Night By Elie Wiesel: Literary Analysis

The concentration camps of the Holocaust were home to countless injustices to humanity. Not only were the prisoners starved to the brink of death, but they were also treated as animals, disciplined through beatings nearly every day. Most would not expect an ill-prepared young boy to survive such conditions. Nevertheless, in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Wiesel defies the odds and survives to tell the story. Wiesel considers this survival merely luck, yet luck was not the only factor to come into play: his father had an even greater impact. Prior to their arrival at Auschwitz, Wiesel lacked a close relationship with his rather detached father; however, when faced by grueling concentration camp life, the bond between Wiesel and his father ultimately enables Wiesel’s survival.

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 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.

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

the body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law and legend comprising the Mishnah and the Gemara. There are two versions of the Talmud: the Babylonian Talmud (which dates from the 5th century AD but includes earlier material) and the earlier Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud.

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.

Renowned American actor David Stiers described the importance of family when he remarked “family means no one gets left behind or forgotten”(Stiers). The importance of family is that they support one another, this is displayed in this remark, and is also seen in Elie Wiesel’s story Night. Night is a story that gives readers a first person account of a fifteen year old boy’s journey through the Holocaust and the struggles that confront him. In his novel, Night, Elie Wiesel expresses the concept that family is the only thing that gets each other through hardships through his use of rhetorical devices such as dialogue, repetition, and elements of tone.

The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel is a story that the author tries to tell from his perspective of what it’s like to try to survive during the Holocaust, and the things that people would have to go through plus what they had to do to live another day. Wiesel is a boy that had to go through hell for the years that are usually the best as a child growing up, and he had that taken away from him. He tells his story and explains to the reader using mixed diction and tones. This time was not an easy time to have survived especially in the camps. Some of the times Wiesel had to lie to not be cremated. “‘Here, kid, how old are you?’ It was one of the prisoners…… Our procession continued to move slowly forward.” (Wiesel 28-30). This is a way Wiesel

The author of Night, a novel documenting the horrible and gruesome events of the holocaust, Elie Wiesel expresses his experiences and observations in which he and his fellow Jews were dehumanized while living in concentration camps (a hell on earth). All Jews, as a race were brutalized by the Nazis during this time; reducing them to no less than objects, positions which meant nothing to them, belongings that were a nuisance. Nazis would gather every Jew that they could find and bring them to these infernos, separating the men and women. Families, not knowing it would never see each other again. Individuals within the categories were divided even more, based on their health, strength, and age. They would be judged by a Nazi officer, which

American author, Ursula K. Le Guin, once stated, “In our loss of fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.” Between the timeline of 1933 through 1945, people witnessed the massive genocide of innocents single-handedly conducted by Adolf Hitler. Within the concentration camps implemented by Adolf Hitler, people struggled to survive, and the people who failed to survive, died miserably. While surviving, some resorted to religion in order to fortify their well-being and state of mind. On the contrary, some individuals lost their religion due to their unimaginable experience in the concentration camps. The memoir Night, reminisces Elie

Context is important, what you know about an event or person can heavily influence your opinions on them and how you react in different situations. This is very important for authors writing in historical settings as often there are several very different sides to the story. Depending on the author’s personal context; their personal life experiences, and the historical context; what was happening in the world at the time, characters and events can be portrayed very differently. Different recounts of an event can be influenced by bias, the person may not know about other people and events, and they might tell the story differently depending on how they felt at the time. Examples of this can be found throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel where he recounts his time spent in concentration camps throughout the second world war.

1. Describe the specific setting of the story; consider both time and place. Explain what influence or impact the setting has on the development of the plot- in other words, discuss the ways the story's setting impacts the events of the novel.

The Holocaust is one of, if not the most, well-known genocides in all of history. Families were torn apart, by being separated, killed, or just by deciding that survival was more important than family. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel wrote about his own Holocaust experience with his father. Throughout the book, Elie becomes more interested in his own survival than following his responsibilities as a Jewish son. Elie is silent as his father is maliciously beaten, he becomes tempted to abandon his father,as well as feeling liberated after his father died.

Elie Wiesel, one of the most famous Holocaust survivors explains his story of the Holocaust in his book, Night where is talks about not only his life, but the life of others in his community and camps. Wiesel has an interesting storyline, different from most because he along with the other Hungarian Jews only started feeling the pressure of the Holocaust in 1944. However, other jews, primarily polish jews started being effected by the Nazi regime starting in 1939 when they created new laws prohibiting jews from owning properties, running businesses and even prohibiting them from going into certain places. Although Polish and Hungarian jews had different trajectories throughout the Holocaust they ended in the same place and were equally persecuted, forced to work in horrendous conditions and tortured.

In Night, by Elie Wiesel, Moshe the Beetle is a common, poor Jewish man. He is taken from his village by the Nazi's and left for dead. He mercurially survived and journeys back the Sighet. He tries to inform the community of the deathly threats, but they do not adhere to his warnings. Similarly, my Zaidi also went, by boat, across the Atlantic, to warn other relatives. He informed them of the possible danger, but they too did not listen. Likewise, Jan Karski, also saw the danger coming and tried to warn the leaders of the allies of the upcoming threat. In all three stories, warnings were said and then ignored. This essay will discuss, the warnings and their audiences, the reasons the people did not listen to the warnings and the outcomes