Emil and Karl#2

For my second post on the book Emil and Karl I will be writing about how the protagonists compare and contrast. The other books that I am including are Milkweed, and Night. In Milkweed the protagonists name is Misha, and in Night the protagonists name is Elie. In the books they are all strong, loving people who are naive about what is happening and why. In Milkweed, Misha is an orphan boy who is adopted by a Jewish family during the Holocaust, but keeps his ties with the other orphans. Throughout the book he helps his new family and the orphans by stealing food. He is very naive about what is happening but what he does know he is very good at. He has never received any schooling and has never seen his real parents. He is different from Karl and Elie in this aspect because they both knew at least one of their parents and were both students. Misha is different from Karl because he is now Jewish and Karl is not, but they are very similar because they both are independent and are about nine in the majority of the story. Elie is different because he is fifteen in the story. I think that they are all young in the stories because it makes the book have a more interesting perspective.

In all of the books they all want themselves, and their families to survive. In Night, Elie is in a concentration camp, and could be killed at any time. In Emil and Karl, they can both be found out and taken away, to where Emil’s father was killed. In Milkweed, Misha is in the ghetto and needs to steal food and avoid the Nazis to survive. A conflict that they each have, is that they need to avoid the Nazis and need to make sure that they protect each other. Some conflicts that they have differently are that in Emil and Karl, and Night, they both are surrounded by them and people like them, but in Milkweed he needs to avoid them instead of deal with them.

I have found that all of the characters have the same basic motivations. They all want to help someone else and all want to make life easier for everyone. In Milkweed and Night, they want to free the Jews from the Nazis, and in Emil and Karl they want to get rid of the threat of the Nazis. They do have different motivations also, because Misha wants to stay alive and leave the ghetto, Elie wants people to know and help with the concentrations camps, and Emil and Karl want their parents back, and to leave. As a whole, they are all very similar, but when you look at the specific details of their lives you see in how many ways they are different.