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.
Night by Elie Wiesel was a novel with great horror and suffering during the Holocaust. “Three days later, a new decree:every Jew had to wear the yellow star”(Wiesel 11).This quote marks the beginning of the religious segregation for Eliezer and his family. At this time the Jews had to wear stars, but as the novel progressed it got worse. It started as clothing then went to ghettos. Ghettos were enclosed districts where Jews lived separately from the world. Trains with large amounts of Jewish people moved from ghetto to ghetto. After that, came concentration camps where Jews were brutally hurt and abused. Eliezer and his father stayed in the same camp at first. They were separated from their other family. Eliezer and his father were given little
One reoccurring theme that is present in the Holocaust is a change of identity with everyone involved. The incidents people confronted, especially the Jews, during this harsh time was life changing and traumatic. The identity of many in the concentration camps changed; young and innocent children developed into mature men. Elie Wiesel in the novella, Night, faces a change of identity within himself and the surrounding people, the Jews, through a variety of events that he encounters.
The decisions made by Elie Wiesel in the book Night both positively and negatively impacted his life. These were decisions that the author thought were best for him or for his mother, sister and father. However, the particular decisions made by the boy in Night affected his identity, innocence, and significantly changed his view of life during his experience in the holocaust.
Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator of Germany, conducted a genocide known as the Holocaust during World War II that was intended to exterminate the Jewish population. The Holocaust was responsible for the death of about 6 million Jews. Night is a nonfiction novel written by Eliezer Wiesel about his experience during the Holocaust. Many events in the novel convey a theme of “man’s inhumanity to man”. The prisoners of the concentration camps are constantly tortured and neglected by the German officers who run the camps. 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 Night, dehumanization consistently took place as the tyrant Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Nazis targeted the Jews' humanity, and slowly dissolved their feeling of being human. The feeling of dehumanization was very common between the jews. They were constantly being treated as in they were animals. The author and narrator Elie Wiesel, personally experienced being treated like an animal and he also saw how his father and peers were treated less humanely. The dehumanization of jews began because of their belief, they did not believe in the same things that the Nazis did. The nazis thought they were impure souls because they were not like the them.
First the Jews were thinking that they were finally be killed. Elie noted, “Hunger was tormenting us; we had not eaten for nearly six days except for a few stalks of grass and some potato peels found on the ground of the kitchens”(115).This showed that the germans were purposely starving the Jews to save money. By starving them, their bodies start breaking down the stored fat for ATP (energy). Due to this they become skinny like skeletons. Secondly the other Jews who made the age restrictions test were thinking of taking on the guards and be set free. While their dads were telling them not to. During that Elie wanted to help his father to march and not be mocked at or beaten up. The other inmates started to laugh and Elie distinctly remembered “My father had never served in the military and could not march in step. That presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and, on a daily basis, to thrash him savagely….But my father did not make sufficient progress, and the blows continued to rain on him”(55).The germans was beating up Elie’s dad. He didn’t do anything wrong, they wanted to beat up someone to set an example for the rest of the Jews. Lastly Elie was marching towards a big ditch with dead bodies everywhere. As they’d walked he noticed something that the soldiers were doing.“Without passion or haste, they shot the prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns”(6) The soldiers without even a single thought threw the babies up and shoot them as if though this was a sport. This was shown so the prisoners would be even more scared in the camp. With all of this going on Elie didn’t lose his
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. The holocaust makes physical and mental alterations to Elie’s life, and this tells the reader that the people who did this are effective and impacting, also it shows that Elie’s mind is controlled by what he was experiencing.
Distractions are used to overcome traumatic events, to motivate survival. The story of Night by Elie Wiesel depicts his journey, beginning from a free life in Sighet, Transylvania during World War II. He, along with his family and the other Jews of Sighet are placed in ghettos then transported to concentration camps. Separated from his mother and sister, Elie strives to find a way to survive alongside his father. He recounts his experiences under Nazi German oppression from his imprisonment in Auschwitz to his liberation in Buchenwald. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience – first believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father.
During the time when Elie was in the concentration camp many things change. His relationship was the thing that changed the most. It changed by Elie now taking care of his dad instead of the other way around. Also the death of Elie's father affected Elie in a negative way.
Ever since humans came to be, they have done many things to ensure their survival. It’s the reason why we humans have evolved as much as we have. Humans have invented devices, accomplished many challenges, and have even relied on nothing but willpower to survive.
Themes in a story help to describe what the book is about. It does this in the book Night by helping describe what World War 2 was like for the Jews. It also helps to see what the people in the camps went through. My two themes from night are imprisonment and survival. The first one I will talk about is imprisonment, then i’ll talk about survival.
Loaded into cattle trains on their way to an uncertain destination it's so crammed that it's impossible to sit down so they must take turns. Two days pass and they have crossed the hungarian border and are now in Germany. A German officer has informed them that their were 80 people in the car and if anybody goes missing they will all be shot like dogs. In the dead of night a woman named Mrs.Schächter begins to scream and throw a fit because she was separated from her husband and all of a sudden begins to scream that she sees fire an awful fire. The Jews in the car try to help Mrs.Schächter by explaining that the visions are not real and then they are fed up and begins to beat her with hits strong enough to kill her. However the next night she begins again screaming that she sees a terrible fire. The train stops for a bit and there is news that they are at Auschwitz where life is supposed to be better. But again that night Mrs.Schächter starts to scream again and again she it beaten she is finally silent. As the train moves on Mrs.Schächter abruptly begins to scream again however this time through the windows everyone can watch as they pass
Night by Elie Wiesel is a book about what Elie witnessed in the concentration camps during the holocaust in WWII and what he had to go through. The film, Hotel Rwanda, featured a similar story except it was about the Rwandan genocide. The reason why both Night and Hotel Rwanda seem similar because they both have ethnic groups that are being hunted down through means of genocide, there are people who are trying to protect the ethnic groups being hunted, and both of the situations that happen in these two stories challenge the morals of the characters.
Your existence is special, so you should be grateful for what you already have in life. If you put your mind to something, you will be able to overcome any obstacle. Keep fighting until you cannot fight any longer. Elie Wiesel has demonstrated these characteristics in his novel, “Night.” He has fought through many tough times and experiences when he was in the Holocaust. Elie was held captive in concentration camps from 1944-1945. During his time in the concentration camps, he became grateful for what he had, overcame countless obstacles, and more importantly kept fighting until he was free. [The Holocaust is very important to learn about because it can teach you some important life lessons.]