Literature plays a monumental role in the society and authors take it upon themselves to address social issues and to achieve certain goals that change the world positively. Elie Wiesel and Harper Lee through their works Night and
To Kill a Mocking Bird respectively, achieved this goal through highlighting social concerns and offering solutions to these issues. The essay provides a comparison of the contribution of Elie and Harper in Night and To Kill a Mocking Bird towards offering solutions to moral apathy.
Elsie Wiesel offers a personal experience with moral apathy in Night. His struggle with moral apathy began when as a child he went through the Holocaust with millions of the Jewish people killed by the Nazis as the rest of the world watched with no care or concern. Wiesel and other Jews were taken into concentration camps and faced the worst dehumanization including taking their identity and replacing it with a number. Wiesel states, “The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hands, and tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel, 42). Wiesel was only fifteen years when he was taken with his family to the concentration camps where he was separated from his mother and sisters and lost his father. According to Bayer and Silverman (8), “before he knew it, he and his family were boarding cattle cars bound for the Auschwitz concentration camps. There, he and his father were separated from his mother and sisters.”
Wiesel wrote Night to voice the atrocities his Jewish community faced at the hands of the Nazis as a platform to tell of his experiences and ensure the world never forgets. In his view, he believed surviving the holocaust gave him a voice to ensure others knew about these atrocities to ensure they would never be repeated. Harper could have been prompted by the civil rights movement to write the novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird. The focus of the book is on the black oppression, discrimination, and social class that were the focus of the civil rights movement to liberate the blacks.
Publishing was the main challenges both authors faced in publishing their books that aimed at advancing their course. Wiesel had written the manuscript for his work but none of the publishers he approached were willing to publish it. The other problem Wiesel faced was language barrier as he had written it in Yiddish and “was rejected by every major publisher, French and American” (Wiesel, n.d.).
There are several aspects in common between Harper and Wiesel including a commitment to speak against moral issues. The other similarities including that both writers achieved tremendous success from their writings and received global recognition. The authors also based their writings on personal experiences with Wiesel presenting the events during the holocaust while Harper using her personal experiences and those of her family to create an engaging opposition against the oppression of the blacks. The main character in the novel, Atticus Finch was a lawyer as was Harper’s father and the setting coincides with the civil rights movement showing the use of the events of the time in development of the content.
The social issues addressed in both authors include addressing the social injustices against people in the world. One of the issues addressed in both novels is the unfairness in the world where Wiesel loses everything including his family, possessions, religion and even his identity in Night while Jem and Scout in To Kill a Mocking Bird learn the unfairness and cruelty through their father Atticus Finch as they witness unfairness meted against the backs. Both authors also address injustice in the society where Tom Robinson is accused and found guilty of rape despite his innocence just because he was black while in Night, six million Jews are touched and killed for their religion. The importance of family is also addressed by both authors with the separation of Wiesel’s family and the death of his father a major part of Night while Jem and Scout learn a lot from their father Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird. In this statement, for example, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” Atticus seeks to show the need to learn to relate with other people and understand what they are going through. (Lee, n.d.).
The effect of the books on the society is offering an understanding of the ills perpetrated against the Jews and blacks and seeking to achieve equality and changes for the better. The books serve to show the benefits of tolerance, equality, and peace between people of different race and religious affiliation. The books highlight the challenges and difficulties that faced blacks and Jews and serves as a reminder to all to allow for a better future.
Works Cited
Bayer, L. & Silverman, J. Elie Wiesel. The Rosen Publishing Group. (2015).
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
Wiesel, Elie. Night: A Memoir. Hill and Wang, 2017.
