Comparing Night And Terrible Things By Eve Bunting

In the text, Night, the poem, First They Came For The Communist, and the allegory, Terrible Things, there is a common theme between all three of them which is, “Just because a situation isn’t happening to you, doesn’t mean it won’t happen to you at all.” Throughout these three sources, this theme has been shown to be the one thing that they are trying to tell us. This can be called the shared theme because in all three of the sources, there have been bystanders who had to watch as others were taken away from their homes yet they didn’t do anything, they just sat and watched dismissing these actions since they weren’t the ones experiencing it. However, when it was finally time for them to be taken as well, they tried to call out for help, or …show more content…
This story is a great way to symbolize what happened during the Holocaust because each of the animals could represent any of the groups the Nazis took and the Terrible Things could represent Hitler’s forces. Additionally, the allegory represents the Holocaust in another way by showing each of the animals as bystanders watching whilst the Terrible Thing took the other animals one by one. So, this allegory could share this theme because as the Terrible Things left with a different animal, the remaining animals started to insult the kidnapped animals and being glad it wasn’t them who were taken. Near the end of the book, the theme becomes clear when only the rabbits remain and then the big and little rabbit have a conversation about the terrible things and themselves when Big Rabbit says, “‘Nonsense,’ Big Rabbit said, ‘Why should we move? This has always been our home. And the terrible things won’t come back. We are white rabbits. It couldn’t happen to us.” When he says this, it’s obvious that he thinks that the Terrible Things won’t come for them. However, the next day the things come back for the rabbits and capture them all except for Little Rabbit who hid under a rock. And since they thought it wouldn’t happen to them, they got caught as well leaving Little Rabbit to go warn the other forest