Reflective Essay On Silence In Night

At the end of Night by Elie Wiesel, the author gazes into a mirror for the first time since before he had been sent to the concentration camps. As Elie puts it, “From the depths of a mirror, a corpse was contemplating me” (pg. 109). He, of course, is talking about himself, or the shell of himself he had become after spending years in the concentration camps. During his time at the concentration camps, he had shed parts of his life and developed new aspects of his personality in order to adapt to his new lifestyle in German captivity. Wiesel himself puts it best: “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (pg. 32). This was clearly the moment when Elie changed. The naive child Elie once was died and was replaced by a faithless, cynical adult.

I kept silent. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows” (Wiesel 54). This is a prime example of the bystander effect because it shows a witness that is frozen and unable to act for a certain reason. In this situation Elie can not help his father because he knows that if he does, then he will suffer a beating as well. He would rather slip away then help his father in order to escape a beating. Fear locks Elie as a bystander unable to act but only watch.

After what seemed to be an eternal suffering, Elie and the remaining prisoners at the camp were rescued by the Allies. Unfortunately, Shlomo Wiesel, Ellie's dad, died shortly before the rescue, and Elie was thrown into the world all by himself. He then spent two weeks in the hospital fighting for his life. It is in that hospital that Elie stares at his own reflection in the mirror and says: "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me" (P115). In this quote, Wiesel represents the horrors of the war through visual imagery, making us imagine how Elie looks after having been put through such conditions. Through this quotation, Elie is separating himself from the person that went through the Holocaust, and is marking the beginning of a new life, leaving his past one behind. This quote scars the reader, leaving haunted by the scars of his past life.

A great quote that Elie Wiesel said. The way he said it made it meaningful and powerful, just like his book Night. In his amazingly written book is about Elie Wiesel himself as a 15 year old going through the Holocaust. At the time he was in Transylvania that was invaded in 1944 by Germany. Later on forced to move to a ghetto then moved again to the concentration camps by cattle cars. Once Elie and his family got to the concentration camps soon enough he mother and sister were killed but Eile stood

In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance of the role that bystanders played in the

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”, said Elie Wiesel the author of night. Elie Wiesel is a holocaust survivor, he went through 5 different concentration camps. He was dehumanized, malnourished, and abused. He lost all his possessions, his family, and his humanity. In Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, the German Army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the jewish prisoners by depriving them of family, food, and self esteem.

When Elie arrives at the camps, the author begins to use the corpse as a symbol of a living person who is dead inside. This is how Elie begins to see himself and others as, the living dead. "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me (Wiesel 109)." When Elie looks into the mirror he can not recognize what he has become. He thinks of himself as one of the others who died like his family or the millions of others slaughtered right before his eyes. He essentially becomes a useless body that works on the outside but is undoubtedly damaged on the inside. Wiesel also brings the story to life with imagery that stimulates all of the senses. He illustrates the horror of the crematories with vivid words that make the reader feel the sympathy he feels."Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget the flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

The holocaust is one of the world's most tragic events, approximately 6 million Jews died and the concentration camp Auschwitz is the world's largest human cemetery, yet it has no graves. In Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir Night, he writes about his dehumanizing journey in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Firstly, Elie experiences the loss of love and belonging when he is separated from his mother, sisters, and eventually his father. Also, the lack of respect that the Nazis showed the prisoners which lead to the men, including Elie to feel a sense of worthlessness in the camp. Finally, the lack of basic necessities in the camp leads to the men physically experiencing dehumanization. As a result, all these factors contribute to the

In 2006, Elie Wiesel published the memoir “Night,” which focuses on his terrifying experiences in the Nazi extermination camps during the World War ll. Elie, a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, is projected as a dynamic character who experiences overpowering conflicts in his emotions. One of his greatest struggles is the sense helplessness that he feels when all the beliefs and rights, of an entire nation, are reduced to silence. Elie and the Jews are subjected daily to uninterrupted torture and dehumanization. During the time spent in the concentration camp, Elie is engulfed by an uninterrupted roar of pain and despair. Throughout this horrific experience, Elie’s soul perishes as he faces constant psychological abuse, inhuman living conditions, and brutal negation of his humanity.

During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s outlook on life shifted to a very pessimistic attitude, showing emotions and actions including rebellion, forgetfulness of humane treatment, and selfishness. Elie shows rebellion early in the Holocaust at the Solemn Service, a jewish ceremony, by thinking, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel 67). Elie had already shifted his view on his religion and faith in God. After witnessing some of the traumas of the concentration camps, Elie questioned what he did to deserve such treatment. Therefore, he began to rebel against what he had grown up learning and believing. Not only had Elie’s beliefs changed, his lifestyle changed as well. When Elie’s foot swelled, he was sent to the doctor, where they put him “...in a bed with white sheets. I [he] had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel 78). Many of the luxuries that Elie may have taken for granted have been stripped of their lives, leaving Elie and the other victims on a thin line between survival and death. By explaining that he forgot about many of these common luxuries, Elie emphasizes the inhumane treatment the victims of the Holocaust were put through on a daily basis.

Throughout history, many terrible things have happened that have put people in terrible conditions. During the Holocaust, millions of people died, and the few that survived were very lucky. Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night”, endured many horrible things in the Holocaust that shaped him as a person today. In “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, changed as a person due to his experiences at Auschwitz.

Six million jews. Six million innocent men, women and children. Emerging from the ashes and corpses, one man had the intention of preserving this tragedy, yet at the same time preventing it. Elie Wiesel’s fulfilled his purpose of showing the heinous crimes of the Holocaust through the change of characterization of Elie before, during and after the events of Wiesel 's 1940 memoir-Night. The Holocaust is remembered as a stain on history, where a massive genocide occurred. but we must also recognize the souls and personalities that were killed and burned. Wiesel trembling hands picked up these ashes, personifying their ebony remains into a young child-Elie.

In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie recounts his experience as a prisoner of the Holocaust, saying, "Never shall i forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.... Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall i forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I cannot feel it. I believe in God even when He is silent” is a quote that was written on a cell wall in Germany during the Holocaust. This quote portrays the hope that was kept by the Jews throughout their experience and journey through the events of the Holocaust. However, through those times of turmoil their faith and beliefs were challenged, especially those of Elie Wiesel, illustrated in his autobiography Night. The story depicts Elie Wiesel, a young, Jewish boy, and his people’s endeavor through the annihilation of their culture. As one reads Night, one sees the Jews questioning their faith due to the silence of their God during the fire and destruction of the Nazi armies.

A quote from Albert Einstein states “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. As difficult as it is to describe the terrible deeds of those who were part of the Holocaust, it is true that those who did nothing are at fault just as much as those who carried out the actions. When one thinks of the Holocaust today it is difficult to picture that such events were done by human beings. Societies have advanced but it is important to acknowledge the reason as to why many bystanders refused to help or why they were so indifferent to the pain felt by the Jews. “The psychological mechanisms used to come to terms with the suffering of another appear to be very similar, whether the person is standing right before us or is 2,000 miles away. (Barnet:118) Barnett explains that ideological and moral principles also come into play, as do self-interest and the weighing of the possible consequences of our actions. We try to establish what is or is not possible. In the end, our decision will be determined not so much by whether we actually have the power to change a situation, but whether we have the will to do so. (Barnett, 118). In the case of many of the individuals who chose to become bystanders rather than change the situation they were not willing to get involved. Although not every German was a bystander, those who