Compare the Tragedies of the Characters in the Last Night and Refugee Blues.

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Compare the tragedies of the characters in The Last Night and Refugee Blues. Everyone experiences tragedy in their lives but fortunately very few are ever subjected to such extraordinary tribulation such as that shown in the texts “The Last Night” and “The Refugee Blues”. Both texts in their own way express the hardships those of the Jewish faith were put through during the 1930s through language and verse. Regarding the language and structure used to show tragedy among the characters, the texts have many similarities and differences. In “The Last Night” the tone in which the calamities experienced by Andre and Jacob are expressed is extremely unemotional and understated as if it was a normal occurrence and and that the tragedy that was all around them was no big deal.“Those who drank from the half dozen cups..drank in silence” this is written in such a calm and plain way that it almost seems like a completely ordinary course of events that people are in a situation so dreadful they cant even talk to one another. In the “Refugee Blues”tragedy is presented to us in a very different way to that in “The Last Night” as instead of being said straight out in a matter-of-fact manner it is conveyed using similes and metaphors for example “saw fish swimming as if they were free” he uses fish as a representation of himself and his wife; Auden's use of this imagery makes the reader almost feel more empathy for the couple than if it had just been presented using straightforward language as it sends the message that German Jews had little importance and less rights than an animal, which is a much more powerful statement than if it had just simply been said that they had very little freedom. Both the passages have completely different structures to each other, the “Refugee Blues” is written entirely in verse whereas “The Last Night” is written in story telling form.

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