Wiesel’s “Night” is a memoir in which Elie, the protagonist is recalling his concentration camp experiences, encompassing events from the end of 1941 to 1945. It is written in the perspective of a younger version of himself. Maus is a graphic novel by American visual artist Art Spiegelman, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It portrays Spiegelman conversing with his father about his encounters as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It is composed in first person, but switches between the perspective of Art and his father who he is interviewing. Through Elie’s and Vladek’s change in perspective of survival, the reader can see that self preservation is more important than keeping others alive, through the means of survival depending on the ability …show more content…
In both memoirs the main objective of the protagonists (Elie, and Vladek) is to survive however, it was not as easy task even to stay alive. Survival in The Holocaust depended upon the ability to see the world in a different way. To survive, one has to completely change his mindset. When talking to Art, Vladek says “Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week…Then you can see what it is, friends! …”, this takes places at the beginning of the graphic novel when setting and characters are being established. When Vladek says this he is intending that real friends are the ones who can maintain their values and attitudes in extreme circumstance. The repetition of the word “friends” followed by a question mark emphasizes how Vladek even questions the idea of having friends. Similarly in “Night” Elie feels like a burden has been lifted of him after the death of his father when he says “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have something like: Free at last!...” (Night 112). The phrase “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep” shows how he actually wanted to be sad