Symbolism In Night By Elie Wiesel

The one person in Elie’s life that means everything to him is his father. During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s bond with his father

After 3 weeks at Auschwitz, they get deported to Buna, which is a turning point for the relationship between Elie and Chlomo. The camps influence Elie and give him a crooked mind focused on staying alive and nothing else. This leads to him disregarding his father. This twisted way of thinking, due to the camps, is making Elie cheer during bomb raids at Buna. He states his thoughts “But we were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death” (57). This shows that he is willing to die to see the camps destroyed. The most horrifying event that demonstrates his twisted mind is when Eliezer pays no heed to his father while he was being repeatedly beat with an iron bar. Eliezer, rather than acting indifferent and showing nothing, actually feels angry with his father. “I was angry at him for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak” (52). The new lifestyle of the camps affected Elie and his relationship with his father for the worse.

“I woke from my apathy only when two men approached my father. I threw myself on his body. He was cold. I slapped him. I rubbed his hands, crying... At last, my father half opened his eyes” (99). Elie almost lost the one thing that kept him going, his father. He had gone all this way, enduring so many different trials and awful things. He was not going to let his father give up now like most of the other people around them. Elie would not let him be like the other ones that were thrown off. “In a snowy field in Poland, hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb” (99). Elie was not going to abandon his father like

“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.

One night, the leaders of Buna had left a cauldron of soup out, no one had dared to go near it but one man. The man was so hungry and was on the brink of madness and he no longer cared if he was going to die, he just wanted food and this is what led him to being killed. “Then, for no apparent reason, he let out a terrible scream, a death rattle such as I had never heard before and, with open mouth, thrust his head toward the still steaming liquid.”. During the first selection, Elie was terrified of being selected and getting killed. This led to him thinking about all the reason why he should be killed and how he was most likely going to be selected. “ My head was spinning: you are too skinny…yo u are too weak…yo u are too skinny, you are good for the ovens …”. When Elie’s father died, he didn’t cry or show any sadness whatsoever. Elie was so numb with the pain he had gone through that he was no longer capable of feeling. “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble

At the beginning of Night, Elie has a good and well-off life. He is not poor and lives comfortably with his family in Sighet, Transylvania. He may not have everything he wants, but he has what he needs. This changes overnight when Elie and the other Jews of Sighet are deported out of their ghetto and into concentration camps. The Nazis take everything from Elie, his family, name, hair, personal possessions, and confidence in his faith. Suddenly, Elie finds he is no longer the son of a well-respected Jewish community leader who has everything he needs, but rather a prisoner with no possessions or home to call his own. In minutes, he has lost everything and now finds himself in a camp where he owns just a bowl, shoes, and the clothes on his back. He doesn’t even have his own bed; that too he must share with others. “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust” (Wiesel, 32). At this point, Elie has realized that the life he knew before was gone. He also probably wished he had appreciated something as simple as his name, as once he was in the camp, “I became A-7713. After that I had no other name” (Wiesel, 39). He even wished he had appreciated his sheets before the war, saying “They put me into a bed with white sheets. I had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel, 74). All of Elie’s realizations of how good his life had been while in Sighet didn’t come until he had lost all the things he took for granted. Prior to his deportation, Elie was just like any other teenager. While he may know that he has a good life and has everything he needs, he usually doesn’t acknowledge or appreciate it. Most teenagers and adults alike take for granted their ability to provide for their needs. They don’t think about the event that

In this chapter Elie names two things that are “his entire life.” What are those two things that Elie values most? How do these two things contrast to the things he valued before entering into the concentration camp?

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

The Holocaust was the mass murder of Jews under the control of Hitler during the period 1941-1945. More than 6 million Jews, as well as members of other groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps the biggest camp was Auschwitz. They got tea for their morning meal, for lunch prisoners would be given a litre of soup that was watered down. If they were lucky, they might find a piece of a potato peel. One of the survivors of the holocaust stated “Your bowl was your life, without your bowl you didn’t eat.” (Kitty - Return to Auschwitz, YTV 1979) Hunger caused the Jew inmates to do things they normally wouldn't do.

When he saw Elie’s gold crown, Franek wanted it for himself in order to trade for more useful objects such as utensils and food with other prisoners. When Elie refused to give up the gold crown, which Franke still eventually received, on the advice of his father, Franek begin to “torment my [Elie’s] father and to thrash him [Chlomo Wiesel] savagely every day” (Wiesel 63). Elie tried to teach his father, Chlomo Wiesel, how to march properly. But day after day, Chlomo Wiesel’s marching was still inadequate. At this point, readers would feel sympathetic and sadness for Elie having to choose between two hard choices, giving up the gold crown or risk losing his father, Chlomo Wiesel, to the daily beatings from Franek for incompetent

As demonstrated in the text, “I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip… Only the first really hurt… I was over… I had not realized it, but I had fainted… He (father) would be suffering more than I” (page 57 and 58). Elie was so calm about being whipped and beaten. He had clearly lost all hope for a pleasant ending. Elie didn’t care about being whipped, yet he cared about his father’s pain. He knew his father would be in pain to see his son beaten, but he claimed that his father suffered more than himself. It shows that he wasn’t in as much pain as his father, who hadn’t even been beaten. Elie didn’t care that he was being beaten. His father cared more than him. An example of Elie giving up on humanity occurs when he says, “He reached the first cauldron… Jealousy devoured us… Poor hero committing suicide for a ration or two or more of soup… In our minds, he was already dead… We jumped at the sound of a shot… Falling to the ground, his face stained by the soup...” (page 59 and 60). The man that snuck soup in the cauldron was a lost cause, and Elie knew it. He knew that there was no way he would survive even if he had gotten in. The greedy people would’ve lunged at him and eaten his extra food. Nobody felt sorry for the guy when he was shot. They weren’t even concerned. Death was a normal thing to them. The Jews lacked the emotion of sympathy. As stated in the text, “Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to… dying men” (page 95). This shows that Elie was still affected by what happened even after the holocaust. His comrade, Juliek, playing the violin surrounded by death affected Elie. Juliek played the song just before his death. The song was a reminder of that day. It brought memories of the holocaust back. It reminded Elie of the hard times and all of

The brutality of the Holocaust drives many to abandon a family member or loved one. For example, when the son of Rabbi Eliahou sees his father losing ground, limping, and falling to the rear of the column, he continues to run on, growing distant from his father. The son feels as if his father can no longer go on anymore. Elie’s feelings are mutual, for his father is taking him for granted. He is like a metal weight attached to Elie’s foot by a rope. Sooner or later, Elie must cut himself free, or else he won’t survive either.

Dementia and physical illness rendered him too weak to rely on, so rather than asking how Elie would live without his father, a new question was presented: How would his father live without Elie? Immediately after arriving to a liberation camp, the surviving prisoners were divided into various groups, so Elie grabbed his father’s hand and refused to let go. Unfortunately, exposure to such unforgiving environments had introduced Elie’s father to the kind of seductive release from pain mentioned earlier. This was confirmed through an argument the two had where Elie refused to let his father sleep, knowing quite well he wouldn’t wake up. However, the latter was obstinate, begging to rest because he was so unbearably weak. The one-sided quarrel caused Elie to admit, “I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen” (105). Elie had previously demonstrated the strength to fight for his life, because that was what survival was, a fight. However, his father was not as fortunate, and didn’t possess the same willpower as his

In “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, two things drove Wiesel through the struggles of the concentration camps. One was the hope to get through the Holocaust alive with his father, and the other was the meager ration of bread and soup at his next meal. However, when his father died, Wiesel lost one of the most precious reasons to survive in the camps. At the same time, Wiesel’s subconscious felt slightly relieved that he was able to live without his father’s weight on his back.

The Jews wanted to survive but the Nazis did horrific things to them like starving them, beating them, so the Jews had to be selfish keeping them self some food, keeping themself out when someone is getting beat then the Jews had a better chance of survival. From the reading I noticed that Elie lied to the dentist that he was sick because he didn’t want his gold tooth removed (52). From this I can suppose that Elie wanted to keep his gold tooth so he could trade it for some food later or even to bribe a guard to leave the camp. This is similar to the dentist when he was taking a bit of the gold for himself so if can get out of the camp and away from Nazis. In the book it said that Elie watched his father get beat by Idek and didn’t do anything