Norman Cousins, a political journalist for the Saturday Review, once said, “The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live”. This can be found true in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. Elie Wiesel was a survivor of the Holocaust, who dedicated his life to bringing awareness to the horrendous, and cruel actions that took place at the concentration camps in the time of Nazi Germany. He endured many physical challenges, as well as many mental challenges throughout his time in the inferno, Auschwitz. Although, he was surrounded by death, the death inside of him seemed much greater. The loss of his humanity, faith, and identity seemed to be his greatest loss.Because Death is not just physical, but figurative in Night, …show more content…
The first instance where a loss of humanity was revealed was when Moishe the Beadle escaped from a round up of all foreign Jews and told Elie what had happened before he escaped. At one point when Moishe was explaining what happened, he begins to tell Elie what the Hungarian Police did to the babies. Moishe described what happened by saying, “Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns” (6). This shows a loss of humanity because, innocent children who had done nothing were treated as targets for cruel policemen, instead of being spared. Another instance, where there was a loss of humanity was when Elie and the other Jews were first loaded into the cattle cars and the Hungarian Police presented a list of rules. The Hungarian officer had said, “If anyone goes missing, you will …show more content…
One of the first losses of faith can be found when Elie and the rest of the Jews first arrive at Auschwitz and Elie see’s all the Jewish men begin to recite Kaddish. Elie expressed how he felt about preying in such a frightening time by saying, “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the external and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?” (33). This quote shows Elie’s loss of faith because, Elie is questioning God for not saving him and the other Jews from the from being put into the concetration camps. This was just the beggining of Elie’s loss of faith. Elie continues to question, and loss his faith when he witnesses a little pipel get hung from the gallows. Elie said, “‘For God’s sake, where is God.’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where- hanging here from this gallows…’” (65). This quote symbolizes a loss of faith because it shows Elie expaining how it’s like God is dead, and how God had died with the innocent little pipel. The last loss of faith found was not in Elie, but in Akiba Drummer. Drummer went on to explain his loss of faith by saying, “‘ Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?’” (77). This shows a loss of faith because, Akiba asks Elie how anyone could believe in God when millions of people were dying,
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....” –Elie Wiesel expressed shortly after his harsh experience with the Holocaust. As many read through Elie’s book Night, they recognize what Elie fought through while he was staying in the Concentration Camps. People have realized the brutal conditions that the he had gone through and have came to the thought of how it effected his future and what he has done ever since the horrible Holocaust.
The book Night is a story of family, religion, violence, and hope. This book tells the story of Elie Wiesel’s journey through the holocaust. During the novel, Wiesel writes with the purpose of teaching us several lessons. This lesson is conveyed through Wiesel’s actions, other character’s actions, as well as quotations. The lesson Wiesel taught in Night is to persevere and never lose hope up no matter how hopeless the situation may seem.
Elie loses complete faith in god in many points where god let him down. He struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. Elie worked hard to save himself and asks god many times to help him and take him out of the misery he was facing. "Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal, and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent..."(page 33). Elie was confused, because he doesn’t know why the Germans would kill his race amongst many others, and he does not know why god could let such thing happen to innocent people. "I did not deny god's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice..."(page 42). These conditions gave him confidence, and a courage to
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.
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” (Nietzsche). This quote, said by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, describes the desire to survive that was inside of Elie Wiesel in his story. The book describes Elie’s late teen years when he was sent to a concentration camp by the German government. In the book, he is separated from his whole family except for his old father, and both are put to work inside of the camp. As Elie suffers through the camp, his faith and his life face many tests and trials. There are many instances throughout the book when people die or when somebody loses their faith. The theme of the book Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is survival, as shown by the death of many Jews during the Holocaust, people willing to do anything to survive, and people’s faith not surviving the traumatic experiences of the concentration camps.
Faith is like a little seed; if you think about the positive aspects of a situation, then it will grow, like a seed grows when you water it. However, if the seed does not receive water anymore, it will die, which serves as a parallel to the horrors and antagonism of the concentration camps that killed Elie’s faith. After the analysis of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the reader can visualize the horrors and slaughter of millions of innocent people that occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains how his faith in God was tested, as he was forced to leave his home, separated from his family, and observed the death all around him; he even witnessed children being thrown into huge ditches of fire alive. Elie felt abandoned, betrayed, and deceived by the God that he knew who was a loving and giving God. It was then he started to doubt His existence. Elie tried to hold on to his faith, but the childhood innocence had disappeared from within him, and he lost his faith in God completely.
“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.
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
The murder of thousands can not only impact the universe, but the ones that live in it. For instance, victims of the Happiest had to deal with, not only losing all of their loved ones but the deaths of others around them. In “Night”, Elie is expiring death, of not only his loved ones, also other Jews who were taken by Hitler. The loss of your family is petrifying. But watching others have their lives slipped away from their fingertips, is indubitably scary. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie changes drastically throughout the book, because of the time he spent in Auschwitz, one of the most infamous concentration camps.
As said by Audrey Hepburn; “Living is like tearing through a museum, not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can’t take it in all at once.” In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the Holocaust took place in an order of layers. As time passed, the extremity was increased each chapter he succumbed to. Elie expresses raw emotion in his memoir, Night, and leaves you in a complete, utter state of wonder and sadness. Not only this, but remembering and cherishing the importance of all the emotions from this time in history. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the theme of remembering is present before the Holocaust and in today’s society.
Elie was a holocaust victim who was almost forced, by other jews, into a furnace, by order of the Nazis. “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” Elie was very religious before the Holocaust and yet on the first night at Auschwitz he lost his faith in God. He regained faith
Traumatic and scarring events occur on a daily basis; from house fires to war, these memories are almost impossible to forget. The Holocaust is only one of the millions of traumas that have occurred, yet it is known worldwide for sourcing millions of deaths. Elie Wiesel was among the many victims of the Holocaust, and one of the few survivors. In the memoir, “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, Elie, the main character, is forever changed because of his traumatic experiences in the Auschwitz concentration camps.
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.
In the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel is a dynamic character shown through the conflict, character versus nature, where he went from being defeated to defiant in the personified death in the concentration camps. Through his journey in the concentration camps and struggle for survival, Wiesel encounters death several times, he either witnesses death’s ways or outlives them. While being in Auschwitz, one of the largest concentration camps from the Holocaust during World War Two, Wiesel had grown numb to the effects of death, he had outgrown the disbelief of how cruel the world could be, of how God could remain silent in such a time of need and help, “Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. The idea
In Elie Wiesel's Night, the first person narrator, Elie Wiesel, lets the reader to be able to have a firsthand account of the Holocaust and World War II and also explain what evil can do to a person. Elie is "a body. Perhaps less than that even; a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time" (Wiesel 50). When he faces the "Angel of Death," Dr. Mengele, he is so scarred that he shall never "forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned [his] life into one long night seven times sealed. ... Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. ... Never" (34). The impact of these lines cause readers to experience the evils that the Germans decided to expose to the Jewish when they brought