“Protect your loved ones.” That is a lesson that can be seen in Towers falling by Jewell Parker Rhoades and in Without Refuge by Jane Mitchell. These stories share some differences but they have aspects that they share resemblance, in both of the novels the main characters are shown protecting their loved ones but in different ways, both of the main characters go through historical wars but with completely different experiences, but in the same way the two characters go through poverty in similar ways. Ghabi who is a 13 year-old boy which grew up in the outskirts of syria and was always a happy child but as the terrorist group ISIS came into Syria everything changed for the worst, people started dying, hospitals were closed and eduction was almost impossible to find. On the other hand Deja, which is the same age as Ghabi, never experienced war, but has experienced poverty coming from a poor family.
Both of the main characters in this story protect their loved ones, Ghabi from the novel Without Refuge by Jane Mitchell displays him saving his brother from a bomb attack that ISIS had planted by putting his body in front of the bomb this left him with a lot of mental and physical trauma but he was grateful that his brother made it out alive this can be seen on page 60 where it states “Thank God that my brother is alive”, on the other hand the character from Towers falling by Jewell Parker Rhoades takes care of them and stands up for them how she does this is when her parents aren’t at home she will make them food and bath them.
Both of the characters in these novels live through historical wars, Ghabi lives through the syrian war against ISIS during this tragic war he has to go through some of the worst experiences of his life, this is including seeing his city getting bombed, seeing his relatives bleed to death because of bomb attacks and even going through mental and physical pain after surviving a bomb explosion as is it noted in page 58, while on the contrary Dejá’s country passed a very difficult time but she never experiences the terrifying horrors war provides because she is safe and sound in her house and never has the fear of bombs exploding near her or someone coming inside with a gun to kill her and her family.
The two characters share a very harsh experience of living in poverty, they both grew up in poverty and never really had money for fun things so that made them in a similar situation make them be closer to there family because since they both hand nothing to do they tended to stay close to there families and this in both of the characters started making a unbreakable bond with their parents, continuing another way that both of these characters go through poverty are there living conditions Ghabi lives in Syria during the war so his house is damaged and filthy, similar Deja’s house is not taken care of because there is no water in the house and her family don’t have a sufficient amount of money for supplies to clean and restore the house. How poverty affects these characters is by in many ways for example in the case of Deja she feels like a outsider because of her clothes and her dirty shoes, on the other hand Ghabi is pushed into a wrong path because of poverty which is stealing, he does this so he can survive during the brutal war that’s going on.
In conclusion, the novels previously mentioned have some aspects in common but the majority of the aspects that have been compared are contrasting. Elaborating more, these novels compare and contrast how both of the characters protect their loved ones, go through historical wars but don’t share the same experiences, but one aspect that they do have in common is that the two characters go through poverty in similar ways.
