Night And Life Is Beautiful Analysis

At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.

Elie, his father, and the prisoners had to run in the snow more than 40 miles to another concentration camp, deeper in Germany. When they stopped a man, Rabbi Eliahou, asked if Elie and his father if they had seen his son. Elie had and he realized that the Rabbi’s son had “wanted to get rid of his father…to free himself from an encumbrance” (Wiesel 87). They then got on cattle trains that took them to the next concentration camp, Buchenwald. They passed by villages and when people threw bread in, the prisoners began to fight to the death for it. One son began to attack his own father for a piece and killed him, only to be killed the next moment himself. Soon after they arrived in Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father was very weak and sick. A part of Elie felt that if he could get rid of his father he “could use all [his] strength to struggle for [his] own survival” (Wiesel 101). He was very ashamed, even more so when his father died and he felt “free at last” (Wiesel 105).

When Elie first arrives at Auschwitz, he is completely overwhelmed. He meets another inmate and the three are all very optimistic about their futures. This is not the case for all inmates, though. The very next person Elie meets has adopted an indifferent attitude about his situation, and has become so tauntrimized by the hardships of life in a concentration camp that he does not care if he lives or dies. When he approaches Elie and his father, his only advice is, “You should have hanged yourselves rather than come here” (30). Because of his traumatic experiences, the inmate has become so numb even death seems better than the life he is being forced to live.

As their time in the concentration camp continues, the conditions there worsen. The prisoners are soon forced into a treacherous forty-two mile run in the icy cold, which makes them struggle between life the death. During this march, one thing keeps Wiesel’s will to live alive and that is his father. This shows one of Wiesel’s weakest moments, where he contemplates giving up numerous times. Exhaustion takes over his body, and the only thing he can think about is the pleasures that death would bring him. Wiesel’s mind overpowers him and he reflects, “Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled. It stuck to me. I felt that I could touch it. The idea of dying, of no longer being, began to fascinate me” (82). However, his father needs him, and that is truly what drives him to keep pushing until the end. They stay alive for each other, which shows how much they really care about the other. While Wiesel rests in the shed after the run, Rabbi Eliahou, a very well-liked man, comes in looking for his son. He and his son have been sticking together for three years. Wiesel expresses that he has not seen him, without realizing that this is false. The Rabbi’s son purposely left him, to strengthen his own chances of survival. Wiesel is taken aback by this, and astonishingly begins to pray. He thinks, “My God,

Several SS men rushed to find me, creating such confusion that a number of people were some my father and I. Still, there were some gunshots and some dead” (Wiesel 96). Because Elie ran after his father, some people were shot and dead, that could have been him, but Elie did not care. As long as he stayed with his father, he was okay. Even though his father was getting weak, Elie never left his side, even if it meant putting his own life in danger. Most people in the camp did abandon their fathers, however, and would even beat their own fathers to death for a few crumbs. Elie was the different one in this case, he was one of the only people that did not abandon his father and did not just think of himself the whole time. His father and him relied on each other in the camp and because of that they were both able to be so resilient depsite the terrible conditions thy faced. Without his father by his side, Elie did not feel alive. For example, after Elie’s father

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.

As Elie’s life continues he endures more tests that at his age majority of the people would not have experienced. Elie's father was suffering from dysentery and other maladies. On the night of January 28th in 1945, Elie goes to his bunk in exhaustion with his father still alive and in the bunk below him, “I had to go to sleep. I climbed into my bunk, above my father, who was still alive. The date was January 28, 1945”(112). In the morning, Elie wakes up to a new person in the bed where his father had laid. Elie realizes that he has no emotion left to show, especially not sympathy, “I

In Elie’s story, it mostly focuses on his view and what is happening just to him. “During the alert, I had followed the mob, not taking care of him. I knew he was running out of strength, so close to death, and yet I had abandoned him.” (page 106) said Elie. Elie started to only think about himself and not his loved ones. While Life is Beautiful shows what happens to all of the characters. Elie’s story begins very close to the beginning of the Holocaust, Guido’s story before the Holocaust takes up half of the movie.

The memoir,”Night”, shows the perspective of Elie Wiesel, a young boy that was sent to a concentration camp alongside hundreds of other Jews, that lost their valuables , faith and family.The terror within the concentration camp slowly deteriorate the Jews ,physically and mentally.The jews had a choice to be selfish or selfless,given the jews’ situation it is best to do what was in their best interest. Throughout Elie Wiesel’s memoir, “Night”; many individuals had a hard time navigating the brutality within the concentration camps.Through these times of brutality, many people in the camp had to choose to either be selfish or altruistic. Given the jew’s situation, it is better to act selfish than to be altruistic.

When people look at two extremely different stories such as Night and Life is Beautiful, they would not expect there to be many similarities. However, these two devastating tales are more alike than suspected. Both Night and Life is Beautiful may be two accounts of the holocaust, but that does not mean that they bring the same thing to the table. They both may include a somewhat similar father-son relationship, yet they still aren’t that same. Night, a tragic memoir of Eliezer Wiesel, and Life is Beautiful, a humorous and still somewhat depressing movie of Guido and his family, have numerous similarities as well as drastic differences between them.

After surviving the Holocaust, Elie writes down the things he experiences as a young boy during that time period. As Elie enters Birkenau holding his father’s hand, he claims, “Never shall I forget the small faces of children whose bodies I saw transform into smoke under a silent sky… Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself. Never.” (Wiesel 34). Upon his arrival at the concentration camp in Birkenau, Elie witnesses young children being burned alive in crematoriums. He asserts that he has seen events so horrid that the memory would stay embedded with him forever. As soon as he witnesses the death of countless people, Wiesel begins to see the world as one filled with cruelty and hatred, the exact opposite of what he learns in his Jewish studies. In the end of his memoir, Elie finds himself in the hospital after being liberated by American soldiers. Elie looks into the reflection of the mirror hanging on the wall and describes what he sees as, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me” (Wiesel 115). After experiencing such traumatic events, Wiesel refers to himself as a new person. The innocent and religious Elie slowly dies during the Holocaust. In his biographical memoir, Elie slowly changes his

Dementia and physical illness rendered him too weak to rely on, so rather than asking how Elie would live without his father, a new question was presented: How would his father live without Elie? Immediately after arriving to a liberation camp, the surviving prisoners were divided into various groups, so Elie grabbed his father’s hand and refused to let go. Unfortunately, exposure to such unforgiving environments had introduced Elie’s father to the kind of seductive release from pain mentioned earlier. This was confirmed through an argument the two had where Elie refused to let his father sleep, knowing quite well he wouldn’t wake up. However, the latter was obstinate, begging to rest because he was so unbearably weak. The one-sided quarrel caused Elie to admit, “I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen” (105). Elie had previously demonstrated the strength to fight for his life, because that was what survival was, a fight. However, his father was not as fortunate, and didn’t possess the same willpower as his

Benigni portrays the theme of love through hard times in the film Life is beautiful by using a range of cinematic techniques such as lighting, non-diegetic music and camera shots.

Ever since the Holocaust happened there has been a variety of movies and books portraying this massive genocide that changed individuals’ lives. One of these movies that portrays the Holocaust is Life is Beautiful that was directed and acted by Roberto Benigni in 1997. This particular film won Oscar awards and it’s unlike any other Holocaust movies because of its drama, romance, and comedic genre. It tells the story of a man named Guido that comes to Arezzo, Italy and works as a waiter for his uncle Eliseo. Guido falls in love with Dora, a school teacher who he calls “Princess” each time he sees her. Eventually, Guido is able to charm Dora despite her being engaged. Five years later they have a son named Giosuè, but at this point in time

A technique used to convey themes in Life is Beautiful is the use of lighting. In the ending scene of the film, lighting is used to show how beauty can be found even when it seemed that all hope was lost. Throughout the second half of the film, the setting is constantly dark. The room where Guido sleeps with the other inmates only has a few small windows, and the bunks are always in shadow (1:19:59-1:21:23). A scene where Dora is sorting out clothes (1:14:33-1:15:02) is set in a dim courtyard with grey walls and peeling paint. These settings give the audience a sense that the conditions are bad and morale is low. By contrast, the ending is incredibly lighthearted. As Joshua rides in the procession of vehicles (1:47:23-1:47:44), the sun is shining, bathing everything in a happy yellowish light. Additionally, the tanks and surrounding landscape are bright green, whereas the concentration camps were devoid of colour. This is a beautiful ending to a not so beautiful occurrence.