Character Analysis Of Night In Night By Elie Wiesel

Before Elie went to the concentration camp, he had many character traits; such as, being caring, impatient, and optimistic. For example, Wiesel stated on page 15, “Get up sir, get up! You must ready yourself for the journey. Tomorrow you will be expelled, you and your family, you and all the other Jews,” said Elie. In this example, Elie is going into people's homes, warning and telling them, they need to get prepared for their long journey. This shows how much Elie cares about other people. Before Elie went to the camp, he believed in his religion deeply. On page 4 in Wiesel's book, he stated, “One day, I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah.” Elie’s dad responded, “You are too young for that.” In this sentence, the character Elie is wanting to learn more about his religion, even though he knows that he has to be twice his age to learn about Kabbalah. Through his words, you can see that Elie is very

Before Wiesel traveled to this gruesome death camp, he showed an abundance of positive traits. Some of these being his love for his religion, his strong hope for his future, and his powerful, loving family. In the first few pages Elie confesses his love for his religion and his ambition to pursue it to a teacher of the Jewish religion. He says that “...I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar…” (5). He was stating that he wanted to branch off of his current religion and learn a new form of it, but he was limited because no one in his area also studied this form of Judaism. We can also learn that he was hopeful because you can tell that he is still trying to learn this other religion. Elie also writes that “Naturally, we refused to be separated” (20). He was speaking about his family in this quote and how he and his sisters had the opportunity to leave their mom and dad so that they could get to a safer place with the family maid. The mother did not want to go, so no one went; Instead they stuck together in the ghettos. They had an immensely strong family bond and it is shown through this passage. The children chose their family over a more certain safety. The next quote came after they were all in cattle carts, and were traveling to the new place. Elie recalls “It was as though madness had infected all of us” (27). Elie was scared during this time, but also reserved. He just kept to himself on while he was in this cart that was heading somewhere that he did not know.

Before Elie was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, he displayed some positive character traits such as; faithful, courageous, and smart. To begin, Wiesel states: “He had watched me one day as I prayed at dusk” (4) Elie is talking to Moishe the Beadle (teacher in Sighet) and wasn’t afraid to express his faith. Obviously Elie is faithful because he is praying, but this shows that he is also very passionate about his faith and doesn’t care if people know if he is Jewish. Elie had this trait before he was sent to Auschwitz, and he made his faith number one. Further into his stay at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Elie starts to let his faith drift away, leaving him with almost nothing. Next, Wiesel states: “There could no longer be any doubt: Germany would be defeated. It was only a matter of time, months, weeks perhaps.” (8) Elie and his family were getting worried about the Nazi’s invading many Jewish homes. Elie becomes very confident to the situation and tells himself that the Germans will be defeated. Confidence is deeply displayed in this piece of text evidence because he begins to make it a fact that the

What would it do to a person to go to a concentration camp, see the horrible things, and come out alive? This book, Night, is about Eliezer Wiesel, who is both the main character and the author. Elie’s book is a memorial about his experience in Hitler’s concentration camps, what he went through, and how he survived. This paper is going to be about Eliezer’s horrific experience and the ways that it changed him.

Elie reflects on the first night at the camps, he says “Never shall I forget the night at that camp that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed...Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the natural silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live…” (pg.34). Elie was explaining that was the night it all changed for him, how it will always be apart of him. After seeing what this camp had to offer, to still even be alive was a privilege. He knew then, Auschwitz was just a Jews death sentence waiting to happen. He will never forget because it will always be stuck with him, that it was so horribly traumatizing that one could be so evil to innocent people. Think about Elie’s motivation it seems to go up and down, there were different things that would build his hope up but at the same time deprive him from it. The author illustrates this point when he states “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me” (pg.86) When Elie and all the other men were told to march on, the SS officers told them to increase their pace more and more and soon found themselves running at full pace for hours and hours. The SS officers had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. Elie was explaining how his foot was aching and he was so exhausted and desperate for it all to be over, but never seemed to end. He was so reckless at this point, but he remembers his father. Elie tells us “My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his soul support?” (pg.86-87). This simply proves that this was the only reason that Elie was to go on was because he wanted his father to go on.

Before the Holocaust changed his life, he had a distant relationship with father, and they often argued about him wanting to become a mystic. Towards the beginning of his time in the concentration camps, a Kapo was speaking with Elie’s father and struck him in the face, “I stood petrified. 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 criminals flesh” (Wiesel 39). Elie would’ve done something to avenge his father after he had been struck, but he couldn't. If he had done so, the result would have been worse for him rather than what the Kapo had done to his father. This shows how if he wasn’t restrained, he would done something to the Kapo, but

He planned to study his religion. This quickly changed when Nazi officers began to round up Jews in his city. Him and his family were taken to Auschwitz, a camp where Jews were either immediately killed or worked to death. Elie and his father stay together, but are separated from the rest of their family, whom they would never see again. Elie goes through a lot, and is changed in many ways throughout the

With the events that happened during the concentration camps, it makes him stronger as a person to keep staying alive and keep thinking that the whole situation that they’re in will end. When Elie’s father dies, he is torn apart and he only had one thought coming into his brain; nothing mattered to him anymore. Elie wrote, “I remembered in Buchenwald until April 11. I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered.

Character, not circumstances, make the man. In this case the circumstance of the holocaust did not change Elie in every way, his character began to help him develop some of his changes. There are a few cases where change can be beneficial and good. Elie made many changes throughout his adventure some good and some that will possibly be very hard to come back from. Elies character changes in many ways during this book, but there are some that basically are big changes which are, his faith, physical and mental thoughts.

While in the camp, the Jews were abused physically and mentally. Before the end of the book, Wiesel has adopted an indifferent attitude toward his own life. He thinks of, "It no longer mattered. After my father's death, nothing could touch me anymore" (107). Before his father's death, there were times when Elie watched the Nazis abuse his father and, however he didn't react, he felt regret, anger, and a craving to "sink my nails into criminal's flesh" (37) to guard his father. Sadly, before his father died, he began to care less and less about himself and his father. And when his father passed away, he no longer could imagine a reason to continue living. This did not make him sad, because his exclusive belief was to survive: “I had no more tears. And in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like—free at last!” (106) Wiesel lost his ability to care about his life, and he felt free from caring about anything after his father had passed. Elie's absence of worry shows the amount he changed while in the concentration camp. Elie Wiesel survived the concentration camps for nearly two years. Despite the fact that he frequently claims that he wanted to surrender, that he wished he would just die, regardless he battled against death. He was still alive and well when the first American tanks arrive at Buchenwald (109). He composes: “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread” (109). This quote demonstrates that; however, Elie has lost his personality so much that he is almost similar to a wild animal, he has still managed to keep the impulse to survive. This endurance demonstrated that he never was able to completely abandon life. He by one means or

In the last five pages, Wiesel addresses his life after his father’s death until he gets freed by the Americans. Elie had only one desire in his life right now and it was food, “I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat. I no longer thought of my father, or my mother. From time to time, I would dream. But only about soup, an extra ration of soup.” (113) Elie’s only desire was food because he lost everything else that was important to him and food was his only source of happiness, even though he barely got a ration. A year in the concentration camp brainwashed Elie and most people, this was shown when people killed their relatives for food and didn’t show emotion toward death and harm like Eliezer did. In last few lines of the book, Eliezer informs his audience about his mirror image a few weeks after he was freed from the concentration camp, “I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed has never left me.” While Elie was in the camps and weeks later, he was a corpse, not a real person who was full of emotion and passionate about his religion. Eliezer isn’t the same person from before the holocaust and he probably will never be the same

In real life, bad things happen to people, that can change them. In the holocaust many people changed. Ellie wiesel is one of the many people that got changed. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character Elie, was transformed throughout the book by his experiences in Auschwitz.

Throughout this time period, Elie changes spiritually. In Sighet, he was a very religious Jewish male. Young Eliezer studied Kaballah under the direction of Moshe the Beadle. Many people thought that Moshe was crazy. An example of how Elie changed from being religious in the concentration camp was that he did not even fast on Yom Kippur. Fasting for a day can easily mean death while in the camps. Many people in the concentration camp, there was a big debate whether people would past or not. He decided to not fast not because he couldn’t, but because he was mad at God. “I did not fast. First of all, to please my father who had forbidden me to fast. I no longer

Before Elie went to Auschwitz, he displayed many positive character traits including expressing faith, love,

Before Elie went to the Concentration camp, he had many good character traits. On page 31 - 32 Wiesel states, “The wind of revolt died down. We continued to walk until we came to a crossroads. Standing in the middle of it was, though I didn't know it then, Dr. Mengele, the notorious Dr. Mengele. He looked like the typical SS officer: a cruel, though not unintelligent, face, complete with monocle. He was holding a conductor's baton and was surrounded by officers. The baton was moving constantly, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left”… “This conversation lasted no more than a few seconds. It seemed like an eternity.” In this part of the book Elie had just gotten to the camp and is getting sorted by the angel of death. This part of the text showed that Elie was brave because Elie had just talked to a man who had killed hundreds of people, and he never said he was scared or acted like he was frightened. Another trait he had before he changed was that he was hard working. One example of that trait is on page 50, “Sitting on the ground, we counted bolts, bulbs, and various small electrical parts.” In this part of the book after they got