Both Sebastian Faulks and W. H. Auden write about the tales of Jewish refugees living in the time of holocaust during WW2 in their two pieces, ‘The Last Night’ and ‘Refugee Blues’. By using literary techniques such as imagery and tone both writers, Auden and Gray create a sense of alienation for the characters portrayed in their writing. Both Auden and Gray create a sincere illusion of reality to promote the refugee’s alienation and suffering in both stories ultimately bringing the two gripping tales to life.
Both Auden and Faulks use imagery as an extremely strong literary device to create alienation towards the refugees in their two stories. Immediately Auden introduces the reader to the impossible situation that the characters that they find themselves in. Auden manipulates social structure and the feeling of alienation towards the refugees with the use of natural imagery. Lines such as “saw a door opened and a cat let in” and “Thought I heard thunder rumbling in the sky; … they must die”. These two lines not only show the manner in which the refugees have been regarded as completely inferior but also that they are willed to die, disregarding the concept of escape. In Faulk’s ‘The Last Night’, though not as frequently, also uses natural imagery to highlight the distressing solitude of the refugees and their impossible situation. “Though none of the scraps reached as far as the enclosure.” The word ‘enclosure’ emphasizes how the Jews had been cast aside as ‘social dirt’ as animals are normally associated as being hoarded into an enclosure by human beings.
The two pieces ‘Refugee blues’ and ‘The Last Night’ differ significantly in the way that they are written. In Auden’s ‘Refugee Blues’ the story of the refugees is told through a poem with three lines in each stanza. Whereas in Gray’s ‘The Last night’ the structure follows