Night By Elie Wiesel: An Analysis

Night by Elie Wiesel remains a shocking and terrifying memoir of a survivor of the Holocaust, the murders of six million Jews and five million Gentiles. Elie, a victim of this dreadful event, was forced to separate from his family, and to miss the life he once had. Elie transformed into a unrecognizable, scarred person by the end of his journey. Elie’s traumatizing experiences in the concentration camps of Auschwitz affected him significantly; he changed both spiritually and in his relationship with his father.

Night is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There are many examples in the beginning of Night where people are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but there are many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion.

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel it says “human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” This shows that the world’s problems are everyone’s problems. Everyone has their own responsibilities and when war occurs people tend to take on more responsibility than ever before. The United States is a prime example of making the world’s problems their own.

There are many vices that are taken up exclusively by Humans. Other animals don’t think about wiping out entire races or species just for kicks, most species don’t have the urge to attempt genocide or even turning on their own kin, but humans do. Elie Wiesel was a holocaust survivor whose ghastly year at the Auschwitz death camp was shared with the world by way of his book, “Night.”

In “Night,” the setting creates a cruel and depressing mood which helps the reader feel what it was like to live during the Holocaust. For example in chapter one he uses descriptive words that make it seem like the Nazis think that the Jewish people didn’t deserve a life. Once the Jewish get to the concentration camps the writing said “They were forced to dig huge trenches then they shot the prisoners” (Wiesel 6). That quote is saying that they were forced to dig their own grave when they arrived at the concentration camps, and then got shot and placed in the grave that they had just dug. In the writing i get the feeling that the Nazis thought the Jews were evil people because of the way they named the street that they lived on. In the text

The novel Night written by Elie Wiesel recounts his horrible experience as a young Jewish boy during the time of the World War 2, his story shows the lengths of man’s capability to act inhumane to one another. Millions of Jews -countless women, men and children- were murdered during the Holocaust. Unfortunately for the Jews in Sighet their projected fate became reality, although there were warnings of the danger coming. These signs were constantly ignored and overlooked. Characters such as Moishe the Beadle and Mrs. Schächter revealed people’s ability to ignore the reality that is approaching and how people often disregard information that is too difficult for them to accept. The Jews in Sighet preferred to remain oblivious in order to protect

In the novel “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor suggests that when humans are faced with protecting their own mortality, they abandon their morals and values. This can be seen in both the Jewish and German people. The German’s are inhumanely cruel to protect their own jobs and safely by obeying government commands. The Jewish captives lost their morals as they fight to survive the concentration camps. Elie Wiesel encountered many obstacles that made many of his ideals changed drastically for Wiesel which was his loss in humanity throughout the book he explains the many ways he does not see people as people anymore. He also explains how all of his natural human rights were no more during the time in the Holocaust. He had to find a sense of self because he could have easily fallen apart. He could not have done anything different, he knew it was going to end poorly. Silence is a very important and prominent theme in this book as silence represents many key symbols such as. God’s silence: Eliezar questions God’s faith many times throughout this book and wonders how he could just sit there and be silent while people are mass murdering people.

Night begins with the narrator, Elie, talking about Moishe the Beadle, who is described as the “jack-of-all-trades” in a shtibl (Weisel, 21). He then continues by talking about his family. He goes back to talk about his deep conversations with Moishe and their evenings spent together. One day, the foreign Jews of Sighet, where he lives, were expelled. This included Moishe. They were taken away in cattle cars by the Hungarian police. Months past and one day, Elie saw Moishe sitting on a bench near the synagogue. He tells Elie about what happened to him; how he and the other Jews were transported and forced to dig their own graves in the forest. Luckily, Moishe had managed to escape. He had come back to warn the Jews in Sighet of what to come.

One day, when Elie returned from the warehouse, he was summoned by the block secretary to go to the dentist. Elie therefore went to the infirmary block to learn that the reason for his summon was gold teeth extraction. Elie, however pretends to be sick and asks, ”Couldn’t you wait a few days sir? I don’t feel well, I have a fever…” Elie kept telling the dentist that he was sick for several weeks to postpone having the crown removed. Soon after, it had appeared that the dentist had been dealing in the prisoners’ gold teeth for his own benefit. He had been thrown into prison and was about to be hanged. Eliezer does not pity for him and was pleased with what was happening

After nearly two years of misery, a young boy finally saw the first ray of hope on the horizon; the Americans had finally arrived, and the Nazis were gone. In his autobiography Night, Elie Wiesel shares his experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of Hitler’s concentration camps. Wiesel was one of the minority of Jews to survive the Holocaust during World War II. His family did not make it through with him, and this had lasting effects. Wiesel’s identity changed completely during his experiences in Auschwitz; he lost his faith in God and he became indifferent to his survival and the survival of his family members. Despite these hardships, however, he ultimately became a stronger person than he was before.

As Elie’s life continues he endures more tests that at his age majority of the people would not have experienced. Elie's father was suffering from dysentery and other maladies. On the night of January 28th in 1945, Elie goes to his bunk in exhaustion with his father still alive and in the bunk below him, “I had to go to sleep. I climbed into my bunk, above my father, who was still alive. The date was January 28, 1945”(112). In the morning, Elie wakes up to a new person in the bed where his father had laid. Elie realizes that he has no emotion left to show, especially not sympathy, “I

Luba Frederick, a holocaust survivor, answered “To die was easy.”, when discussing the tragic and horrible events of the holocaust. In the Nazi concentration camps, life was miserable. Jews were oppressed by Nazi’s and forced to do their dirty work. Families, jobs, dreams, were nothing more than an illusion as cruel and inhumane treatment replaced them. People felt hopeless and looked to death as an option. Many were intrigued with the idea of death, since it was easier to give up rather than choosing to continue. Majority of people stopped eating, gave up their religious faiths and hope, welcoming the darkness to embrace them. Surviving was a constant struggle for these people and the only way to overcome it was the acceptance of death.

Elie has adapted to his environment and adjusted to how others act around him. At the beginning of the book Elie is unaware of the horrors of the Holocaust and was in denial of the Nazi’s coming to Sighet. The author shows his further optimism when he states, “... optimism soon revived: The Germans will not come this far. They will stay in Budapest” (page 9). He drifts away from these early beliefs as his journey continues. He soon starts to realize that this experience is a terrible one, and after fighting for so long he wants to quit and he even considers suicide, “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot” (page 86). Based on this quote from the book, we see that Elie was in extreme pain and was ready to give up. Towards the end of the book, Elie gets tired of trying to save himself and his father all of the time therefore he becomes selfish and is somewhat relieved of his father’s death, the author admits this when he says, “I did not weep… I was out of tears… And deep inside of me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!” (page 112). As the books states, Elie was very impassive by the end of his journey. This demonstrates his feelings from the beginning to the end of the book and Elie’s overall self

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel there are many instances where his use of imagery helps establish tone and purpose. For example Elie Wiesel used fire (sight) to represent just that. The fire helps prove that the tone is serious and mature. In no way did Wiesel try to lighten up the story about the concentration camps or the Nazis. His use of fire also helps show his purpose. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times scaled. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw

In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel is a young boy who struggles to survive after being forced to live in the brutal concentration camp of Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, death and suffering is rampant, but due to compassionate words and actions from others, Elie is able to withstand these severe living conditions and overcome the risk of death in the unforgiving Auschwitz. As shown through the actions and words of characters in Night, compassion, the sympathetic pity for the suffering or misfortune of others is critical to the human experience because it enables humans to empathize with each other, empathizing which allows us to feel the need to assist others which can often be vital for survival.