Theme Of Identity In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie endured so much mental damage at his young age that it made their mental state irreversible. Elie’s story is truly inspiring, having survived one of history’s most heartbreaking, detrimental, and antisemitic events in World History. Before he was imprisoned by the Nazis, Elie lived a very religious life. God was whom he would turn to in need, and the Holocaust altered that. The division between men and women forced Elie to stay by his father’s side for the next two years in brutal, unhumane conditions.

Sometimes in life we are faced with challenges that threaten our identities. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel his challenge was the holocaust, and every aspect of his identity changed. He lost his faith, his appearance changed dramatically, and his lost his ability to care about things he loved most.

Night by Elie Wiesel is an autobiography about his experience during the Holocaust when he was fifteen years old. Elie is fifteen when the tragedy begins. He is taken with his family through many trials and then is separated from everyone besides his father. They are left with only each other, of which they are able to confide in and look to for support. The story is told through a series of creative writing practices. Mr. Wiesel uses strong diction, and syntax as well as a combination of stylistic devices. This autobiography allows the readers to understand a personal, first-hand account of the terrible events of the holocaust. The ways that diction is used in Night helps with this understanding.

Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize

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.

Elie experienced many changes, as a person while he was in Auschwitz. Before Elie was sent to Auschwitz, he was just a small naive child that new very little

Elie’s father loses his strength quickly, “his eyes [grew] dim” (46) almost immediately after arriving. The horrors which he had seen were easily enough to crush the spirit of a former community leader. His disbelief of the horrors he saw questioned the very basis of his soul, and he began to despair. His father’s eyes soon become, “veiled with despair” (81), as he loses hope for survival. The despair of camp life shrouds the human within, showing only another cowed prisoner. Elie’s father no longer can see hope, having his vision clouded by cruelty and hate. Elie’s father is eventually overwhelmed by despair; he, “would not get up. He knew that it was useless” (113). The Nazis crushed his soul, killed his family, stole his home, and eventually took his life; this treatment destroyed the person inside the body. He could no longer summon the strength to stay alive, so he gave up, and collapsed.

The early 1940s, an observant, young boy, and his caring father: the start of a story that would become known throughout the world of Eliezer Wiesel. His eye-opening story is one of millions born of the Holocaust. Elie’s identity, for which he is known by, is written out word for word his memoir, Night. Throughout his journey, Elie’s voice drifts from that of an innocent teen intrigued with the teachings of his religion to that of a soul blackened by a theoretical evil consuming the Nazis and Hitler’s Germany. Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, examines the theme of identity through the continuous motifs of losing one’s self in the face of death and fear, labeling innocent people for a single dimension of what defines a human being, and the oppression seen in the Holocaust based on the identities of those specifically targeted and persecuted.

From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). The minorities in the concentration camps are no longer individuals, but are dehumanized into empty shells of themselves. The longer they remain in camps, the more they are reduced to a mere physical presence, losing their selves to their self-preservation instinct, and eventually becoming just hungry, nearly dead bodies. Counting the days until his liberation, Elie thought “[He] was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time” (Wiesel 52). The loss of the right to be an individual confuses Elie, making him question whether he is too weak to survive, giving readers their first glimpse into his change in personality. From a loyal son who fought his father’s battles, he becomes the betrayer, allowing his father to be killed right in front of his eyes. This change in personality is derived from a Level 3 Defense Mechanism of the human mind known as Dissociation. This Defence Mechanism involves the victim modifying their own identity to avoid the suffering accompanied by a traumatic situation. Elie alters his characteristics to be better suited for survival, as seen in how he sacrificed his father, something he claimed he would never do, perhaps as a way of providing a reason for this sudden change in personality. By dissociating himself to overcome trauma, Elie loses his sense of his identity and what he was raised to believe in.

In Elie Wiesel's memoire, instincts of self-preservation overwhelm all other human emotion. While at Auschwitz Elie and his father were transferred to new barracks were Elie's father was beaten by a gypsy inmate who was in charge for politely asking were the bathroom was. Elie describes his reaction of standing petrified and thinking "What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thoughts, because he whispered in my ear: 'It doesn’t hurt.' His cheek still bore the red mark of the hand." (3.117-120)Elie's lack of reaction showcases how the environment of the concentration camp was already conditioning Elie to put his needs of survival ahead of his human identity. Weasels description of the events show how the brutality of the camps have changed Elie's actions and thoughts because Elie knows that interfering in the encounter would mean sacrificing basic survival; love and human emotions are no longer a priority.

Then, throughout the middle of the novel, the strength of family bonds of the Jews is tested. After the run, a Rabbi asks Elie if he had seen his son, Elie tells him that he had not. Then Elie realizes that he had seen his son on the run, but he does not tell the Rabbi because his son left him behind on purpose. The text states, “He had felt his father growing weaker… by this separation to free himself of a burden that could diminish his own chance for survival” (Wiesel 91). This is where the reader begins to see the toll that the concentration camps are having on the families. Elie includes this to show, that now, family members see each other as burdens rather than a blessing. Later in the novel, family members go as far as taking a life. One old man

Humans are very social by nature, the idea of family, and friends are things that separate us from other animals. Ask anyone what important to them, and most will reply family, and friends. This is also true during the holocaust; many of the survivors lived only because of the thought of their loved ones. When he arrives at Auschwitz, Elie meets Stein, a relative from Antwerp. Stein tells them that "the only thing that keeps [him] alive is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up…" (45). Because of our social nature, humans become connected to one another on a much deeper level. When a person loses those that they care about the most, they also lose the will to live. For some people this happens very quickly, depression sets in and a person will become immune to their surroundings, no longer caring what happens. Elie survives through the holocaust because his father is with him. Because of his

In addition to losing his faith, Elie Wiesel seems to forget his identity due to dehumanization. In order to dehumanize him, the Nazis take away the thing that Elie Wiesel is most proud of, his name. Elie was renamed “A-7713. From then on, [he] had no other name” (Wiesel 42). Not only does he lose his name, but Elie Wiesel no longer has a reaction to the mistreatment that is happening to other people around him. He sees this abuse all the time every day that he has become numb to it. He even watches his own father be beaten up “without moving. [He keeps] silent… [and] thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows… That was what life in a concentration camp had made of [him]…” (Wiesel 54). In addition to being numb to the abuse, Elie becomes numb to his own human emotions as well. This shows when Elie sees Yechiel, the Sigheter rebbe’s brother crying. Elie informs Yechiel to not cry and to not “waste [his] tears…Not cry? [they’re] on the threshold of death…How could [they] not cry?” (Wiesel 88). All the suffering that Elie has endured exhausts him, and he can no longer feel regular human emotions.

First Elie started to lose his faith. He wanted to believe that his mom and sister were kept safe but he was losing his faith. “We pretended for what if one of us still did believe” (Wiesel 46). He started losing his faith after him and his mom and sister got separated which has a big effect on his identity. He stayed silent in hard times. Elie was abused for no reason but he chose not to say anything about it. “As I bit my lips in order not to howl in pain” (Wiesel 53). Instead of standing up for himself, he lost his will to speak. One of the major points when he lost his identity, was when he lost his name. Elie’s identity was taken from him when they took away his name and called him by a number instead. “I became A-1137. From then one I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). When he lost his name he was no longer the same person he was before the holocaust. Elie felt like he needed to speak for all the Jews the lost their identity that couldn’t speak for

When Elie arrived at the first concentration camp, he was a child, but when left he was no longer human. Elie’s character changed through his encounter of the Holocaust. Elie idolized his religion, Judaism, one relevant identification for him. Elie spent hours praying and learning about Judaism, but it was the reason he and his family were tormented for. Elie was so intrigued by Judaism, that he wanted someone a “master” to guide in his studies of Kabbalah, an ancient spiritual wisdom that teaches how to improve the lives (Wiesel 8). Furthermore, he loses hope in God and in life. Elie only had a few items when he arrived in the camp, one being his family, but that would soon be taken from him. When Elie and his family arrived at the camp in Auschwitz, he was kept by his father. He always gazed after his father, caring for him until his death.