Compare and Contrast Essay on Social Issues from Hana’s Suitcase and the Paper Bag Princess

1510 Words7 Pages
"Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful." - Margaret Mead In today’s society, there are hundreds of social issues occurring, which we must deal with as part of our daily lives. For example, issues of divorce, child abuse, alcoholism, racism, and stereotype cause problems every day, and millions of people are being negatively affected that people have depression and even anti-social disorder. However, one of the most reoccurring problems is stereotyping. Then what is a stereotype? Stereotype is an exaggerated belief image or distorted truth about people - a generalization about a group of people where people use a very simple patter for judging an entire group of people. When this happens, stereotype leads to many negative effects to the society such as prejudice and discrimination. In this essay, however, two characters from Hana’s Suitcase and The Paper Bag Princess are demonstrated, and explain how the author deals with the subject of stereotype issue in each book, the similarities and differences: Hana from the Hana’s Suitcase is stereotyped on her race and Princess Elizabeth from The Paper Bag Princess is stereotyped on her sex. First of all, in Hana’s Suitcase, Hana is being stereotyped because of her religious, cultural and ethnical background. Hana’s Suitcase, written by Karen Levine, is a non-fiction novel that has story of a Jewish girl surviving from the concentration camp during the World War II, and 50 years later, a Japanese curator traces her news. During this period, however, many Jewish people were tortured by the Nazis, and forced to be in the concentration camps. This is because the Germans were taught that Jewish people are evil and unnecessary race: “The Nazis declared that Jews
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