Unlocked By Elie Wiesel: Chapter Analysis

“Splendid news from the Russian Front. There could no longer be any doubt: Germany would be defeated. It was only a matter of time, months or weeks, perhaps. The trees were in bloom. It was a year like so many others, with its spring, its engagements, its weddings, and its births” (8).

Night, in its original Yiddish form, was the first of the 57 books written by Elie Wiesel till date. The book titled Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Remained Silent) in Yiddish, was published in abridged form in Buenos Aires, Brazil. Wiesel rewrote a shortened version of the manuscript in French, which was published as the 127-page La Nuit, and later translated into English as Night. The book gives a detailed and heart wrenching first person account of the activities that took place in the concentration camps under the Nazi rule during the Second World War. It describes how Elie, then a small boy, was severed from his mother and sister forever, and how he lost his father, his faith and also the will to survive by the end of his unimaginable ordeal.

During Elie Wiesel’s book there seemed to be many mixed emotions throughout the situation of being in the camp and the separation of their family, and along with the relationship between him and his father. In the beginning of the book Elie thought that his father could care less about him and what he does since he always seemed to be busy and had no time for his wife or his children. “My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental, He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (Wiesel, 4). In the middle of the book things started to change, the both of them tried their hardest to stay together and to never be separated apart no matter what circumstances stood by “We’ll take turns. I’ll watch over you and you’ll watch over me” (Wiesel, 89).

The five letters that Elie Wiesel utilizes as the title for his book summarize, within one word, all the feelings, the uncertainty, the anger, the fear, etc. associated with the events contained in this novel. The book is a work of art, and Wiesel is a great storyteller, leaving his audience with a deeper knowledge of both historical events and the defiance and courage of the human spirit. Perhaps the most memorable scene in the story is that in which the author and his father begin the journey out of the camp, a cruel death march towards other, harsher, conditions, a tragic tale is loss, fear, and hopelessness. It is, indeed, a memorable scene that culminates with the death of Wiesel's father, and it symbolizes the greatest of human emotions that one could associate with the events of the Holocaust; namely, and as aforementioned, hopelessness. This paper will discuss Wiesel's character in detail, as well as this condition of hopelessness, how it is provoked, and how it is symbolized throughout the novel.

Elie Wiesel’s nonfiction novel Night shares the author’s experience in Auschwitz which demonstrates the importance of memoirs. Throughout the novel, Elie’s experiences in the camp are narrated allowing readers to see into the young boy’s life. Seeing into the life of Elie enables readers to empathize for the young boy when he or his father is mistreated. By writing a nonfiction, readers are more likely to empathize with the main character since that individual exists. When readers are able to empathize with certain characters, the novel becomes more significant. Relating to Elie helps readers recognize the Holocaust in a different way. Instead of just learning about the event, readers are able to empathize with those who have suffered. Additionally,

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

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night

In the Holocaust Narratives, Night and Maus, Elie Wiesel and Vladek Spiegelman have less ability to control their lives due to their race and culture; they have fewer rights, less reputation and are forced to follow discriminating rules, leads to the character's desperation and psychological damage, which ultimately demonstrates the importance of Cosmopolitanism.

Night is the detailed account of Elie Wiesel’s experiences as a Jew in Germany during the Holocaust. Night is considered a memoir, however, Wiesel uses fictional characters to tell his story. Eliezer acts as Wiesel’s author surrogate, a fictional character based on the author, and narrates the story. Over the course of the text Wiesel exposes the full face of the dehumanization perpetrated against the Jewish people. Through persuasive oration, Hitler was able to manipulate the Germans and justify the Aryan supremacist ideology of the Nazi Party. Hitler’s powerful rhetoric “brainwashed” the Germans into believing the Jews were the source of Germany’s hard times. The Nazi party dehumanized the Jews by depriving them of basic liberties, stripping them of their identity, and subjecting them to violence and intimidation.

Couple days later, they have identification numbers tattooed on their arms, and his name changed from Eliezer Wiesel to A-7713. Upon arriving at Auschwitz, Elie enters into a world of nightmares and hellish visions. Both day and night are filled with horrors and evil, and night itself is no longer restful for anyone. After three weeks of being in Auschwitz, all the unskilled laborers left in the camp are rounded up to be transported to another camp in Buna. Now it will be interesting to see if Elie will be better treated in Buna, or worse compared to Auschwitz.

Page number seventeen begins when the Germans are clearing out the ghetto, in which Wiesel first states, “On everyone’s back, there was a sack.” From his position on the sidewalk, he describes the raw emotions that everyone’s eyes and posture were exposing, but no one had the courage to speak about. He says that as everyone moved in a slow and steady pace to the gate of the ghetto with distress and tears running down their cheeks. He states that he is stiff, unable to move, when the whole situation becomes surreal, as if it was torn out of a novel. Wiesel sees Chief Rabbi hunched over with a bundle on his back, looking strange without a beard and hunched. Teachers, friends, and people who Wiesel had once feared or had found ridiculous all

The book Night tells the story of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, and his time in concentration camps. Throughout the story, Elie slowly transitions from a devout man of faith, into another godless wandering soul among this earth, phased by all of the thing that he saw in the god- forsaken concentration camps. Before leaving his sleepy town of Sighet, Elie was so wrapped up in his faith, that he was somewhat naïve, believing every about God that he has heard. Yet, when he and his father arrive at the concentration camp, Elie starts to question his faith, he wonders how God would allow these mass amounts of death to happen. ‘For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I bless His name? What had I to thank him for?’(33). Elie, like most humans, had started to change what he believed in when things did not go his way. As he began to see the flames of children and families burning, he went on to say, ‘Never shall I forget the flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my god and my soul and dreams turned to dust’ (22). This, was the final moment that Elie Wiesel had faith in God. For a moment, he was just a scared little boy, trying to find someone to grasp his hand and comfort him in a time of need.

If Winston had this, he would’ve survived. If Elie didn’t, he would’ve died. If Emilia travelled without this, she wouldn’t have made it so far. Hope plays an important role in each of these characters lives, and it is necessary for survival in all three novels. In 1984, George Orwell shows how dangerous hopelessness is through the character of Winston Smith. Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, explains how important hope is while dealing with dangerous situations. Salt to the Sea, written by Ruta Sepetys, uses a group of World War Two refugees to explain the importance of hope in a hopeless journey. Survival depends on hope because it gives a person the motivation to live, it is necessary to persevere through situations where death is imminent, and

The end of a story is just as important as the beginning. The end of a story seeks to bring a sort of closure to the adventure that was just had in the pages before. With the more intense the story the more difficult the end is. Elie Wiesel’s book Night has an ending that seems rather abrupt but is none-the-less appropriate to the horror that was written on the pages before. The title itself is significant to the end of the story, not just because it is where the story begins, but because the end of the end of the story is the end of the long night that was the Holocaust.

The story begins with the author showing us how Jacques Sauniere was killed and by whom. His killer is introduced as Silas, a big albino guy who is part of Opus Dei with a troubling past. The story continued with the introduction of a main character, Robert Langdon. He is introduced as a professor of religious symbology that teaches at Harvard University. Langdon is awakened in his hotel room by a summoning from the captain of the judicial police. He is informed that Jacques Sauniere was murdered, and is invited to view his body at the crime scene, the Louvre. The Teacher is then introduced. He is an unknown male who seems to be behind the murders. He tells Silas to obtain the keystone based on the information he received from the four men