Adolescence is a time when adolescents learn to become more independent, to become more understanding and, above all, to discover themselves and discover who they are. But this is not always the case; When the adolescent's situation is abnormal, his experiences and maturation processes also become abnormal. With the examples of Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank and Jeanne Wakatsuki, we can see that growing up in a war environment plays a definite role in the process of maturing and becoming an adult. These authors all become, at one time or another, egocentric, which helps them discover themselves. They are also very lenient about their treatment and sometimes they may even feel that they deserve this type of injustice. And finally, they also distance themselves from the people they adored, which causes them to become very independent and isolated from the outside world as if they weren't already. We can already clearly see the difference between growing up in a safe environment and growing up with constant gunfire outside the window, but we can see the difference even more clearly by asking ourselves, "How would these individuals have different if they had grown up without constantly fearing for their lives because of the hostility and bloodshed unfolding before their eyes? As Night by Elie Wiesel, Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston show, growing up in a war environment can affect a teenager by making him or her more prone to misunderstanding . others, more egocentric, more angry and more accustomed to this type of harsh treatment. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay During this period, the three teenagers (Anne Frank, Jeanne Wakatsuki, and Elie Wiesel) were self-centered, but not always selfish. An example of how self-centered and ultimately selfish a teenager can be is Elijah, he took care of his father, even though he knew he wouldn't be able to since he was so old and frail. “I tightened my grip on my father’s hand. The old familiar fear: not losing him,” writes Elie in his memoirs (page 104). Arriving at Auschwitz, they were left for dead, but they stayed together despite the struggles that came with it, but as the story progresses, Elijah changes, but not for the good. He starts to not have to take care of his dying old father and starts to wonder why he should suffer just to save his father who was already dead inside, and in the end he basically sends his own father that he loved once, when he died: “I gave him what was left of my soup. But my heart was heavy. I was aware that I was doing it reluctantly... The officer brandished his club and dealt him a violent blow to the head. I didn't move. I was afraid, my body was afraid of another blow, this time to the head. (page 107 and page 111) He begins to think more of himself, and the reader can't blame him, he has been through hell and back, and on this journey he learns the only way to save ; be selfish. The other two were fortunate not to be physically abused, but mentally they suffered almost as much, but in very different ways. Jeanne probably suffered the least, but that doesn't mean she didn't suffer at all. Forced into internment, Jeanne learns to be her own advisor and guide because her parents were no longer there for her. “As a youngest child, I grew up fortunate enough to haveparticular. Now I found myself more and more cut off from him,” Jeanne writes (page 117), showing that not only did she feel that her relationship with her father had changed, but that it had now completely disappeared, that They were no longer just roommates, living in the same house with the same last name, but they weren't really a family. This took a toll on Jeanne trying to become an adult because she didn't have the care she needed to feel wanted and feel like even though the rest of the world was against her, she still had the 'love and support from her parents, but just when the world was against her and her family, her family just cut her off. And as for Anne, unlike the other two, she didn't become selfish or completely cut off from her family, and that's because she couldn't. She was forced to hide, having no other choice but to face her family for almost all of her time, she did not have the opportunity to distance herself, unlike Jeanne who wanted to get closer to her family. . As she wrote in her diary on August 21, 1942: "Mom sometimes treats me like a baby, which I can't stand" (page 24) and on November 7, 1942: "Daddy doesn't understand that I need sometimes gives free rein to my feelings towards mom. He doesn't want to talk about it; he simply avoids anything that might lead to remarks about Mom's failures. Likewise, Mom and her failures are something I find harder to deal with than anything else. (page 45) Annie constantly has problems with her family, and in most cases it's her mother, but she has no one to vent to and she doesn't have the space to get away and give yourself a private space. She is self-centered in the sense that she always feels like others are wrong or that they are always responsible for how they treat her, and this affected her growing up. Instead of learning when to give herself a break, she learned a way to express her feelings while being in the same room as her mother, even though her mind was a million miles away; and it was his diary. For Elie, his father, at the beginning, was the only thing that prevented him from being selfish and completely independent, while for Jeanne, she had to become independent, because she had no one to count on, and as for in Anne, she had her father. diary; her kitty. All three may have felt mistreated, less understood, or even bullied by their parents, but their shared mentality was entirely due to their circumstances. Normal teenagers don't live in fear that the Gestapo will catch them and because of that, they get something that all three of them would have cherished; freedom. But even without freedom, they learned to discover themselves, both mentally and physically, but they were unable to try new things or "live" their lives because they were either stuck in a hideout or in an internment camp , or in a concentration camp. Wartime life does not offer normal, safe opportunities for friendship and self-discovery, although makeshift options are possible. Anne seeks comfort and discovers herself not only by writing her feelings in her diary, but also by talking to Peter, as she wrote on January 6, 1944: "My desire to talk to someone has become so intense that, 'Somehow I took it into account. my head to choose Peter. (page 131) If Anne had the choice, she would not have chosen Peter as a friend, but as she was confined, she had no other choice, as she said the day before: "If only I had a friend! (page 131) In other cases, Anne also discovers herself sexually by talking toPeter, but she discovers herself more emotionally and mentally by writing in her journal because, as she said, “paper is more patient than man.” But since she was confined in the Secret Annex, she only had one friend, Peter, and unlike normal teenagers, she didn't even have the choice of that friend, which led her to talk to the only other friend she had. I had to choose which was his diary. Elie didn't have the chance to meet new friends, when you are on the verge of death, slowly falling over and barely hanging on to the other side, making friends is not not an option or any importance, the real importance is to stay alive and even though there were familiar faces here and there, he could barely remember them. Jeanneau instead, she could have made many friends, but instead, in all of her memoirs, she only befriends one person, and that person wasn't even really her friend . This friend was Radine, she was a pretty blonde with sparkling blue eyes, everything that Jeanne is not, but wants to be. As she writes: “Even today I have a recurring dream, which each time fills me with a terrible feeling of loss and desolation. I see a young, beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed high school student moving through a room full of other people her age, much admired by everyone, both men and women, including me, as I look through a window. (pages 171-172) This shows that even though Jeanne was lucky enough to choose a friend, she chose a friend who made her feel like absolute trash and she was constantly jealous of her, but she couldn't 'admit because she wanted to believe she deserved it, and that's where she's wrong. Growing up in a war environment, Jeanne, Anne, and Elie demonstrated an excessive understanding of their living conditions, making them more insensitive to how others treated them and, in some cases, believe they deserved this type of judgment and religious segregation. Of the three, it was Jeanne who felt this the most; she repeatedly talks about how she wanted to be invisible or how she didn't want to cause a burden to others: "But he was afraid to use me." He had to go and talk to the board of directors and some parents about it, to see if it was allowed for an Oriental to represent the school in such a visible way. This had never happened before. I was told this survey was crazy and my reaction was the same as when I was trying to think about Girl Scouts. I apologized for placing such a burden on those who had to decide. She was apologizing for something she couldn't change, which was what the internment camp had done to her. It made her believe that she was really different and so different that she couldn't be given the same opportunities, the same respect or even the same attitude, but in her mind it was all justified, she thinks herself that if she was in the other shoe's group, she would do the same thing. Unlike Jeanne, Anne was furious with her situation, not understanding why, because of her religion, they had to hide, but that doesn't mean she didn't accept and understand her living conditions. Anne wrote in her diary on November 19, 1942: “I myself am frightened when I think of close friends who are now at the mercy of the cruelest monsters that have ever lived on earth. And all because they are Jewish. (page 54) This shows that she understood the situation and the cause of it, namely the fact that they were Jewish, but she still was not able to understand why the fact that they were Jewish meant so much and made them enemies of the Germans. Instead of becoming more understanding by listening toothers or by opposing opinions like most other teenagers do, these teenagers have learned to be more understanding in accepting their terrible living conditions. They also begin to believe that they deserve this type of treatment. Elie, on the other hand, is not furious against the Nazis, against himself, against his father, against the people around him, against passers-by, but against God. God was everything to Elijah, before being sent to the concentration camps he entrusted his life to God, but over time he suppressed his anger and blamed God for his situation, he did not understand, that’s what kept him hopeful. . He still believed that the fact that he was Jewish was no excuse for him to be treated like slave laborers who were mentally and physically abused daily for months and years, so he placed the blame on God. “Blessed be the name of God?” Why, but why should I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He burned thousands of children in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria operating day and night, including the Sabbath and holy days? Because in his great power he had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna and so many other factories of death? (page 67)That night he began to question God, he began to question the one thing he believed in him, and this anger in him was not caused by anything because that as a teenager he must have found himself stuck in the middle of a tragic war. But what if he wasn't? Maybe, just maybe, if these poor children hadn't had to suffer in concentration camps, endure the pain of discrimination in internment camps, and go into hiding, these individuals could have grown up a lot taller . differently. To begin with, Jeanne was perhaps more confident in herself instead of being the way she was, insecure, unassertive and extremely unsure of herself. Even though she was voted the prettiest girl in her class, she still didn't and couldn't believe that she was good enough, but if she was raised and taught that it's okay to being Japanese, so maybe it's about that. day, she would be proud. She would not fear the judgment of others and would simply accept victory. Maybe then Jeanne wouldn't have had recurring dreams of being someone different, and maybe she wouldn't have had to make herself invisible. Maybe she could have gone out with the guys she liked, joined the sorority on her own terms, and most importantly, lived her life as it is. And as for Anne, she could have become what she dreamed of being, a writer, but simply because she was Jewish, she didn't have the opportunity to do so. But what if, what if Anne had never been arrested or the Holocaust had simply never happened? Anne probably could have followed her dreams and become a writer, she probably could have learned much more than what the world has to offer rather than only studying 5 irregular verbs a day due to lack of resources in the secret annex. She could have made better friends, she wouldn't have to be confined with Peter. She wouldn't have to constantly endure her mother's abuse, but she could learn to distance herself from others. And what about Elijah? He would not have had to endure all this physical and mental abuse at the hands of the Nazis and the SS, he could have been a normal child living in normal conditions. He could have stayed with his parents and he wouldn't have to painfully watch his father collapse and slowly die in front of him. He could have been so different, he could have loved and believed in God fully without having the slightest doubt about his ways. He could have pursued his religious dreams.