Examples Of Identity In Night By Elie Wiesel

How you ever experienced something really distressing that it changes your life and identity? Identity is the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. In the book, Night by Elie Wiesel tells about his hardships and deprivation during the holocaust. Six million Jews have died from that event. Traumatic experiences affect one’s identity because it changes the way you look at the world and your perspective is different.

From the time where Elie had to decide to fight for his father’s life, to the time where he questioned his beliefs, Elie has had to make many life-changing decisions. As some of his decisions left negative consequences, some were left a positive outcome. In the end, all the decisions Elie had made in the camps has made his life miserable or at its best. For better or for worse, the events that Elie encountered makes his life unforgettable as realizes there was more to life than he had thought of

Throughout a lifetime, people undergo many different identities to discover their true self. Elie Wiesel, the author of the memoir Night, suffered a major event that changed his identity forever. In his experience at the concentration camps during the Holocaust, Elie had to fight to stay alive even during the most resilient moments. This event shaped his life and brought Elie to endure different perspectives in his time in the camps. Eliezer’s identity changed throughout the memoir from faithful, to fearful, to hopeless.

Unchallenged authority leads to unnecessary aggression and violence. Power is extremely hard to control through one being in our human nature, so a balance of power is often the only way to rule effectively without going over the line. Power will take over and turn to aggression even toward the innocent inferiors of this world. In the novel Night, author Wiesel speaks of the extremes that unlimited power will lead to using imagery, details, and diction to outline his first-hand experiences under an overkill authority. Wiesel demonstrates his harsh days under unjust rulers through touching diction.

“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories” (Wiesel 30).

Sometimes in life we are faced with challenges that threaten our identities. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel his challenge was the holocaust, and every aspect of his identity changed. He lost his faith, his appearance changed dramatically, and his lost his ability to care about things he loved most.

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.

The slaughter of millions of innocent Jews was the outcome in the concentration camps ran by Nazi Germany. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the author, a concentration camp survivor, shows the cruel, inhumane acts by the Nazis in the camps. Elie faced starvation, dehydration, and beatings by the German soldiers. In order to survive, luck and motivation by Elie was needed. In my opinion, he was extremely brave. For example, on page 52, he says, ’’Couldn’t you wait a few days, sir? I don’t feel well, I have a fever.’’ The dentist was going to remove Elie’s ‘’gold crown,’’ but Elie was brave enough to lie. In the beginning of the book, German soldiers invade Hungary and were to put all Jews to concentration camps. When Elie and his father arrive

the child I was, had been consumed by flames. All that was left was the shape that resembled me” (37). This is important because the student that Elie was, was now dead, and that is one of the places where his innocence was lost.

We’re all humans. But in the book called Night, written by Ellie Weisel, many people throughout the journey of the holocaust suffered from loss. Which includes losing food, loved ones, a proper bed to sleep in, and a proper place to relieve themselves. Can one still be human, even in these harsh circumstances? I believe that yes, it is possible to stop being human.

In the Holocaust, there were those who were silent and those who spoke up. Elie Wiesel said “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” I agree with the statement because being neutral doesn’t aid any side and remaining silent doesn’t help anyone either.

In many pieces of literature authors use character change to show the progression of characterization throughout the novel. In Night, by Elie wiesel, character change happens because of the setting Eli is in. Eli the protagonist’s feelings changes as a result of his setting. Eli is left with his father after being taken away from his home and sent to the concentration camps. Eli was innocent, kind, waiflike, and a religious person. While at the camps Eli has to decide whether or not he can stay true to himself or become a brute. By the end of the novel, Eli has become non religious, and brutal towards his father and others.

When Elie Wiesel, the author of the novel Night says, "The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference” he is expressing his core belief that indifference is the greatest sin of all. Knowing that indifference can be tempting because it is a lot easier to look away from victims than to face them. With all this he is still careful to note that for the person who is indifferent, their neighbors are of no consequence.

Mark Twain once said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-- not absence of fear.” The author is discussing the existentialist view of courage. This way of thinking is often a popular theme within literature. Eliezer Wiesel’s autobiographical novel Night expresses the importance of survival skills during the atrostic time of the Holocaust. Some individuals lose their faith in God.

When forced into such oppressive and horrible conditions people benign to do whatever they can in order to survive. Man got desperate enough to eat out other prisoners that broke rules. The camps affected the prisoners attitudes about themselves, making them believe that there was no hope for them, and some even believe that they were put in the camp because they are being punished by God for something they did.(Aleksandr Soljenitsin, Online PDF, Page 40) The camp makes the men look at themselves in a new light, with how they choose to survive and live defining who they are. They have to decide themselves if discarding any dignity they have left and lowering themselves will be worth it to survive. What they decide to do in order to survive makes them think if this is who they really are or want to be. Most importantly, the camp attacks their personal identity and individuality. Their names replaced with random letters and numbers, all aspects of themselves stripped away.They are not aloud to remember themselves and eventually it will be up to them to try and remember their lives before the camp, and who they are as an