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.
In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.
Wiesel’s speech shows how he worked to keep the memory of those people alive because he knows that people will continue to be guilty, to be accomplices if they forget. Furthermore, Wiesel knows that keeping the memory of those poor, innocent will avoid the repetition of the atrocity done in the future. The stories and experiences of Wiesel allowed for people to see the true horrors of what occurs when people who keep silence become “accomplices” of those who inflict pain towards humans. To conclude, Wiesel chose to use parallelism in his speech to emphasize the fault people had for keeping silence and allowing the torture of innocent
In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when he questioned God, ¨Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled, he caused thousands of children to burn his Mass graves?¨(Wiesel 68). Overall, Wiesel does not follow the words of God and is not believing in him anymore because he thinks God is the one thatś letting all the inhumanity occur.
It is a human instinct to prioritize one's well-being before others. We are constantly confronted with situations where we as humans have to take action for our own contentment. In the book, Night by Elie Wiesel, he shares his own traumatic experience of the Holocaust, which was a mass murder of 12 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, basically anyone who is different and wouldn’t fit into Adolf Hitler’s image of a perfect society. Despite how ruthless the Holocaust was, the Elie and his fellow prisoners fought and fought for their freedom, displaying how much humanity will fight for survival. By looking at the following examples: A child kills his own father for a loaf of bread, a son leaving his father behind during one of the march so he would not die, and Elie debating if he should let his father die so he could have a higher chance of surviving. 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.
Elie Wiesel wanted to show the world the horrible act of indifference and how it has personally affected him as a child and for his whole life growing up. Wiesel manages to create many viewpoints and to throw us in his shoes for us to understand the inhumanity of the ones had no sympathy towards the jews during the holocaust. Wiesel’s use of ethos, pathos, logos, diction, and allusion certainly gives the audience information and emotions he was hoping
Wiesel makes the claim that the terror of the Holocaust existed in how everyone dehumanized one another. Moshe the Beadle is dehumanized by the people of Sighet. When Moshe comes back to tell them what experienced, Moshe is dehumanized in the way is discredited and shunned. Moshe the Beadle represents dehumanization in the treatment Moshe receives. This process continues in the train when the men on the train beat up Madame Schächter. When Madame exclaims that there’s a fire, Madame is not validated or heard. Rather, Madame is told to "shut up" and then forcibly beaten into silence. Once again, dehumanization is evident in how victims of evil treat one another. Throughout the camps, examples of children abandoning parents, people betraying one another, and internal aloneness dominating human actions until survival is all that remains are examples of dehumanization. These examples show that the Holocaust happened because individuals dehumanized one another. In seeing human beings as less than human beings, individuals were able to treat one another with a lack of dignity and voice. Wiesel 's work reminds us that anytime voice is silenced, dehumanization is the result. This becomes its own end that must be stopped at all
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
In this memoir, Elie Wiesel uses imagery in order to develop the presence of animal-like behavior on people when they are being dehumanized. At this point of the story, Elie and the other prisoners are in a wagon traveling to a different concentration camp, and they are trying to survive in inhuman conditions. To begin, Wiesel describes, “We were given bread… We threw ourselves on it… Someone had the idea of quenching his thirst by eating snow.”( Wiesel 96). This fact emphasizes the alternatives they have to take just to survive because as animals do, that is the only thing they can look forward to. Later, when the wagon goes through German towns, Wiesel describes, “... a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede, dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs.” (Wiesel 100). Here, their almost hopeless desire to eat comes true, but because of the way the food is given, men have to confront each other, emphasizing that animal behavior by the use of the term “stampede.”After they get some of the
“Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind.”- Shania Twain. At times, it appears unviable for one’s life to transform overnight in just a few hours. However, this is something various individuals experienced in soul and flesh as they were impinged by those atrocious memoirs of the Holocaust. In addition, the symbolism portrayed throughout the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, presents an effective fathoming of the feelings and thoughts of what it’s like to undergo such an unethical circumstance. For instance, nighttime plays a symbolic figure throughout the progression of the story as its used to symbolize death, darkness of the soul,
The characterization of Moshie and Mrs. Shachter shows the indifference and denial of the Jews of Sighet. The chilling juxtaposition of a beautiful landscape containing a camp of death illustrates how the world not only was indifferent to the inhumane suffering, but also continued to shine brightly as if nothing really mattered. This timeless theme of denial and its consequences during the Holocaust echoes the struggles of those in our time who are persecuted solely due to their beliefs. The reader takes away the important lesson of never turning away from those who need it greatest, each time one reads Elie Wiesel’s memoir,
In the World War II extermination camp Chelmno there were 150,000 deaths, the camp Belzec had 435,000 deaths, and the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp ruled with over 1,000,000 deaths. In the unbelievable novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author gives the audience a first person look on his experiences throughout his time at several prisoner of war camps as a Jewish teenager. Through the use of motifs about the night and a person’s eyes, Wiesel writes about the deeper meaning of how he kept his dignity in the face of inhumane cruelty. By analyzing the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, one can interpret the central theme of the story into a deeper meaning from the descriptions of the night and eyes, which is important because it helps younger generations to understand clearly what Holocaust survivors endured.
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.
Certain fears prevent others from causing a certain action in life, avoiding to be next to something or someone, or fear can get to a point to make someone remain silent. Meanwhile, silence is something that many people don’t consider that important. Maybe silence may not be a big deal. But in reality, silence is something that can mean a lot and can affect others in many ways over time. During the Holocaust, many of the Jews have noticed that they have changed over time. As much as Jew’s wanted to speak for themselves, or even save others, this wasn’t possible due to their fear of winning them causing silence. In the Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, shows how Wiesel’s experience was during this harsh time in his life as a teenager. During this experience, Wiesel discovers how others, also including him, decided to remain silent as a result of their fear, causing some choices to be avoided and not made. To sum up, Wiesel’s experience portrays that fear always wins and causes others to be silent.
“Father! Father! Wake up. They’re going to throw you outside… No! I yelled. He’s not dead! Not yet!...” Elie said as the desperation crept throughout his voice as he hoped his father would open his eyes and continuing to give him the strength to live. The theme family is carried out through the story Night. Family is essential when going through an extremely dark, depressing, lonely period of time, like the Wiesel's did. Elie and his father experienced things that are unimaginable and couldn’t have made it as far as they did without each other. Throughout the book Night the author Elie Wiesel is trying to accomplish the goal of making people understand that there will be difficulty throughout life and family will be there to make the hard times easier. Elie uses imagery, symbolism, and flashbacks to explain the importance of family after his tragic trauma.