Night Vs Sea Wolf

Elie Weisel and Jack London use very similar stylistic elements to achieve their purpose of showing how inhumane and cruel man can be to other man.

Even though Jack London’s The Sea Wolf and Elie Weisel’s Night are very unique and different from one another, they were both written for the same reason, to show how cruel and inhumane man can be to other man. Both of these authors also achieve this purpose by using the same stylistic elements: symbolism, development of character, and setting. These works are similar in the purpose and the way they achieve the purpose but as far as content and genre the novels are very different and unique from each other as well. However, through symbolism, development of character, and setting they both effectively achieve the same purpose of demonstrating how cruel and inhumane man can be to other man.

Both Night and The Sea Wolf have main characters that undergo a major transformation from the beginning of the novel to the end of the novel. However, their conditions and environments forced these changes upon them, they were not given a choice. In Night, the main character Elie Weisel, starts the novel out as an immature, innocent child. In the beginning of the novel he is just a child, who is innocent, caring, loving, trusting and spoiled. However, after surviving and enduring all that he had to go through Elie Weisel ends the novel as a mature adult who has been through Hell and back. Weisel loses many things at the Nazi “death” camp he goes to. He loses his innocence by seeing men tortured and killed. He loses his trust of all humans by enduring all that the Germans put him and his fellow Jews through. He loses his family as well. The first day his mother and sister are sent to the crematory. He loses his father at the end of the novel as well. Weisel is no longer a child, he is now a mature adult who is no longer spoiled but is forced to become independent. This change in Weisel is not brought about by choice however. These changes were forced. Weisel either made these changes or he dies. He was forced to become independent after leaving the concentration camp because he had no family and if he were not independent he would die. Also, the “Death Camp” that Weisel went to was, extremely physically demanding. Weisel had to become a lot stronger physically or he would not have survived the “Death Camp.” The camp forced Weisel to become a lot stronger physically as well as mentally. The main character in The Sea Wolf, Humphrey Van Weyden also goes through a forced change in the novel. Van Weyden was born a gentleman and in a conversation with Wolf Larsen, Larsen tells Van Weyden “You stand on dead men’s legs. You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals.” (23: Chapter 3). Larsen was basically pointing out that Van Weyden was a gentleman who never had to work a day in his life so he couldn’t do anything on his own. However, after months of involuntary servitude under Wolf Larsen Van Weyden transforms into a man that is independent enough to survive on an island by himself, which he does in towards the end of the novel. Van Weyden goes from a gentleman to a “jack of all trades,” who can pretty much do everything. Van Weyden is even capable of living with only a woman on a deserted island for a period of time after undergoing the changes he went through. He had to become independent enough to build a shelter, kill seals, and cook food for h

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