Surviving In Elie Wiesel's Life Is Beautiful

Never have I had to experience a choice between my loved ones and certain death, however I like to think that that choice would be simple for me. Die, with only the knowledge that I am helping my family survive? Absolutely. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie recounts his time in the Holocaust he spent trying to make it through to the end with his father. Life is Beautiful, directed by Roberto Benigni, is about a small family with a husband and wife, and one son, that is taken to a concentration camp, where the husband desperately tries to save them. In these two pieces the theme of perseverance goes hand in hand with survival, two important characters persevering only to see the people they care about survive. Therefore, The characters

In Life is Beautiful, Guido is taken to a concentration camp with his wife and son. Out of this small family Guido is the most capable to get them out alive, with Joshua being so young and his wife being on her own with the woman. He immediately accepts this responsibility without question and a heart full of love. He spends the rest of his life trying to create ways for his wife and son to escape. He does not act out of self preservation but complete and utter devotion to his family. Similarly in Night, Elie becomes his father’s rock. Elie and his father have an argument for his life, “‘Don’t yell, my son… Have pity on your old father… Let me rest here… a little… I beg of you, I’m so tired… no more strength…’ He had become childlike: weak, frightened, vulnerable. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘you cannot stay here’”(Wiesel 105). Elie is still a young teenager who is simply trying to survive, but at this moment in the book he becomes the father figure of the two. He has now been burdened with the effort of keeping himself and his father alive. He obediently stays by his father, who throughout the Holocaust has lost the will to survive. He has no motivation so Elie provides that motivation for him because he is

At the end of Life is Beautiful Guido does not cease to keep up the game for his son if it will help him survive. Guido cements the rules of “the game” in his son’s mind throughout the movie, and at the end he desperately tries to keep his son out of the path of the Nazi’s. After getting his son in a safe place, Guido does something that he surely knows will get him killed. He dresses up as a woman so he can go warn his wife, putting his life on the line, his only hope to save his family. After being caught he is marched away but still finds a way to give Joshua peace. Guido literally marches off to his death, he paid the ultimate sacrifice, his only reward was the hope that his family would survive. Likewise, Elie had to make a decision between his health and his father, “As for me, I was thinking not about death but about not wanting to be seperated from my father. We had already suffered so much, endured so much together. This was not the moment to separate… I had made up my mind to accompany my father wherever he went” (Wiesel 82). At this part in the book Elie has suffered a major infection in his foot but he refuses to leave his father to die. Though he later feels some reluctance to keep saving his father, at this point his only thought was to stay with his father no matter what the cost. He would go through intense pain in his foot and also a missed opportunity to be liberated along with the other