A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye, and Night Essay
Synthesis of A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye, and Night
There are approximately seven billion people living on the Earth. Each person is different. The journey of finding one’s self is a path that one must take with little help from others and built from their own experiences, creating an identity that must be established by themselves and can only be taken away by themselves as seen through the texts A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and Night by Elie Wiesel. In the memoir Night written by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel found a new part of his identity from his experiences in the multiple concentration camps. While in the camps Wiesel is faced with multiple trials that transforms all the people around him into animals, he learns from what happens and uses that to make him stronger, not destroy them. Just before the weak are pulled into the selection Akiba Drummer gave up on his faith, “If only he kept his faith in God, if only he could have considered this suffering a divine test” (Wiesel 77). The loss of faith for the Jews in the concentration camps is very common. Most of them completely give up on everything and shut out everything that is happening unless it has anything to do with food. Instead of shutting out everything and losing all of his humanity, Wiesel uses these experiences to gain a further insight in himself and others. Unlike the religious leader that just lost the faith he put so much faith into , Wiesel’s religious belief doesn’t falter, he believes that the fate of all of these people isn’t just, “You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!” (Wiesel 68) Wiesel’s perception of what is happening to everyone he knew is much different than compared to those around him. This perception creates an entirely separate identity for Wiesel compared to the lost identities of those around him. What makes Wiesel different from
There are approximately seven billion people living on the Earth. Each person is different. The journey of finding one’s self is a path that one must take with little help from others and built from their own experiences, creating an identity that must be established by themselves and can only be taken away by themselves as seen through the texts A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and Night by Elie Wiesel. In the memoir Night written by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel found a new part of his identity from his experiences in the multiple concentration camps. While in the camps Wiesel is faced with multiple trials that transforms all the people around him into animals, he learns from what happens and uses that to make him stronger, not destroy them. Just before the weak are pulled into the selection Akiba Drummer gave up on his faith, “If only he kept his faith in God, if only he could have considered this suffering a divine test” (Wiesel 77). The loss of faith for the Jews in the concentration camps is very common. Most of them completely give up on everything and shut out everything that is happening unless it has anything to do with food. Instead of shutting out everything and losing all of his humanity, Wiesel uses these experiences to gain a further insight in himself and others. Unlike the religious leader that just lost the faith he put so much faith into , Wiesel’s religious belief doesn’t falter, he believes that the fate of all of these people isn’t just, “You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!” (Wiesel 68) Wiesel’s perception of what is happening to everyone he knew is much different than compared to those around him. This perception creates an entirely separate identity for Wiesel compared to the lost identities of those around him. What makes Wiesel different from
Cited: Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print. Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1991. Print. Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.