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Wars effect on literature
The concept of transformation in literature
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"There are no extraordinary men...just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with."
Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr. (Bull) (American Naval Officer who led vigorous campaigns during World War II, 1882-1959)
The Benevolence Forged by War
Often, we find ourselves facing dramatic events in our lives that force us to re-evaluate and redefine ourselves. Such extraordinary circumstances try to crush the heart of the human nature in us. It is at that time, like a carbon under pressure, the humanity in us either shatters apart exposing our primal nature, or transforms into a strong, crystal-clear brilliant of compassion and self sacrifice. The books Night written by Elie Wiesel and Hiroshima written by John Hersey illustrate how the usual lifestyle might un-expectantly change, and how these changes could affect the human within us. Both books display how lives of civilians were interrupted by the World War II, what devastations these people had to undergo, and how the horrific circumstances of war were sometimes able to bring out the best in ordinary people.
In the book Hiroshima, author paints the picture of the city and its residents' break point in life: before and after the drop of the "Fat Boy". Six people - six different lives all shattered by the nuclear explosion. The extraordinary pain and devastation of a hundred thousand are expressed through the prism of six stories as they seen by the author. Lives of Miss Toshiko Sasaki and of Dr. Masakazu Fujii serve as two contrasting examples of the opposite directions the victims' life had taken after the disaster. In her "past life" Toshiko was a personnel department clerk; she had a family, and a fiancé. At a quarter past eight, August 6th 1945, the bombing took her parents and a baby-brother, made her partially invalid, and destroyed her personal life. Dr. Fujii had a small private hospital, and led a peaceful and jolly life quietly enjoying his fruits of the labor. He was reading a newspaper on the porch of his clinic when he saw the bright flash of the explosion almost a mile away from the epicenter. Both these people have gotten through the hell of the A-Bomb, but the catastrophe affected them differently. Somehow, the escape from a certain death made Dr. Fujii much more self-concerned and egotistic. He began to drown in self-indulgence, and completely lost the compassion and responsibility to his patients.
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
In the memoir Night, the narrator Wiesel recounts a moment when he witnesses the most horrific actions done by men,”I pinched myself : Was I still alive ? Was I awake ? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent “ (Wiesel 32). Wiesel was thinking and questioning about his existence. While also caring for his father because that's all he has left. It's even more important because, what Wiesel experiences in camps has been near death and fight for survival. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Wiesel are, loss in religious faith and father and son bonding.
The crises to which this work responds was the total annihilation of Hiroshima and the aftershock experienced by those left behind. Those who witnessed this devastation were left to make sense of it, and then attempt to carry on with their lives. Aki had temporarily managed to go on with her life until she went to visit her friend Tomiko. At her friends house she saw "two small jars"that contained "fetuses that had been miscarried"( Takenishi 1895), most likely an after affect of being exposed to the bomb. The sight of these fetuses must have stirred some deeply buried feelings, because shortly afterwards, Aki started to have very disturbing flashbacks and dreams of the devastating event that took place during her childhood. Through these dreams and flashbacks it becomes apparent that Aki is unable to acquire any closure regarding this horrible event. This feeling of deficiency could be, in part, attributed to her feeling that there was a shameful lack of consideration shown for the "rites" owed to those who died. In her eyes they were never properly laid to rest; Therefore they" will not rest in peace" (Takenishi 18...
Most historical events, whether beneficial or detrimental to society, bear witnesses. Regardless of how many total were affected by the event, each person owns a personal account of what they endured during the event. Elie Wiesel, author of Night, expresses the personal account of Elizer, a Jewish teenager, who fought to stay alive during the holocaust, and shows the importance of witness accounts, the will to survive, and the remembrance of past historical events. Night encompasses the idea of “Literature of Witness” by simultaneously showing how millions of people were affected by the holocaust and how each person, principally Elizer, has their own personal story to tell to understand and remember that horrendous time.
Elie Wiesel has gone through more in life than any of us could ever imagine. One of my favorite quotes from him says, “To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” In his novel “Night” we are given an in-depth look at the pure evil that was experienced during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. We see Wiesel go from a faithful, kind Jewish boy to a survivor. As he experiences these events, they change him drastically.
In John Hersey's book, Hiroshima, he provides a detailed account of six people and how the bombing of Hiroshima affected their lives. John Heresy felt it was important to focus his story on six individuals to create a remembrance that war affects more than just nations and countries, but actual human beings. Moreover, the book details the effect the bomb had on the city of Hiroshima. “Houses all around were burning, and the wind was now blowing hard.” (Hersey, 27).
The non-fiction book Hiroshima by John Hersey is an engaging text with a powerful message in it. The book is a biographical text about lives of six people Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki and Rev. Tanimoto in Hiroshima, Japan and how their lives completely changed at 8:15 on the 6th of August 1945 by the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The author, John Hersey, through his use of descriptive language the in book Hiroshima exposes the many horrors of a nuclear attack.
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
“The Perils of Indifference” In April, 1945, Elie Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp after struggling with hunger, beatings, losing his entire family, and narrowly escaping death himself. He at first remained silent about his experiences, because it was too hard to relive them. However, eventually he spoke up, knowing it was his duty not to let the world forget the tragedies resulting from their silence. He wrote Night, a memoir of his and his family’s experience, and began using his freedom to spread the word about what had happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again.
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
All humans are supposed to have emotion, but when people don’t have anything to hold on to positive emotions can become dormant. The memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, is Wiesel’s story from surviving the Holocaust with the help of his father and fighting to stay alive day by day. Wiesel suffered from brutal conditions in labor camps and managed to survive through the agony while watching others perished every day. The unnatural behavior by the S.S. led to dehumanization that shattered the faith of Elie Wiesel and many other prisoners.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
“Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” (Wiesel 2006, p. 34) Elie Wiesel is a humanitarian but better known as a holocaust survivor and the author of the book Night. Elie recounts the horrors of his experience throughout the book and revisits times which he had not touched upon in years. His book initially only sold a few copies but later on through this renewed interest, Elie Wiesel’s book skyrocketed to fame and he started his journey in his humanitarian activities which in turn earned him a Nobel peace prize and resulted in his famous speech, Hope, Despair, and Memory. In Elie Wiesel’s speech, Hope Despair and Memory Elie Wiesel reminds us through his use of pathos and ethos as a speaker of the despair that humankind can create, but through our recollection and memories obtained from such despair we can summon the future with hope of change.
In “The Son of Man,” Natalia Ginzburg asserts that while the war did irreparable psychological damage to its survivors, it also gave the young generation enough strength to confront the stark reality of the precarious nature of human existence. Passionately but concisely, through the use of repetitive imagery, fatalistic tone and lack of classic organization, Ginzburg shows how the war changed the world around Man and how Man changed his perception of the world.
“This story takes place in Tokyo after World War II” and the drop of the atom bomb. After Hiroshima, countless lives were disrupted the shock of this event changed many peoples lives forever. The author Yukio Mishima uniquely describes this evolution from the female perspective. Probably an ability acquired from his youth “That was dominated by his grandmother.” In the story the lead characters Toshiko’s comfortable life is interrupted when her nanny graphically gives birth to a son in the middle of her child’s nursery. This one horrific experience causes the character’s personality to complete alter from self-centered individual to someone so engrossed with this child’s life that she becomes selfless.