Night And Fog Analysis

In today’s society, people tend to view the Holocaust as a horrible thing that happened and it won’t happened again. But nobody really understands fully what it meant to go through it, except for Holocaust survivors. Unfortunately, they were hesitant to share those moments that forever changed them. Elie Wiesel is not one of those people. As the author of the memoir Night, he uses repetition and imagery to try to fully express the amount of terror and suffering that they had to go through during the Holocaust.

In the novel “W, or the memory of childhood” written by Georges Perec, we see the story of a Jewish child that lived through his childhood during World War 2 and the time of the Holocaust which was a depressing time for Jewish people. This is an autobiographical novel which uses alternating chapters to help better describe his journey through this depressing time as a child, with trauma comes emotional and psychological harm which causes you to do whatever it takes to numb the pain, whether it is to find the source of the pain or to submerge them deep inside your heart to forget it. In this case, Perec used alternating chapters

As said by Audrey Hepburn; “Living is like tearing through a museum, not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can’t take it in all at once.” In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the Holocaust took place in an order of layers. As time passed, the extremity was increased each chapter he succumbed to. Elie expresses raw emotion in his memoir, Night, and leaves you in a complete, utter state of wonder and sadness. Not only this, but remembering and cherishing the importance of all the emotions from this time in history. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the theme of remembering is present before the Holocaust and in today’s society.

The Holocaust, yet another unpleasant time in history tainted with the blood and suffering of man. Human beings tortured, executed and starved for hatred and radical ideas. Yet with many tragedies there are survivors, those who refused to die on another man’s command. These victims showed enormous willpower, they overcame human degradation and tragedies that not only pushed their beliefs in god, but their trust in fellow people. It was people like Elie Wiesel author of “Night”, Eva Galler,Sima Gleichgevicht-Wasser, and Solomon Radasky that survived, whose’ mental and physical capabilities were pushed to limits that are difficult to conceive. Each individual experiences were different, but their survival tales not so far-reaching to where the fundamental themes of fear, family, religion and self-preservation played a part in surviving. Although some of these themes weren’t always so useful for survival.

Between memoirs and history textbooks, two very different approaches to historical matters are dealt with: one appeals to emotion, while the other to reason and logic. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, he discusses his life during the Holocaust and what life in a prison camp was like on an emotional level. The treatment of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi guards is more appalling through the emotional description of a survivor like Elie Wiesel than through the contextual and fact based evidence found in a textbook. One such example of this is when Wiesel describes how when the Jews were herded onto the cattle carriages to move them from Geiwitz to Buchenwald, and how the Nazi’s distribution of rations led to the Jews eating snow off one another’s backs:

As Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel once said, “To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice,” that is why we are called to remember. Many movies, novels, and story representations of the Holocaust have been created in order to spread the memory of the past. An important part of remembering is learning, and therefore not repeating the same mistakes once again. Movies may find it difficult to represent the Holocaust accurately, while also giving it meaning and artistic expression. The writer, Edwin de Vries, and the director, Jeroen Krabbé, strive to represent the legacies of the Holocaust and Jewish culture in the film, Left Luggage (1998), based on a novel by Carl Friedman through a portrayal of the daily lives of Holocaust survivors and their children in late 1960s Antwerp, their direct confrontations with their memories of the Holocaust, and character development. The film shows us many examples of the legacy of the Holocaust as it is passed through the children of survivors, and how it continues to affect their daily lives. The audience understands the intentions through depictions of muteness and the necessity to remember.

The terrors of the Holocaust are unimaginably destructive as described in the book Night by Elie Wiesel. The story of his experience about the Holocaust is one nightmare of a story to hear, about a trek from one’s hometown to an unknown camp of suffering is a journey of pain that none shall forget. Hope and optimism vanished while denial and disbelief changed focus during Wiesel’s journey through Europe. A passionate relationship gradually formed between the father and the son as the story continued. The book Night genuinely demonstrates how the Holocaust can alter one's spirits and relations.

As the famous journalist Iris Chang once said, “As the Nobel Laureate warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” After experiencing the tragedies that occurred during the Holocaust, Eliezer Wiesel narrated “Night”. Eliezer wrote “Night” in an attempt to prevent something similar to the Holocaust from happening again, by showing the audience what the consequences are that come from becoming a bystander. Elie illustrated numerous themes by narrating the state of turmoil he was in during the Holocaust. In Night, Eliezer provided insight into what he experienced in order to teach the unaware audience about three themes; identity, silence, and faith.

Traumatic and scarring events occur on a daily basis; from house fires to war, these memories are almost impossible to forget. The Holocaust is only one of the millions of traumas that have occurred, yet it is known worldwide for sourcing millions of deaths. Elie Wiesel was among the many victims of the Holocaust, and one of the few survivors. In the memoir, “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, Elie, the main character, is forever changed because of his traumatic experiences in the Auschwitz concentration camps.

“Never shall I forget that smoke… Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever...Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into ashes…”(page 34). Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night”, describes his experiences in the Holocaust. Elie experiences pain and suffering throughout his time in the concentration camp, Auschwitz, and he shares how he survived. In the book “Night” the main character, Elie, is affected by the events in this book such as loss of faith, emotional connections with his father, and his self changes mentally and physically.

Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.

The Holocaust was a time of great suffering and inhumanity. The novel Night, which took place during this time, was written by Elie Wiesel and talks about his teen self-experiencing the concentration camps of Auschwitz. This is related to the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas which is the story of a young German boy named Bruno who befriends a Jewish boy in a concentration camp. The many similarities and differences between the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the novel Night include their many themes of “inhumanity” and “guilt and inaction”, and the two also share and differ in the loss of innocence of the characters and how they develop in each medium.

When a person recalls an emotional situation, it can be difficult for them to explain to others exactly how they felt when the event occurred. Authors attempt to communicate these tough experiences using a variety of literary devices—which include symbolism, irony, and theme. Night by Elie Wiesel, and First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung are two pieces of literature that recollect the memories of the authors during traumatic events; Night is set during the Holocaust, while the latter is set in Cambodia during the harsh rule of Pol Pot. The literary devices present in each text are utilized by Wiesel and Ung in unique and similar ways to communicate the extent of what they felt .

Throughout the film Image Before My Eyes, directed by Josh Waletzky, viewers are shown videos, pictures, and interviews regarding European Jewry from the late 1910’s to the 1930’s. Though this is a film explaining the events and upheavals that led up to the Holocaust, the word Holocaust is rarely ever mentioned. It is through the use of multimedia in this film that the devastating history of the Holocaust becomes illuminated. The film allows the viewer to begin to fathom the destructive events that occurred between the two World Wars as well as the secularization of daily life for Jews throughout this time period.

Francois Truffaut continued on to say that Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, made in 1955, was the “greatest film ever made”. The 30-minute film based on the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazi concentration camps after World War II combines Resnais’ own cinematography with original images and footage of the captives in their unfathomable state. The film is lead with a somber narrative that not only accompanies the sobering images being shown but both compliments them and puts them into perspective. Carl R. Plantigna’s chapter from his book ‘Rhetoric and Representation in