Farewell To Manzanar Analysis

Imagine, losing the part of you that makes you unique, or being treated like you were worth absolutely nothing. Think about losing all that you hold on to: your family, friends, everything that you had. Imagine, being treated like an animal, or barely receiving enough food to live. All of these situations and more is what the Jews went through during the Holocaust. During the period of 1944 - 1945, a man by the name of Elie Wiesel was one of the millions of Jews that were experiencing the wrath of Hitler’s destruction in the form of intense labor and starvation. The novel Night written by the same man, Elie Wiesel, highlights the constant struggle they faced every single day during the war. From the first acts of throwing the Jews into

In the novel Farewell to Manzanar, the author Jeanne Watatsuki Houston and James D Houston, they try to convey the theme prejudice. Throughout the novel the Japanese have to face the struggle of being the outgroup. “What had they charged him with? We didn't know that either, until an article appeared the next day in Santa Monica paper, saying he had been arrested for delivering oil to Japanese submarines offshore”(Houston 8). This shows prejudice against the Japanese because Papa has had this job for a while, and they didn't have any problems with it before. They just now start showing prejudice against a the Japanese because of the Pearl Harbor attacks, and are treating the Japanese unfairly. The author also conveys the theme prejudice against

I have begun reading Night by Elie Wiesel. This novel is about the events that Elie Wiesel endured as a teenager and harrowing truths about the holocaust. The first chapter was quickly paced and straightforward. A major part of Eli’s day was studying. A man Elie meets named Moishe the Beadle begins to cause him to question his faith and why he prays. The man is definitely different and this later causes the community to miss a warning sign of their impending doom. Moishe the Beadle is a foreign jew and is taken away months earlier than the other jews. He witnesses and miraculously survives a mass murder of foreign jews by faking dead. After returning to Sighet he attempt to warn the residents of what happened but no one believed him. This is important because at this time there were still visas available but since no one could fathom the idea of an attack on a whole population that included millions no one listened. Eli thinks, “Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout so many nations? So many millions of people! By what means?” (8) I liked this explanation in the book because most holocaust books brush over the reason of not leaving when they sensed conflict besides fear and this seemed much more logical in the fact that it does appear to be unbelievable.

Oppression, defined as, “unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power” (merriam-webster.com) and prejudice, defined as, “injury or damage resulting from some judgment or action of another in disregard of one's rights” (merriam-webster.com), both actions that have changed people. Some people are changed for the worse and some are changed for the better, but some choose to share their story. Two people named Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and Elie Wiesel did this, they shared their story with the whole world. They both did this by writing autobiographical memoirs, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston wrote Farewell to Manzanar alongside her husband and Elie Wiesel wrote Night, both sharing their experiences during well known events that have happened in the world today. Even though the stories have taken place at different places and different times, the people involved in these event experienced the same things. This does not mean that they were affected in the same way, they were affected differently in their own ways.

Night is an non fiction, dramatic book that tells the horrors of the nazi death camps all around Europe. The book is an autobiographical account of what happened, so the main character is the author. The author is Elie Wiesel who was only 14 year old when Nazi Germany came through his town of Sighet, Transylvania. This is story is set between the years of 1944 and 1945. Elie and his family of 4 are optimistic when Germany begins to take power. Germany invades Hungary, then arrives in Elie’s town. The Nazi’s begin to take over the Jews by limiting their freedom. Jews are eventually deported. The Jewish people are crowded into wagons where they are shipped to Auschwitz. He is separated from his mother and sister. Over the course of the book,

In the novel Night, the author and protagonist, Elie, goes through change because of dehumanization and oppression. During World War II, Adolf Hitler wanted to abolish all Jews from society by murdering and putting them in concentration camps, an event known as the Holocaust. These camps held millions of Jews that were treated like dehumanized animals by the German police. Night is a novel written about the experiences about a boy, Elie Wiesel, who lived through the holocaust. He wrote Night in order to give a voice to those that were unable to do so of the events in the concentration camps. In Night, Elie Wiesel's faith was strong in the beginning of the novel, and started to decrease during his time at the concentration camp, and completely disappeared by the end of the Holocaust.

First, prejudice played a role in the Japanese-American relocation by only moving the Japanese into internment camps and not moving people from the other enemies’ countries into camps. The United States government sent the Japanese-Americans like Jeanne and her family off to internment camps like Manzanar for a majority of the war. However, the Germans and Italians who were living in America were not sent to internment camps. The text states, “In court, the racial bias was challenged again. Why were no German Americans evacuated, it was asked, or Americans of Italian descent? Weren’t these nations our enemies too?” (91-92). That excerpt from the text shows that one cause of the relocation was definitely prejudice. If the Japanese had been evacuated, but the Germans and Italians were not, that means there was definitely prejudice. This means there was a preconceived opinion without reason about the Japanese race, most likely connected to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which caused the government to relocate the Japanese. All in all, prejudice played a role in the

In the memoirs Farewell to Manzanar and Night, the authors both reveal events from their tragic past to the reader. However, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston takes a more reflective tone while Elie Wiesel tells his story with a solemn yet intimate tone. Within Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne narrates her story in a very calm and reflective way because she wanted to spread awareness that the Japanese internment did indeed happen. Although she tries to remain more of an observer and state facts of the time she was interned, at the end of the memoir, her tone does shift from a very factual standpoint to a more nostalgic and sentimental tone. In Night, Wiesel’s solemn and intimate tone helps him tell the reader of his difficult conflicts trying to survive religious persecution from the Nazis and his struggle to keep faith in God.

The Nazis did everything in their power to dehumanize the inmates in the concentration camps during the holocaust. Night follows the story of a member of the Jewish community, Eliezer Wiesel. This book is Eliezer’s retelling of his experience in the camps, losing his belongings, his family, and finally his humanity.

Prejudice: something that we have had troubles with since the beginning of time. In Farewell Manzanar prejudice is one of the main concepts in the book. The first was Gordon Hirabayashi. In the book states “Gordon Hirabayashi, a Nisei student from the University of Washington, challenged the racial bias of these actions and the abuse of his civil rights. The court avoided the issue of the evacuation itself by ruling curfew.” (125) The next reason is Fred Korematsu. In the book it says “Fred Korematsu, a young Nisei living in Oakland, had ignored the evacuation to stay with his Caucasian girlfriend. He had plastic surgery done on his face, he changed his name, and was posing as a Spanish Hawaiian when the FBI caught up with him. In court, the racial bias was challenged again.” (126) Lastly the case of Mitsue Endo. The book states “Soon after she was evacuated in April 1942, Mitsue Endo, a twenty-one year old and I sei and an

Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, is the story of cruel events being retold. A personal recollection of a nightmare experience brings the reader into the heart of what the Holocaust was for a Jew in 1933 to 1945 . As the story is told, the hatred and evil of the German Nazi’s becomes more and more clear. Dehumanization is the act of reducing Jews to below the human standard, and this was vividly seen in Night. Because of this dehumanization, the Jews were treated accordingly- as less than humans. The cruel acts of the Germans led to this dehumanization of Jews when they shuttled the Jews, trafficked Jewish children, and burned their live bodies.

The book Night is about a Jew, Elie Wiesel, who was taken from his home. He and his family were taken to Auschwitz, then to Birkenau. Elie was in a concentration camp for most of his life. When he was 15 he witnessed hangings, beatings, bombings, and other unthinkable events.

In the novel “Farewell to Manzanar” many people refused to leave the camp once they got used to it because they didn't want to face racial discrimination. Many people had to leave where they were from because they looked Japanese or they were related to Japanese people. In “Farewell to Manzanar” Jeanne Wakatsuki says “He burned a lot of papers too, documents, anything that might suggest he still had some connections with Japan.” Jeanne’s father didn't want them to think that just because he was Japanese that he had connections with Japan. Discrimination did not justify government to intern Japanese Americans because discrimination is very bad, it removes the equality that we all are supposed to

With the arrival of WWII came the arrival of change. Jeanne Wakatsuki’s memoir, Farewell to Manzanar illustrates the countless struggles that Japanese Americans faced during World War II. Distrust among the white Americans and Japanese Americans was at an all time high due to the war in the Pacific Ocean with Japan. With the American government encouraging wartime propaganda, the Japanese were dehumanized and ultimately forced to move into internment camps. Farewell to Manzanar explores the resilience of the human nature by illustrating the struggle of prejudice in a WWII era America.

The novel, night, is about a young jewish boy, who expiecence the hardships of going through the holocaust. He explains his his story with five different motifs; Irony, dehumanization, family relationships, perspective, and loss of innocence that help make the story more understandable to readers. The topics of the novel truly explain the traumatizing experience that the young boy, Eliezer Wiesel, went through during the darkest moment of his life and global history. The Irony in the novel deepen the meaning of story and gave great examples on how he feel during that point of time.