Beethoven's 5th Symphony Theme Statements

In spite of my efforts not to think about it, I could feel myself as two entities-- my body and me. I hated it.” -- Elie Wiesel (pp. 91-92). This quote sums up the “death march” from Buna to Gleiwitz. The main characters in this scene were Elie and his father, the SS officers, Rabbi Eliahou, and Zalman. This march was an enforced exodus across dozens of kilometers in the dead of winter, where not a soul was to be seen aside from SS officers, who had orders to execute anyone who took even a second’s break. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and Chopin’s Death march pieces fit nearly perfectly as ambient music, especially the “dun-dun-dun” part of the 5th symphony. Beethoven’s 5th symphony was the most moving of the pieces. This piece had its ups and downs, along with dark imagery next to the light. Juliek, the violinist, died pouring out his heart in Beethoven. Ironically, the Allies used a part of Beethoven’s 5th symphony as a source of

91. This one sentence starts one of the most dark chapters in the book. “Faster, you swine, you filthy sons of B***h!” -- 91. The Jews were forced to go faster and faster, until they were running through the countryside. “If one of us stopped for a second, a sharp shot finished off another filthy son of a B***h.” -- 91. Every time someone stopped, that person was picked off. Wiesel continued until he was practically sleeping while running. Every time he fell asleep, he was jolted awake by someone behind him. Poor Zalman, who was running to break all ties with his humanity, suffered a stomach cramp next to Elie. At one time, when he was thinking and fantasizing about death, Wiesel’s father appeared next to him, urging him on. “It was only then that I really felt my weariness.” -- 94. The prisoners eventually come across a town with a decrepit brick factory, where Wesel and his father took turns making sure each other didn’t die. Overall, this chapter was likely the darkest chapter of them