It is the goal of numerous people in the world to eventually find their identity, or, in other words: who they are. Numerous aspects of life can determine who someone is. It may be through whom they meet, the things they do, or the events that take place in their lives that define them. In addition, a person may find their identity in their belongings or their family. However, in the beginning of the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel already has a clear sense of who he is, and is mostly content with his identity. He finds his identity mostly in his religion and family. In fact, in the beginning of the book, the author describes himself as “believing profoundly”(Wiesel), which is synonymous with being a devout Jew. Ths can be interpreted into …show more content…
Before this occurs, however, the Jews are stripped of all of their freedom, belongings, and much of their clothes. Instead, the Nazis view them only by their Jewish heritage. This removes every person’s individuality, as they are defined according to what they have.The manner that the people were transported was through cattle cars. This was a particularly harsh and unhealthy environment. Almost immediately, numerous people resort to using instinct and increasingly barbaric ways. An example of this can be found on page 32, when the author writes, “Free from all social constraint, the young people gave way openly to instinct, taking advantage of the darkness to copulate in our midst, without caring about anyone else, as though they were alone in the world.” (Weisel 32) This certain segment from the text demonstrates how quickly many people are willing to give up their identity and former characteristics in the occurrence of a crisis. This is merely the beginning of the effects that the theme has upon all of the Jews that experienced the …show more content…
To begin, the males and females are immediately separated. Unfortunately, this includes Elie being separated from his mother and sisters; which immediately takes a toll on his identity. Then, shortly after, Elie recounts getting assigned numbers, or new names. On page 42, he says, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel, 42) The many people dwelling in the work camp become so fixated on survival and when they would receive their next meal, that they lose their former qualities and morals. Wiesel writes of the appearances of the Jews around him in the camp. He explains how different they appear physically. In addition, he also explains how their mentality has altered. They are constantly fixated exclusively on their next meal, or food in general. This is an example of how drastically the labor camps changed not only Elie, but all of the Jews that had the misfortune of residing within them. Elie no longer recognizes himself. He is a “corpse” or a husk of who he was formerly. At this point in his experience if the Holocaust, Wiesel had almost entirely lost faith in his God, which, the audience can recall was a large portion of his identity before the events that
In the book Night, we the readers witness the hardships and struggles in Elie’s life during the traumatic holocaust. The events that take place in this story are unbearable and are thought to be demented in modern times. In the beginning Elie is shown as a normal teenage Jewish boy, but the events are so drastic that we the readers forget how he was like in the beginning. Changes were made to Elie during the book, whether they were minor or major. The changes generated from himself, the journey, and other people.
It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.
Throughout Night, by Elie Wiesel, the narrator, Wiesel, was subjected to changes within his ideals and religious beliefs. When Wiesel was first introduced to the book, he was a devout Jewish boy who loved his father and had his total faith in God. Over time, Wiesel began to change as a result of being beaten down almost every day and witnessing his fellow Jews being worked to death or simply killed for not being fit enough. "I watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent.
To develop the theme of denial and its consequences, Wiesel uses juxtaposition and characterization. Wiesel uses juxtaposition to develop the theme of indifference and its consequences. Near the beginning of the memoir, Elie’s family is packing for their deportation to Aushwitz. There is absolute chaos, as Wiesel writes, “Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty ground” (15). Unlike the disorder, however, Elie, on the same page, writes, “All this under a magnificent blue sky.”
In chapters 4 to 6 in the novel, “Night”, Elie Wiesel and his father continue to suffer in the grasp of the Germans. Eventually, all the Jews are moved to a new work camp, Buna, where they are overworked and undernourished, and resort to killing each other for pieces of bread. In his old home, Elie had never experienced brutality and inhumanity within it. Now, Elie and other Jews witness extreme violence and an absence of mercy that begins to erode their mental state; bringing most men to animalistic tendencies. In chapter 4, the Jews arrive in Buna.
It becomes clear that Elie Wiesel`s commentary on human nature is that, during extreme circumstances, people are selfish and would achieve anything for their own survival. Furthermore, In Wiesel’s novel people strived to survive this injustice. For example, the Holocaust caused countless amount of
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer Wiesel narrates the legendary tale of what happened to him and his father during the Holocaust. In the introduction, Wiesel talks about how his village in Seghet was never worried about the war until it was too late. Wiesel’s village received advanced notice of the Germans, but the whole village ignored it. Throughout the entire account, Wiesel has many traits that are key to his survival in the concertation camps.
To illustrate, a change of identity occurs, “If only [Eliezer] were relieved of this responsibility… Instantly, [he] felt ashamed, ashamed of [himself] forever,” when he almost tried to leave his father alone (106). Elie faces a permanent change of identity when he strays away from his old educated habits and becomes a selfish creature when going through pain. Another example of a change of identity within Elie is when his father dies, “And deep inside [him], if [he] could have searched the recesses of [his] feeble conscience, [he] might have found something like: Free at Last!” expressing that his father’s death finally freed him, out of the misery, out of the agony (112). Eliezer’s journey with his father through the excruciating concentration camps developed him from an innocent teenager to a mature man with the capabilities to succeed in unbearable situations.
Although survival was a key aspect in concentration camps, Elie gradually begins to live numbly, surviving only because instinct told him to. He no longer cared for the meaning of life, and his only thoughts were of bread, much like a stray dog hoping it would find morsels of food to live off of. However, he didn't start off this way. At the start, he lived for his father. Schlomo Wiesel was Elie's only reason to live, but prior to his father's death, he slowly began to free himself of caring.
The cruelty of the German officers at the concentration camps change Elie’s personality throughout the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Elie is deeply religious and spends most of his time studying Judaism. However, by the end of the novel, Elie believes that God has been unjust to him and all the other Jews, and has lost most of his faith. The cruelty of the German officers also changed the other Jews as well. The events of the Holocaust forces the prisoners to fend for themselves, and not help others.
Throughout this novella, the denied ability to have an exclusive title other than just a number, the critical circumstances of the feared concentration camp Auschwitz, and the disability to obtain a soul, all contribute to Elie’s incredulity towards his faith. Family titles and names are a prodigious gift from God. To acquire a name means that there is an importance for the individual’s life. Without names, an individual has no meaning and no worth. The SS men have replaced their captives original names for irrelevant numbers as shown in the following quote, “I became A-7713.
Imagine believing so strongly in something and then being let down, or thinking that you were wrong to believe. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie felt as though he had lost his religion and beliefs. “I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep of the destruction of the Temple,” (Wiesel, 14). This quote shows how strongly he believed before experiencing the hardships of the Holocaust
The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.
In the novel Night the protagonist, Elie Wiesel, narrates his experiences as a young Jewish boy surviving the Holocaust. Elie 's autobiographical memoir informs the reader about how the Nazis captured the Jews and enslaved them in concentration camps, where they experienced the absolute worst forms of torture, abuse and inhumane treatment. Dehumanization is shown in the story when the Jews were stripped of their identities and belongings, making them feel worthless as people. From the start of Elie Wiesel 's journey of the death camps, his beliefs of his own religion is fragile as he starts to lose his faith. Lastly, camaraderie is present as people in the camps are all surviving together to stay alive so as a result the people in the camp shine light on other people 's darkness.
Throughout the tragic times of the Holocaust, in an attempt to excuse their actions, the Nazis dehumanized the Jews. This was a crucial factor in the Jews losing their innocence in Auschwitz. In Night the Nazis treated Elie, his father and his fellow Jews more as ‘things’ than people. The Jews were worked to death, and killed as if