After nearly 2 years of misery, anguish, and despair, a young boy is finally freed to a normal life he had almost forgotten existed. Elie had started to become accustomed to the fact that indifference would be what decides if he survived in the concentration camps or not. In the novel, Wiesel employs the motif of silence to illustrate that silence from the Jews represents the fear, apathy, and the absence of God which results in them constantly feel hopeless and are mentally defeated.
While the Jews in the camps are silent, this doesn’t mean they’ve nothing to say, but rather means they’ve grown used to anything they say being in vain and they are too afraid to protest anything. Their cries for help are constantly ignored, even by each other.
…show more content…
The silence from the world as well as the presumed absence of God had embedded a significance in the novel that Wiesel had started to accept muteness as a standard part of his life. He no longer expected anything from anyone but impartialness and has reached the point where he has submitted to the painful realization that his God had also chosen to spectate without action to their grief. While Elie is in the midst of perceiving this unjust reality he believes he is “Terribly alone in a world without God and without man” (65). The impassiveness from what seems to be everyone, has caused to Elie to feel that he is isolated in this camp and will continue to simply be ruled by the Nazis. Wiesel isn’t sure why God has chosen to turn a deaf ear to him and the other Jews as he wants to “Pray to the God within [him] for the strength to ask Him the real questions” (3). He wants the strength to ask God these questions because know why He and the world could be so cruel as to ignore the situation of the people in the concentration camps. Their neutrality only helping the
in the book “night” by “elie wiesel” we see a boy who was trying to live a normal life but unfortunately for him the nazi’s enter and change his life completely. like elie gets sent to many camps to try and separate him from his father the only source of strength elie had. Over the course of the book, elie changes from a believing person to just a emotionally destroyed person. This is important to the book as a whole because it connects to the of theme of nazi has played a completely negative lifestyle for a person for example when the night at the camp, when elie gets ripped away from his father, but also we see elie show her weakness at the end of the book
In the book Night, Elie Wiesel focuses on the idea of the unknown. It is a recurring theme throughout the text. The book gives many examples of things that are unknown to Elie and the other characters. For example, on page 27, Elie writes, “‘Auschwitz.’ Nobody had ever heard that name before.” This quote tells readers that the characters had no idea about the concentration camp prior to when the person by the window read it out loud. They were unaware of the sinister things taking place in Auschwitz and the danger that was now placed upon them.
After experiencing the holocaust, Elie can no longer make sense of his world. His lack in faith results from his painful experience with Nazi persecution, but also from the cruelty he sees fellow prisoners inflict on each other. Elie also becomes aware of the cruelty of which he himself is capable of. Everything he experiences in the war shows how humanity is lost people allow cruelty to show itself. “Our
As Elie gets used to his new life in such a hellish state, he realizes that the trusting and faithful child that he once had been had been taken away along with his family and all else that he had ever known. While so many others around him still implore the God of their past to bring them through their suffering, Wiesel reveals to the reader that although he still believes that there is a God, he no longer sees Him as a just and compassionate leader but a cruel and testing spectator.
It was as if death was slowly but surely becoming a mutual feeling. The complete degradation and disregard for human life by the Nazis caused the Jews to, little by little, lose hope for themselves. The silence describes how not only him, but everybody else around him was void of speech. With everyone having nothing to say or do, all that could be done was wait for their inevitable persecution. Last but not least, Wiesel used the symbol of eyes to represent inhumanity.
Not yet exposed to the horrors of the concentration camp, Elie enters Birkenau with his innate senses of compassion and altruism intact. Soon after his arrival, Elie witnesses the burning of children, women, and men alike. In response to this horrific sight, Elie becomes doubtful of the reality of this situation and questions, "How was it possible… that the world kept silent?" (32). As seen in the creation of Night and this question, for Elie, silence is unthinkable. At this point, Elie still holds faith in the power that people hold. However, the only hope to save these people from their fates is if the silence breaks. Along with this thinking, his tone of disbelief contributes to Elie's demonstration of one of man's most primitive instinct: compassion. This compassion is still strong in Elie—for if this was false, why would he have questioned this so passionately? However, after submitting to oppression from the concentration camps' officials, Elie's
Elie Wiesel experienced many personal and social conversions. One theme that relates to everyone throughout the novel Night, is freedom v.s confinement. In the beginning of this nonfiction story, Elie and his family are arranged in a ghetto in their town. The author introduces this by saying, “Two ghettos were set up in Sighet. A large one, in the center of the town, occupied four streets, and another smaller one extended over several small side streets in the outlying district. The street where we lived, Serpent Street, was inside the first ghetto.” The idea of confinement is now being constructed. Within the ghetto, they are not aware, but this was the last time they would see their homes or a place that gives them full contentment/ satisfaction.
What does silence mean? In Night, a book wrote by Elie W, answer is shown. Night explains what silence is. Silence is the absence of, therefore silence is the path of death.
After nearly two years of misery, a young boy finally saw the first ray of hope on the horizon; the Americans had finally arrived, and the Nazis were gone. In his autobiography Night, Elie Wiesel shares his experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of Hitler’s concentration camps. Wiesel was one of the minority of Jews to survive the Holocaust during World War II. His family did not make it through with him, and this had lasting effects. Wiesel’s identity changed completely during his experiences in Auschwitz; he lost his faith in God and he became indifferent to his survival and the survival of his family members. Despite these hardships, however, he ultimately became a stronger person than he was before.
"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." This quote was once said by a humble man whose name was, Elie Wiesel. He was a strong, but gentle man who had never thought he would undergo the pain that he endured. Elie lived humbly but happily with his family, which he adored. He had two older sisters, one younger sister, and two happily married parents. He was very religious and stuck to his Jewish beliefs and traditions. For the most part, everybody in his community treated each other with benevolence, respecting each others beliefs and traditions. Elie was just a normal kid wanting to live as much of a normal life as possible. He never looked for trouble or ways to hurt someone, he just wanted peace and love in his life. Elie also stated that "No
“The Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy but also a human tragedy,” (Wiesenthal). The Holocaust was all-around a dark patch in history. It was something that although it took a toll on lots of people throughout the world, and the Holocaust had the biggest impact for those being Jewish and living in Europe. There have been many films, movies, and books depicting life during the Holocaust. Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, who was a victim of the Holocaust growing up as a Jewish boy and has as a result gone to numerous concentration camps. In Night, he describes a time period of his life which revolved around the Holocaust. Where his family, identity, and innocence were lost in a very cruel way. Elie Wiesel through his use of tone
Often, the theme of a novel extends into a deeper significance than what is first apparent on the surface. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the theme of night and darkness is prevalent throughout the story and is used as a primary tool to convey symbolism, foreshadowing, and the hopeless defeat felt by prisoners of Holocaust concentration camps. Religion, the various occurring crucial nights, and the many instances of foreshadowing and symbolism clearly demonstrate how the reoccurring theme of night permeates throughout the novel.
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
Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.
Cruelty surrounds the world constantly, and is used frequently in works of literature to reveal certain things about the theme. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, acts of cruelty are used to express the theme and enhance its message. One of the largest themes revealed by these acts is “man’s inhumanity to man,” which includes mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis, the common people, and other Jews. Watching the large amounts of violence, abuse, and discrimination that occur in this memoir show us the horrors of the Holocaust and how it transformed the men and women who it experienced it, as well as those who caused it.