“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - George Bernard Shaw. George Shaw’s famous quote describes that to achieve, you must change yourself. On May 1944, Elie Wiesel and his family were forced out from his home in Sighet, Romania to live in Auschwitz, Germany. He and his two older sisters survived the holocaust, Elie then wrote his experience in 1960. During the span of the book, “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the novel demonstrates that traumatic events can change a person drastically. In the beginning, Elie lived with his family in Germany, his mother, his father, and his three siblings. The Germans forced the Jews to hand over their valuables, live in ghettos and finally moving them to concentration camps, including Elie’s family. He was disunited from his mother and three siblings, but managed to stay with his father. At first when he entered the camp he was pessimistic and discouraged when he saw the townspeople crying including his father. After, Elie then learned to take care of himself and his father during tragic events, he stuck to his ambitions and values which led him to go through many obstacles , despite the limitations, and be free of the camp of Auschwitz. As he set out Eliezer was an immature and carefree 15 year old who developed into a responsible young adult. Before Ellie was taken away from Sighet to Auschwitz, he was an inquisitive adolescent interested in biblical studies. As stated “One
The Holocaust is arguably one of the most horrific events in human history. As the last Jewish survivors are passing away from old age, the importance of Holocaust related documentation is going to be imperative in teaching the next generations about the monstrosities that went on during this time. In the 1960 novel, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes several literary devices, including the symbology of nighttime, motif of religious practices, and theme of father-son relationships, in order to emphasize the atrocities of the Holocaust specifically for Jews. Wiesel’s first hand experience in concentration camps allows for a vivid retelling of what many people had to endure.
I swore never to remain silent whenever and wherever humans beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.- Elie Weisel
Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on giving the reader a precise understanding of the Holocaust from the perspective of a man who endured it. In order to vividly describe the situation, Wiesel uses specific words or phrases to signify the importance and value behind it. Wiesel writes, “Night. No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes” (Wiesel 21). “Night” is used abundantly throughout the book. In today’s American society, night is for rejuvenation, peace,
Forty-two years after entering the concentration camp for the first time, Elie Wiesel remarked, “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope” (Nobel Lecture 1). This means a lot from someone who endured almost two years of the terror in the WWII concentration camps. During these two years, Elie endured the sadness of leaving his former life and faith behind, the pain of living off of scraps of bread, and the trepidation of the “selections”, where he almost lost his father. He watched the hanging of innocent people, was beat by Kapos and guards time after time, and marched in a death march right after having a foot surgery. Through all of this, he survived because he remained hopeful. Hope was all the Jewish people
There are many important themes and overtones to the book Night, by Eliezer Wiesel. One of the major themes from the book includes the protagonist, and author of his memoire, Elie Wiesel’s ever changing relationship with God. An example of this is when Moche the Beadle asked Elie an important question that would change his life forever, as the basis of his passion and aptitude for studying the ancient texts and teachings of Judaism, “When Moche the Beadle asked Elie why he prayed, Elie couldn 't think of an answer that truly described his faith, and thought, "a strange question, why did I live, why did I breathe?" (Wiesel 14).
Jewish prisoners that were alone during the holocaust survived better than being with family. In “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie had to be separated from his family; he never saw them again. Family made the holocaust even harder; Jewish prisoners perturbed about their family every second. On top of Elie worrying about his family, his dad was an old man. There were many times throughout the book Elie had to be a provider for his dad.
In this lesson, we will explore three of the major themes of 'Night ' and the imagery that the author, Elie Wiesel, uses to create them. The themes we will discuss are identity, silence, and night.
What was it that changed Elie Wiesel? Was it the millions of his comrades burned before him? Was it the fact that his father was taken from him? What really changed Elie Wiesel during his experience with the Holocaust? In the novel “Night,” the author, Elie Wiesel, was taken from his home in Sighet, Transylvania when he was fifteen years old.
“I learned that the hard way” it is a statement that is often used in regular everyday conversation. Situations or struggles that individuals have to deal with teach them lessons about the world and may in turn impact who they are. In Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, Elie develops the idea that adversity in one's life can quite drastically change or shape a person's identity and mentally wear them down to the point where they are incapable of being who they truly are even after they already have developed their own ways of being. He continually develops this idea throughout the book when he talks about his relationship with God and his view of his family or more specifically his father. Additionally, he shows this with his father, Shlomo, who begins
The Holocaust was a mass killing of innocent people. In Elie Wiesel's book Night humanity shows what happens when people lose all hope. The Nazis caused so much innocent death and murder was caused by the Nazis. Elie Wiesel, has seen and experienced the inhumane acts. Shooting the weak, beating the innocent, starving people for no reason, Elie had seen all of this in his time in the concentration camp. In times of suffering people tend to show inhumanity to other human beings.
Elie Wiesel experienced a lot of life changes throughout the memoir “Night” that sculpted him into the man that he is today. During his childhood, before the Holocaust occurred, Elie was described as a nice, innocent, young boy, who enjoyed doing things that every young boy liked to do at that age. His life began to change when the Nazi party took over; Elie experienced things that he had never imagined before. He was separated from his family, was starved and beaten, had his personal identity ripped away through dehumanization, and had to do things that someone his age should never be forced to do. As a result of his experiences during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel changes from a religious, sensitive teenage boy to a spiritually dead, unemotional
Elie Wiesel is a Jewish teenager. He leads a very religious life until he, and thousands of other Jews are placed into concentration camps. Throughout his book, Night, we learn about the struggles in the concentration camp. They are forced to do hard labor, sleep in freezing temperatures, and eat very little while being subject to watching hundreds die every day for no reason other than their faith. They were being dehumanized.
The most confident people are those to have known failure and misfortune. It is evident that adversity elicits our talents that successful situations could not elicit. However, overcoming obstacles can also elicit our character flaws. Through my study of the memoirs Night and The Glass Castle as well as personal observation, I agree with Horace in that adversity elicits character talents but adversity can also extract our character faults.
Many of those who believe in religion abide by their faith, but during times of immense suffering, that faith is often tested. Through his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel introduces the reader to his life during the Holocaust through the character Eliezer, a teenage boy from Sighet, Transylvania. Eliezer and his father move into multiple concentration camps with a constant risk of torture or death. The memoir gives the reader the perspective Elie had about the inhumane and brutal treatment the Jewish prisoners received. Wiesel writes about his experience of the Holocaust and its result of personal struggles with God and his faith. The Holocaust proves to be a trying time for Elie Wiesel and causes him to question critical aspects of life. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience: first believing
I feel like the book Night lets off a very sad a depressing mood. The setting of this book is a various amount of concentration camps that Elie and his dad go to. The main central idea of Night is to explain the experiences in the Holocaust. I personally think that this book is a good book for young adults and not kids because it uses some language and it’s very descriptive.