Having watched the movie Life is Beautiful, and reading the book Night, there were many similarities and some differences that were clearly shown if one wanted to compare the two. Both stories take place in the mid 1900’s during the last few years of the Holocaust, and were about survival. Life is Beautiful was a realistic fiction movie that was based off the actual events that happened during the holocaust, and Night was an autobiography/novel that depicted the life of a Jew that lived in various concentration camps.
Both stories are viewed from a child’s perspective who has suffered a great deal physical and emotional pain from living within the camps, and if it weren’t for their fathers, they would have not survived. Life is Beautiful is a film that will make you feel a variety of emotions as it depicts the life of Guido Orefice’s love that he had for his family, and the sacrifices he made for his child Joshua. The movie shows how Guido is trying to make the camp as fun as possible for Joshua, and to keep hope alive by promising him a real tank if they get to 1000 point.
When Guido knows that he is about to die, the only thing that he can really think of is making sure that the last time his son will see him, he would be happy. At the end of the movie, after Guido’s death, we see that Joshua was able to make it out of the camp riding on a tank that his father promised him, with the rest of the Jews walking to their freedom. It wasn’t until the end when he says that he is the narrator.
Life is Beautiful is very similar to Night whether or not it was on purpose, and even though both Joshua and Eliezer were close with their fathers, Eliezer seemed to slowly grow apart from his. The story of Night was written by the current human rights activist Eliezer Wiesel. He was around the age of 12 or 13 when he first entered the Auschwitz concentration camp. At first, all of his family arrived with him, but that was quickly changed when he and his father were separated from his mother and sister.
The only family he had was his father, so they had to depend on one another. Because Eliezer was old enough to fully understand the situation, he never needed to be protected from the truth like Joshua. He and his father were very close to one another, but later on his father became a burden. Unlike Joshua, Eliezer knew that his father was going to die and grew distant from him. Even though he loved his father, the situation was too heavy Eliezer to handle, so he decided that individual survival was the main goal.
Guido made sure that his son would live on if he didn’t, and Eliezer’s father probably wanted the same for his son. Even though Night was a sadder Holocaust story than Life is Beautiful because it was real, and most people don’t get to be reunited with family like Joshua did. Even though Joshua was a fictional character, he still wanted to share his story with others so they could learn from the plight of the Jewish people, just like Eliezer.
