Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, "a person is a person through other people." The people we meet in life are the ones who make us who we are today; the conflicts, situations and moments we have experienced and spent with them and the support they offer are what shape our character. I agree with Archbishop Desmond Tutu as his ideas are conveyed in Richard Wright's Black Boy and Elie Wiesel's Night through conflicts and important ideas such as the Milgram experiment and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In Richard Wright's Black Boy, Richard goes through many events and conflicts with others that determine his character at the time. For example, right at the beginning of the novel, Richard's father comes out of his bedroom into the backyard yelling at Richard and his brother to keep a cat quiet so he can sleep. He didn't care what they did, as long as they kept it hidden, even if they killed him. At the time, Richard's image of his father was only when he shouted at them to stop playing; Richard held so much hatred and contempt for his father that he decided he would take his words literally and actually kill the cat. He wanted to demonstrate his hatred to his father without getting into trouble, he wanted to make him angry. This exemplifies the fact that Richard's father created a little killer inside Richard or at least turned him into a violent little boy. As Richard grew up, he was transformed into a racist boy by his neighbors and schoolmates. At first, Richard and his friends sang racist songs against Jews without realizing that he was discriminating against Jews just as he was being discriminated against by whites. On the other hand, Richard was raised this way by his parents and this was at the core of Maslow's hierarchy of needs as Elie preferred his safety over his physiological needs which, in reality, caused Elie to survive the holocaust . Elie's father gave him the reason to live; even after his death, Elie lived only for his stomach, keeping in mind that he does it for his father and to keep his memory alive. Throughout our lives, we will meet many people; they will evaluate us, seek us, break us and make us happy. But it's what we go through with them that makes us who we are today. This can be demonstrated in various ways in Black Boy and Night by authors Richard Wright and Elie Wiesel. The main characters of both novels went through many difficulties and encountered many more, but they did not stop at each of them and did not give up. They benefited from each person they met and learned from their experiences that later helped them overcome other obstacles.