Hana's Suitcase: A Literary Analysis

Children literature is a term that refers to the texts written for children. The artist uses creative ways to ensure that children are provided with educational books, touching on a variety of themes. This paper will include comparison of two characters from the two texts, “Hana's Suitcase: A True Story,” authored by Karen Levine and “Charlotte’s Web,” written by E.B. White, with the aim of understanding ways in which problems are solvable as indicated by selected characters.

In the book, “Hana's Suitcase: A True Story,” Fumiko Ishioka is one of the outstanding characters. Fumiko is the organizer of the Children's Holocaust Education Center in Tokyo, Japan and her role begins in a small museum, when she figures out that Japanese children had

The groups that are antagonistic include, the Holocaust museum fraternity and Ishioka and her class. According to Karen Levine, “When Fumiko felt sad about her life, she thought of these survivors. They were so strong willed and wise. They had so much to teach her.,” and these survivors are the victims of the Holocaust (Levine 10). The quote above indicates that Fumiko had some emotional argument, a Character vs. Self conflict. She was disturbed by Japanese historical experiences and relating to that of mass killing in Germany. Fumiko felt her only way out of such emotional turmoil could be resolved by teaching the Japanese children and it was her to make it happen. And by searching Hana Brady’s story is her source of confidence a to solve this conflict. She travels the world to look for artifacts and finally, when Fumiko visited Terezin Ghetto Museum, she found a list of children imprisoned and even discovered Hana’s brother named George. The records even showed that George survived the tragedy. The information Fumiko uncovered didn’t stop her to continue searching for her questions about Hana until she found Hana’s brother George who is now living in Toronto. Finally, Fumiko and George met in Tokyo and as Karen Levine described, “Fumiko beamed with pride as, one by one, they presented George with their drawings

Among the characters is Wilbur and Charlotte. Wilbur had Character vs. Self conflict concerning friendship as she thinks of Charlotte, “I’ve got a new friend, all right! But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, and bloodthirsty-everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is beautiful and, of course, smart?” Such thoughts of Wilbur indicate that he had fears and doubt on whether to accept Charlotte as her friend (White 41). But Wilbur is helpless and needs friend to rely to save his life so to solve his problem, he tries to be like Charlotte so as to solve his conflict. Such an attempt is comprehensible to readers that Wilbur imitates Charlotte’s spinning of a web, so as to relate to a friend’s ability. Such mimicking is supposed to alleviate the lack of confidence friendship. As their story continue, Wilbur discover that his impression with Charlotte is wrong. Underneath Charlotte’s cruel exterior, she has kind heart and a loyal and true friend to the very