The author of this heartbreaking memoir, Loung Ung, who was five at the time, describes her experiences under the barbarous and ruthless dictator, Pol Pot. Loung Ung, her parents, and her six siblings lived a normality where life, liberty, and the security of a individual were considered basic human rights. On April 17, 1975 the invasion of Communist Khmer Rouge took all aspects of public life and private life.

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972 Words | 4 Pages

In Duong Thu Huong’s Paradise of the Blind, Hang has been placed on a path of self-sacrifice and duty by her family. Her life unfolds in stages- childhood, young adulthood, and her eventual role as an exported worker in Russia. With each of these shifts in her life comes a shift in setting and a shift in her emotional state. Hang’s changing emotional state depicts her “coming of age” and her growth as a character. Setting is important to creation of shift in the novel, and is often described in detail.

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At this camp, everyone is forced to work in the field, as they must earn their stay and “work hard for Angkar.” While Loung and her sister are working, a soldier sees Loung’s sister eat a bean. This causes her to receive a (negative sanction.) She is hit in the head by the soldier even though she pleas for his forgiveness. Three of Loung’s siblings became soldiers, however her sister comes back injured and later dies.

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