What Are The Similarities Between Farewell To Manzanar And Night

What does a girl ripped from her home and placed into seclusion and a boy seperated from most of his family and faced with death every day have in common? The answer lies not with their experiences, but within the emotional effects of the aftermath of their traumatic experiences. Jeanne Houston writes about her life in a Japanese-American in her autobiography Farewell to Manzanar, and Elie Wiesel shares his story of the Jewish concentration camps in his autobiography Night. Both of these intimate books reveal truly horrific events and details about the crimes against humanity that went on during WWII, although one author clearly had experienced more appalling episodes. While both Jeannie and Elie suffered heavily and lost family connections

“Papa’s life ended at Manzanar,” (Houston 175). Before being confined in internment camps, Jeanne’s father was the tried and true leader of her family and guided her and her relatives through life. Once he was separated from the family and sent to another internment camp, the family descended into chaos and a state of decadence. Without a true leader, the disorganized family failed to retain their once affectionate attitudes toward each other. Even when Jeanne’s father was reunited with the family, he had changed and ended up being more of a burden that pushed the family apart than the glue that held it together. “And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: free at last!...” (Weisel 112). When the Jewish people of Sighet, Transylvania were first being transported to concentration camps, Elie and his father were separated from the rest of his family, never to see eachother again over the course of the book. Elie’s strained connection is exemplified when his father, his only family member remaining with him, dies. Instead of feeling depressed, or even the tiniest bit of sadness, Elie does not feel at all. And as shown with the quote, if he was able to feel, he would have felt free from the burden of his father, of all things. Although both children were placed in drastically different situations, the malignant effects on their families both remained