Cultural Conflict In A Night Divided And Nobody Knows

“Sometimes the things we can’t change end up changing us” (Anonymous). This explains that when there are obstacles in your way that you can’t alter, you can become stronger or different because of them. Many of the characters in A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen and Nobody Knows by Shelley Tanaka changed because of a cultural conflict presented to them. In Nobody Knows, the Mother of five children sneaks in four of them to live in an apartment where no children are allowed. Over the course of the book, the mother abandons her children and Akira, the oldest child, is forced to take care of all of his siblings on his own. In A Night Divided, Gerta’s family was split up over night when the Berlin Wall was put in place. Her father and and …show more content…
In A Night Divided, when Gerta and Fritz first came up with the idea to dig underneath the Berlin wall Mama was completely against the idea. She thought that the idea was too dangerous for her children to go through and her kids would be risking their lives in this action. “Papa might not want us to dig, and Mama would never give us permission, but it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re going to build that tunnel” (Nielsen 122). This proves that Fritz knows that Mama will never give them permission to build the tunnel. They know that she is sticking to her belief that is too dangerous of a mission for her children to complete or begin with the Stasi killing whoever tries to cross the border. Mama’s beliefs on what her kids should do about their harsh government changes because of the cultural conflict of being against the government. Mama ends up deciding that they can’t stand how the government is treating the border and their citizens. She finally decides to let them dig, and even help in the process. “With Mama’s help, we made far more progress than ever before” (236). This shows that she completely changes her attitude after long times of her family and friends being hurt mentally and physically. In Nobody Knows, Akira’s attitude changed about how he was feeding his siblings. When his mother was home and making sure that Akira was taking care of his siblings the right way, he was making exquisite home cooked meals. “Akira made the rice. He washed the potatoes, chopped the vegetables. The apartment filled with a good spicy smell. Curry was one of his specialties” (Tanaka 25). This shows that when the mother was still caring for her children, they were making meals and planning out the nice meals that they were going to make. The mentality of taking care of each other and the attitude of cooking changed when there wasn’t a mother to make them stay on top of things. Akira began to stop planning out the day and making