Don't Fight the Enemy in Night by Elie Wiesel Essay

The Holocaust was a very terrible time in history over six million Jews perished in concentration camps. Even though in every tragedy there are survivors. Elie Wiesel was a little boy when all of this happened. He experienced all of the terrible things that happened during this time frame. While suffering in the terrible condition of the camp Elie and his father’s relationship goes through a drastic change.

The setting of “Night” is Eastern Europe and during Nazi rule between the late 1930s and the mid 1940s. Throughout the entire story it takes place in Europe but the location varies to different concentration camps around Nazi occupied Europe.

In the non fictional story Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel tells his autobiography about when he went through concentration camps. The story takes place during World War Two, when Elie is 15 and 16 years old. He is forced to leave his home in Sighet, Transylvania. Elie goes to three concentration camps called Auschwitz, Buna Buchenwald. Throughout the story, Elie changes spiritually, physically and emotionally.

After experiencing the holocaust, Elie can no longer make sense of his world. His lack in faith results from his painful experience with Nazi persecution, but also from the cruelty he sees fellow prisoners inflict on each other. Elie also becomes aware of the cruelty of which he himself is capable of. Everything he experiences in the war shows how humanity is lost people allow cruelty to show itself. “Our

Elie and his father are taken to Auschwitz where they are separated from the rest of the family and first hear about atrocities such as the incinerators and gas showers. In the beginning Elie believes that everything is a rumor, a lie, that humankind cannot perform such crimes, but he soon is forced to witness the demise in front of his eyes. This is when his outlook on his faith starts to waver. While watching the smoke billow up from a crematory, Elie hears a man standing next to him begging him to pray, and for the first time in his life Wiesel turns away from God. “The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank him for?” (31).

Which has a more corrupting effect on individuals: power or fear? In the book, “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Jews are being influenced by fear and are stripped of their humanity. Corruption by fear is shown when people prioritize saving themselves, when people lose humanity, and fear of authority. In life or death situations, most people prioritize saving themselves before others. This is shown when Elie has to watch his dad get beat before his own eyes.

Night by Elie Wiesel was published in 1955 and narrates the author’s personal experiences during the Holocaust. Young Elie Wiesel recounts his struggles as he was forced into various concentration camps through his writing. The events that are written in Wiesel’s Night exemplify the brutality evident during the 1940’s Nazi Era. Eliezar Wiesel was born on on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Transylvania, now Romania. He attended a nearby yeshiva, a Jewish institution that studies traditional religious texts, until he was fifteen years old.

“If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one.” Said Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, who uses his book Night to highlight the true terrors of what happened during his life in the concentration camps during World War II. As the author and main character in Night, Elie describes his personal experiences that drastically changed his life forever. As a result, we can tell Elie is a dynamic character because he begins to question his faith in God and in his religion, his attitude towards his father and his father’s survival changes, and his childhood and innocence are lost. First and foremost, Elie begins to question his faith in God and in his religion.

Elie was a Jew that never could have imagined life with a quiet God. Before the Holocaust, he had studied Talmud every day and had such a strong belief in Him. When Elie and his father first entered the concentration camp, they saw unimaginable things being done to children and adults. They were thrown into flames and burned alive. After seeing this, for the first time, Elie felt anger to the Great Almighty.

“Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.” After World War I Germany had suffered great loss. Their economy was especially weak. The German people desperately seeked for a leader that could help them. Adolf Hitler had won over the people of Germany and gained control. Many thought he would be the one to save them. Hitler slowly began turning everyone against the Jews. He said the Jews were the ones to blame for their country’s problems. Hitler began sending them to concentration camps in order to exterminate them, this was known as the Holocaust. Between five to six million Jews were killed. Elie Wiesel experienced all of these horrors right in front of his very own eyes, alongside his father.

In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they

As humans, we require basic necessities, such as food, water, and shelter to survive. But we also need a reason to live. The reason could be the thought of a person, achieving some goal, or a connection with a higher being. Humans need something that drives them to stay alive. This becomes more evident when people are placed in horrific situations. In Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, he reminisces about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. There the men witness horrific scenes of violence and death. As time goes on they begin to lose hope in the very things that keep them alive: their faith in God, each other, and above all, themselves.

Often, the theme of a novel extends into a deeper significance than what is first apparent on the surface. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the theme of night and darkness is prevalent throughout the story and is used as a primary tool to convey symbolism, foreshadowing, and the hopeless defeat felt by prisoners of Holocaust concentration camps. Religion, the various occurring crucial nights, and the many instances of foreshadowing and symbolism clearly demonstrate how the reoccurring theme of night permeates throughout the novel.

When Elie arrived at the first concentration camp, he was a child, but when left he was no longer human. Elie’s character changed through his encounter of the Holocaust. Elie idolized his religion, Judaism, one relevant identification for him. Elie spent hours praying and learning about Judaism, but it was the reason he and his family were tormented for. Elie was so intrigued by Judaism, that he wanted someone a “master” to guide in his studies of Kabbalah, an ancient spiritual wisdom that teaches how to improve the lives (Wiesel 8). Furthermore, he loses hope in God and in life. Elie only had a few items when he arrived in the camp, one being his family, but that would soon be taken from him. When Elie and his family arrived at the camp in Auschwitz, he was kept by his father. He always gazed after his father, caring for him until his death.

When responding to situations in life people must consider if doing so will benefit themselves or the people around them. In circumstances that demand quick thinking people often can not form a concrete decision based on how little information and time they have. In life people frequently must try to do so through their daily battles with the people around them as well as themselves.