Night by Elie Wiesel and The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick - Essay Example

?Night vs The Shawl Night by Elie Wiesel and The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick are two very popular books. This paper draws a comparison between the two books. Conditions in which the various events of the story take place are similar between the two books. While the characters of Night are kept in ghettos and camps, the characters of The Shawl live in concentration camps in the first part of the story. There is scarcity of food for the characters in both books. Hunger rips most of the characters of the two books of all pity and shame. For example, a man in Night kills his father in a fight over a piece of bread. Likewise, in The Shawl, Stella at one point felt like eating Magda thinking of her as Aryan. When a family is exposed to tough and severe circumstances like the two families in the two books, survival does not entirely depend upon age of the family members. Survivors can be young ones or the elders depending upon who is stronger or healthier compared to others. Night is a story of men whereas The Shawl is a story of women. On one hand, Night is about Eliezer and his father. On the other hand, The Shawl is about Rosa, Stella, and Magda. Struggle of the individual characters in the two books has been explained in accordance with their gender roles. Since it is a story of men, challenges in Night are more difficult compared to the challenges in The Shawl. While the characters of both books have to survive hunger and weather, Eliezer and his father face a multitude of additional challenges that include but are not limited to escaping the cremation and constantly walking and running despite minimal intake of food. The main character of Night is one i.e. Eliezer whereas in The Shawl, all three characters are equally important and almost equally discussed. Story of Night primarily revolves around Eliezer. There is detailed discussion of the events and hardships he goes through, and as the book explains that, the personality of Eliezer is revealed. An in-depth analysis of the personality of Eliezer suggests that he is a kind, pious, and responsible son. Not only Eliezer keeps his father from falling asleep in the snow, but he also feels guilty for the slightest thought that passes his mind of getting parted from his father and of visualizing his father as a burden. On the other hand, Stella is the only one among the three main characters of The Shawl who is a grown-up child and can be expected to be responsible toward her mother and her baby sister like Eliezer is toward his father. However, most of the events in the book reveal Stella as a mean and selfish person. Some examples of such events include her being jealous of her baby sister for having the shawl, the fact that she once thinks of eating Magda, and the fact that she takes the shawl away from Magda to cover herself up, leaving Magda without a shawl. Night is totally realistic whereas The Shawl has superficial elements in it. A very good example of such superficial elements in the book is the shawl after which the book has been named. The shawl has magical powers that reflect in terms of keeping a baby fed for up to three days only if the baby sucks on its corner. One may find this slightly comparable to Madame Schaechter’s prediction of the burning furnace that scares other occupants of the train and is later found out to be true. However, that cannot be interpreted as magical powers of Madame Schaechter because that was more of hallucination or prophecy than magic. It is possible to think of such people in the real world who can make correct predictions and sometimes know things beforehand, but such a shawl that keeps the baby relished is interpreted only as a fantasy in the real world. In the end, Rosa sucks on the shawl just like Magda hoping that it would also bring fortune to her like it does for her daughter, but the shawl goes dry. Another example of superficial element in Night is the black body creature that wears boots and helmet and carries Magda over its shoulders, landing her against the electric fence at the end of its flight. In real life, such acts are performed by heroes in movies or cartoon characters like Superman and Spiderman in the stories. The Shawl, as compared to Night, makes use of realistic ways and mechanisms to achieve its objectives, which makes the story more realistic and imaginable for the audience. Night is much longer and complicated in terms of misfortune, and the number of stories whereas The Shawl is shorter and simpler. However, it is indeed, paradoxical, that despite having such a serious theme, Night has been written in a whimsical manner. Actual writing of the book is childish as if it is an account of kids playing soldiers. This reflects in the language used by Elie e.g. “left, right” which is similar to what children use while playing; “I decided to give my father lessons in marching in step, in keeping time. We began practicing in front of our block. I would command: ‘Left, right!’ and my father would try” (Wiesel 55). This is a very simple form of language that can easily be understood by almost any reader. It is no less paradoxical that in spite of having superficial and magical elements in it, language used for writing The Shawl is much more serious than what has been used to write Night. Even such childish references as the desire of Stella to be in Magda’s shawl have been expressed in a very serious language. “A thin girl of fourteen, too small with thin breasts of her own, Stella wanted to be wrapped in a shawl, hidden away, asleep, rocked by the march, a baby, around infant in arms” (Ozick 3). This is a form of language in which each sentence has been carefully constructed to include as many details as possible and in as concise a way as possible. For example, the quoted sentence says a lot about Stella including her figure, age, desires and fantasies. This can be considered as one reason why The Shawl is shorter in length in comparison to Night. While characters in The Shawl adopt traditional roles within the family, role reversal is observed in Night. In normal practice, a child learns how to walk from his father. This practice reflects in The Shawl in which Rosa tries to address the needs of her daughters. However, the desperate circumstances of Night cause Eliezer to teach his father the way to march as well as the way to survive in such extreme weather conditions as snow. This dynamics of role play is, in part, grounded in the physical maturity of the characters. At 14 years of age, Eliezer is expected to carry the energy of a growing adolescent whereas 15 months old Magda is totally in need of her mother. Concluding, Night and The Shawl are two entirely different books with very basic similarities of context and challenges. Comparison of the two books leads to the conclusion that Night is a male-oriented book whereas The Shawl is a female oriented book. Night is, overall, a more realistic and sad story whereas The Shawl goes unrealistic at various occasions. Despite being more serious in terms of storyline, Night’s language is much simpler in comparison to the language of The Shawl. Read More