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. Eliezer’s best traits come out and allow him to survive his terrible ordeal, which are adaptability, determination, patience, and perseverance. Elie uses his father as his reason to persevere and keep on going through.
“It’s just a small story really, about, among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery…” (Zusak, pg. 5)
Being the last sentence of the book, and out of all the passages I highlighted this one stood out to me and described Wiesel’s experience in just a few simple sentence. He looked at himself for the first time in many years, and did not recognize himself he saw a different person. This showed me that the concentration camps changed him he was a different person inside and out. The events that occurred to him had scared him so much that the man he saw in the mirror wasn’t him, but one who had been drained of life that looked lifeless from the events occurred in the concentration camps. He was weak and this whole passage embodies his weakness and the whole point of the concentration camps. Wiesel was not the only man who was put in
Johann Schiller once said “It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons”. But what happens when the night darkens our hearts our hearts? The Holocaust memoir Night does a phenomenal job of portraying possibly the most horrifying outcomes in such a situation. Through subtle and effective language, Wiesel is able to put into words the fearsome experiences he and his father went through in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. In his holocaust memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes imagery to show the effect that self-preservation can have on father son relationships. Wiesel addresses not only his own situation, but also the effect survival had inwards other fathers and sons in the camp. The memoir
The Holocaust was a horrific event, allowing millions of Jews to die or suffer. The tragic event separated families, not being able to see them ever again. However, in the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel and his father relied on each other and as a result, develops a strong father-son relationship. Wiesel and his father develop a strong father-son relationship throughout Night, experiencing horrific events during the Holocaust. Wiesel's relationship with his father progresses from a codependent relationship to a relationship where Wiesel believes his father is decreasing Wiesel's rate of survival.
In chapter one of Night by Elie Wiesel, the some of the characters of the story are introduced and the conflict begins. The main character is the author because this is an autobiographical novel. Eliezer was a Jew during Hitler’s reign in which Jews were persecuted. The book starts out with the author describing his faith. He is Jewish, but he wants to go deeper into his religion and learn more about it. He becomes good friends with a man named Moishe the Beadle. Moishe is very knowledgeable about the religion and he teaches Eliezer a lot.
The development of Elie Wiesel’s tone in his memoir Night, gradually changes into optimistic into mournful which then contributes to the theme of losing of faith and hope. Wiesel’s tone in his memoir constantly stays mournful, but in the beginning of the story, it was rather optimistic.
Night by Elie Wiesel describes his experiences as a Jew in the concentration camps during World War II. During this time, Wiesel witnessed many horrific acts. Two of these were executions. Though the processes of the executions were similar, the condemned and the Jews’ reactions to the execution were different.
In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.
In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when the ss officers were transporting all the prisoners from buna to another camp and whenever somebody couldn’t keep running the ss officers shoot them. “They had orders to shoot anyone who couldn’t sustain the peace”(Wiesel 85). The ss officers cruelty to the prisoners led them to give up, they stopped trying. If someone stopped and the officers didn’t noticed, he would probably die under the feet of all the people behind them. As the author describes his experiences, many other examples of inhumanity are revealed. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Elie Wiesel are loss of faith and disbelief.
“Never shall I forget” (Wiesel Lines 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 11 ). Four simple words that say so much, conjuring up feelings of hopelessness and despair. This statement marked the end of Elie Wiesel’s fragile innocence as he spent his first night in Auschwitz. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding deliberately weaved a tale in which Ralph witnessed corruption, signifying the loss of his innocence. Throughout both passages, Golding and Wiesel included the major idea that, once lost, innocence can never be regained.
“I realized that he did not want to see what they were going to do to me. He did not want to see the burning of his only son”(42). When Eliezer arrives at Auschwitz, the separation of his family puts an emotional toll on his father since he realizes that only him and Eliezer are still alive. This will be a catalyst to their relationship becoming stronger as they endure more together. Elie Wiesel, the author of the novel Night writes his own personal accounts of experiencing the Holocaust through the character Eliezer. Eliezer and his father rely on one another to survive through the Holocaust. Together they encounter the cruelty of the Nazis, the lack of compassion from the prisoners, as well as the difficulty of simply surviving. They remain strong together unlike other father-son relationships seen in the novel. A majority of the prisoners gravitate towards self preservation while Eliezer chooses to remain with his father. Eliezer does exhibit ambivalence in continuing to help his father because the conditions of the Holocaust continually make it harder to make others a priority than oneself. Eliezer’s relationship with his father contrast with other father-son relationships because they
There are many stories from of the Holocaust throughout history, and the world. Every story is unique to the Jew’s situation. Most stories end in them escaping and being able to live, right? Well that might be true, but there are stories of friends, family members, and seeing other innocent people die. Two examples of stories told about the Holocaust would be, Night by Elie Wiesel, and Life is Beautiful directed by Roberto Benigni. Within Night, Elie’s family was taken by the Nazis, separated from each other, and most of them died during the duration of the Holocaust. Elie and his father had to stick together in order to survive. They had to have faith everything would be okay. In Life is Beautiful Guido, his son Joshua, and his wife were sent
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.
The theme of this book is learning to love and care for the people around. How I came to this conclusion is by how Liesel acts towards Max, her foster parents, Rudy, and her neighbors. Liesel cares for people even if they weren't like her and she doesn't understand why there is hatred in this world. She wanted the world to be a happy place for everyone including Jews to be friends with one another. On page 426 in ‘The Book Thief’, when Rudy’s father went to war Liesel could relate to Rudy because “her mother. Her brother. Max Vandenburg. Hans Hubermann. All of them gone. And she’d never even had a real father.” Also, when Mama was depressed about Papa going to war, Mama would sleep with Papa’s accordion Liesel acknowledged “that there was great beauty in what she was currently witnessing, and she chose not to disturb it” (Zusak, 429). Finally, when Liesel’s papa gave a Jew bread during the parade and what Liesel did during the parade, she gave Jews bread by placing them in the street.