Armenian Question Compare And Contrast Essay

Armenian Question influenced Hakob Melik Hakobyan “Raffi” and Franc Werfel to write the historical novels. Despite the fact that both of this writers were inspired by the same thing, the novels are completely different. Armenian Question is term used in European Countries in order to describe the group of problem related to Armenians living in Ottoman Empire at the end of XIX – the beginning of the XX century. Although this term appeared in the end of XIX century, the roots of the problems were created hundreds years before. In 1955 after the long lasting war between Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire, the territory of Western Armenian was conquered by the Ottomans. As Ottomans were Muslims and Armenians were Christians, Armenians were …show more content…
Two factors attributed on the differences of this two novels. First and the most crucial factor was that Raffi was Armenian, while Franc Werfel was Jewish. For this reason, the novel “Samuel” was more subjective, the Persians were described as absolute evil, meanwhile, there were also positive characters among the Turks in “40 days of Musa Dagh”. For example, Agha Rifaat Bereket, the friend of Bagratians Family (Werfel, 1932, p.36). The second factor was that these novels were written in the different stages of Armenian Question. This created several differences. Firstly, “Samuel” was written in the first stage of Armenian Question, while “40 Days Musa Dagh” was written after the Armenian Question was “solved”, when there were no Armenians in Eastern Armenia. For this reason, Franc Werfel had a stories from the history of Armenian Question to base on. On the contrary, Raffi started working on his novel in 1880, 2 years after the Armenian Question has appeared, hence he had to use the story from the past, rather than from the period of Armenian Question. Also, there were different purposes for writing these works. “Samuel” was written to increase patriotism among Armenians and raise people to fight for their freedom. Meanwhile, “40 Days of Musa Dagh” was written so that people are aware about the crimes that was done and yet concealed by Turkey. …show more content…
And despite the many differences between these two novels, such as purpose of writing, writing styles, emphases and time periods. They have one goal in common, which is to help the Armenian nations, who lived in tragic condition for hundreds of years, being treated violently by Muslim population and later massacred for just being