The books Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam and The Night Spies by Cynthia Kadohata and Kathy Kacer are stories that are part of the literary genre historical fiction and have children and pre-teens as their target audience. The first mentioned book tells a story about a relationship of trust and friendship between a newly recruited American soldier and an army dog during the Vietnam War period, while Kathy Kacer’s book is an holocaust remembrance that tells about a jewish family who, thanks to prejudice and religious intolerance against Jews, are forced to hide in a small village in the middle of World War II to survive. In both texts it is possible to observe points of comparison and contrast between them, according to what Kadohata and Kacer suggest from their stories. Both stories show how extreme greed and thirst for power can impact people’s lives and how, even set in different war times, the intolerance and prejudice addressed by both books stood strong in the world. Nevertheless, the stories provide the reader with the opportunity to analyze different points of view during conflicts, from a soldier to a jewish during hard times.
The first impression of resemblance that can be perceived when comparing the both books is how ambition and the desire for power impact people’s lives in the stories. The book Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam shows how the superiors war generals and government decisions about the attack plans, battle camps and about the soldiers drastically affected the life of the military. When reading the work, it is possible to perceive that decisions taken by superiors in the concept of war were, most of the time, out of pure greed. The powerful wanted to get more land, they wanted to get more wealth and consequently achieve more power, even if that ambition had irreversible consequences. In this book, the thirst for power was the cause of the death of thousands of soldiers. As well as Kadohata’s text, the book The Night Spies also openly addresses what the wanting to be superior and the desire to have extreme power of some people can do to the lives of other innocent people. This work, which covers the period of World War II, shows the despair of a child named Gabi and her Jewish family when they were persecuted just for having a specific belief. This whole persecution started because of some people who thought that they themselves and their beliefs were superior to other people and other beliefs, seeing these other people as “inferiors”. Gabi shows the fear kept inside her to her mother saying “Mama, it’s not because we’re different from them that we’re bad! That’s not fair! We’re being followed as if we were the bad ones, but the monsters are them!”
In addition, the issues addressed by both stories are elements that are very present throughout the chapters. Cynthia’s book takes place during the Vietnam War, while Kathy’s book takes place during the Second World War, but even so, social problems such as abomination and discrimination are elements that are strongly present in both works. The book Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam talks about the prejudice of Americans when talking about foreigners and Vietnamese people. In this story, one of the soldiers who worked with Rick Hanski (protagonist of the story) even says “It’s better to marry a dog than to have children with a foreigner!”, emphasizing discrimination against foreigners. Relative to Cynthia’s story, the book The Night Spies talks about the prejudice of Hitler followers against jews and their beliefs, showing how people suffered at that time for having a specific religion, also having their pain invalidated and their family removed in the worst possible way.
On the other hand, the stories contrast by showing to the reader differents points of view of the characters, but in situations where these points of view are shown on opposite sides, more specifically contrasting the perception of a soldier, who has a duty to fight and arrest people according to the orders he receives (Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam) and the vision of a jewish girl who needs to hide from soldiers to stay safe (The Night Spies). Rick Hanski, the soldier,feels that his work is honorable and is very proud to be part of the American army, but, throughout the story, he feels that fighting, arresting innocent people and having to deal with so many deaths makes him seem more like a villain than a hero, as he says in the sentence “I’m proud of my position, but not what I do. Seeing these people suffering and thinking that they are suffering because of my work leaves me devastated. I joined the army to be a hero, but I’m being the counterpart of that”. While Gabi, the jewish girl, in the midst of so many losses and suffering, ended up hating the soldiers and other people who judged her. Gabi began to feel that she was not part of that place and longed to be with her father, who had been taken away from her and taken to somewhere she didn’t know. She also thinks that “they would take everything she had until there was nothing left to take,” which shows her anger and sadness at not knowing what her future would be like.
In conclusion, both historical fiction books Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam and The Night Spies shows to the reader how Kadohata and Kacer provide the reader with the perception of the power of others impacting on the characters lives and the addression of the issues and social problems present in those times, combining real elements from the history of those conflicts and invented elements for the development of the books. Furthermore, the authors also demonstrate in their works, when comparing one book with another, the contrast between the perceptions, actions and beliefs of one character and the points of view of another while dealing with difficult life situations. Cynthia and Kacer suggest that, despite the difficulties and pain being faced, a flame of hope must always be kept lit to move forward, as perseverance is what keeps a person standing and strong during challenging times.
