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Themes In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Some take life for granted, while others suffer. The novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel, contains heart-wrenching as well as traumatic themes. The novel unfolds through the eyes of a Jewish boy named Eliezer, who incurs the true satanic nature of the Nazis. As the Nazis continue to commit inhumane acts of discrimination, three powerful themes arise: religion, night, and memory.
As the novel begins to unfold, Anti-Semitism does as well. As Wiesel demonstrates in the novel, “Three days later, a new decree: Every Jew had to wear the yellow star.” (Wiesel, 11) The yellow star was a cloth patch to mark a person as Jewish. It was intended to be a badge of shame associated with Anti-Semitism or discrimination against the Jews. It showed that while in …show more content…

Both Moishe the Beadle, a pious Jew, and Mrs. Schächter, a forty-year old Jew, constantly repeated, “Jews listen to me!” (Wiesel, 7 & 25) and always forewarned the Holocaust. They were providing warnings for the Jewish community of how they should be constantly vigilant and try to escape while they still can from the Nazis, as they were not who they appeared to be. Nevertheless, everyone refused to listen or believe their tales, and were taken for lunatics. The author yearned to portray how one should not disregard anyone, and instead take into consideration to the warnings they hold, which could be useful. If the Jewish community had listened, they might not have had to experience the abysmal Holocaust. The Holocaust was a devastating event in which the author desired to sustain the history in the hope of preventing another. “[The author] does not want his past to become [the people’s] future.” (Wiesel, XV) The author created the novel in order for future generations to be conscious of the Holocaust, which should never be repeated. One should not follow in the steps of Hitler and commit genocide to millions of beings simply because of their background. Nevertheless, the novel was not only created to make people aware, but also to simply preserve the memory of the Holocaust. “[A person] has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would not be only dangerous but

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