Comparing Night and When the Emperor Was Divine Essay

Readers around the world have focused their attention to the most famous books like, the Harry Potter Series or maybe even The Davinci Code. Some do not realize that books that are not really conversed about are the most interesting. Harry Potter and The Davinci Code may be very entertaining books since one focuses on the supernatural and the other religion, but neither books talk about past, deep history. Two books that do go back to historical facts are Night and When the Emperor Was Divine. The New York Times has said that the novel, Night, was A slim volume of terrifying power. The Los Angeles Times has also said that, When the Emperor Was Divine, is, a gentle, understated novelhas more power than any other I have read about this time. Both reviews express that the two novels express some type of strong emotion that impacts the readers and also the reviewers. Although these two novels are great to explain a lot on the events of how living in a concentration and holocaust camps are, they have a lot of differences and also similarities.

In the two novels, Night and When the Emperor Was Divine, both plots are written about a war going on and how families are uprooted from their homes and taken hostage. Although these two stories have this similarity, there are plenty of differences. The characters in When the Emperor Was Divine were from a Japanese heritage. They lived in America but were Japanese-Americans. They ate like Japanese people, and acted like them. Just as any kind of Asian who follows their religions; however, in Night, the characters were Jewish. This novel took place during Hitlers reign, so therefore, the Jews were taken hostage. So a major difference between the books was the different ethnicities. Another difference was that the characters were named in one book, but in the other book they were not. In When the Emperor Was Divine, the author never writes who the characters they are. She does not say a real name instead she uses the names man, girl, boy, woman, etc, whereas in Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, says the characters names. Wiesel is writing from his own perspective of what he saw in his eyes being the holocaust camps. So he makes sure that he is writing if someone were telling his life story, so he uses his real name, and family members. One other major difference is the treatment of people in the camps. In the camps where the characters in When the Emperor was Divine were sent to, their treatment was okay. They were never tortured or killed for no reason. They never did have a luxury treatment, but that is because they were looked at as evil. In Night, Wiesel and his family are dehumanized from their Jewish roots. They are tortured, some are left to die in a pit of flames and just killed for no reason, whatsoever. This was probably the most importantly seen difference in the book. Along with differences, everything has to have similarities.

There are many similarities in the two novels. One similarity would be the time period each event occurred, as in the years. In When the Emperor Was Divine, each event took place during the 1940s, and during that time was when Pearl Harbor was bomb by the Japanese which made the Americans look at all Japanese-Americans as evil. In Night, the current time period was when Hitler was in power and when the Jewish people were being sent to the holocaust. This event also occurred in the 1940s. So each book has a similarity in the time period. In each book, it seems as at least one of the main characters survives their brutal expedition. In When the Emperor Was Divine, the whole family came back from being in the concentration camps and they were not hurt or anything. It is the same as Night, although Wiesels family members did not all make it alive; he was able to come out alive from the tortures the Nazi did to him in the camps. So with at least one character coming out alive was a big similarity. One final similarity was probably how each story was told. Each story was written about a huge event that took place in the 1940s. Each event took place, which we call now, World War II. It is ironic how each novel can be so similar but at the same time, different.

The two novels, Night and When the Emperor Was Divine, do live up to what other reviewers have said about the novels. They are powerful to the mind and soul. They talk about intensifying events that happened in the past and are still looked at today in history books. The authors make each book clear with many details that explain how each event would be if a person were to be there. The differences and similarities make the novels relate more to each other since each book took place during an important time in history.

Each novel was filled with differences and similarities. There may not seem to be a lot of them because not all were listed above, but those differences and similarities were probably the most important and seen automatically in the book. It seems as all books will have a different or similar thing about each other, as long as each plot in the novels are different. Overall, the differences and similarities make each novel intense and powerful.