Life Is Beautiful Blog

A connection I made between Night and Life is Beautiful would be the relationships that people formed during the holocaust. In Night, Elie and his father depend on each other to live, and in LiB, Giosue depended on his father to protect him at the camp. Both stories show how important relationships and family is during times of despair. In Night  Elie questions the purpose of his existence if his father were to die, and in LiB, Giosue would be taken away and executed by the Nazi’s if his father did not hide and protect him.

One way that Night and LiB are different is how the characters react and adapt to events in their life. In Night, Elie reacts to the Nazi’s by trying to stick with his family. Due to the trauma Elie experiences at the camp, he and his faith in his religion are changed permanently. Elie also reacts to events by sticking it out with his father, his father is all that Elie has left, so it tries to stay alive with his father as long as possible. In LiB, Guido reacts by staying positive, this influences the people around him (especially his son) by giving them hope and comforting them in the rough situation they were in. Guido knew and understood the full extent of his situation, so by keeping up the morale and hope of his son, he saved his son’s life. One way Night and LiB are similar would be how the events in both take place. In the beginning, both are living normally, but suddenly the Nazi’s invade and begin to implement anti-semitic laws and ideas. Then, in less than a year the main characters are shipped to a concentration camp and are forced to deal with their forced stay at the camp.

The main overlying tone between Night and LiB seems very different at a first glance. In Night, the theme is very dark, Elie fully tells the audience about his experiences during the Holocaust, and he intended to show the reader the horrible things that happened in the various death camps he stayed at. In LiB, Guido tries to disguise his situation to his son, and in turn, makes the experience at the camp appear less serious to the audience than in Night. Guido pretended that his stay at the camp would only last a short time, he did this to protect his innocent son, who was about 5-6 years old when he was captured by the Nazi’s.

Throughout the Movie, we see that Guido mainly focuses on the positive things in life, he somehow always finds beautiful things in life. In the movie, we see how Guido met Dora, we see how he tries to win her over, and soon Dora falls in love with Guido. Guido and Dora later had a child, and the two were openly happy with life, even with the rising anti-Semitism in Italy. Another instance of life being beautiful would be when Guido sneaks into a room and plays a record, aiming the horn of the record towards the Women’s section of the camp. Dora hears the music, Guido played a song that was played at a dance that he and Dora went to, this song gave Dora hope. The song reminded Dora of the days before being brought to the camp, during the days when she was most happy, the song gave her hope, hope that she would eventually be freed from the camp with her family.