Derek Greco Mr.M English 9 Honors 28 May 2024. Elements of Night Memoir Essay Elie Wiesel, a teenage Romanian Jew, uses the memoir Night to present hardships from the Holocaust. Elie Wisel uses various elements in this memoir to describe this hardship. Such as Elie first going and working at Auschwitz and later on walking through the deadly, harsh winter of Gleiwitz. The themes that are demonstrated in Elie’s memoir are choiceless choices and tarnished faith and identity, which help the reader understand his hardships during the Holocaust. The first theme is the choiceless choices at Auschwitz. In the text, it states, “You are in Auschwitz”. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you …show more content…
In the concentration camps, the Jews had no choice. They were programmed to work. These people did not realize how oppressed they were and were not even seen as humans. These choiceless choices were important to Elie Wiesel because they ultimately led him to escape the concentration camp system. This choice in this quote is given so that it seems like they have a choice. The choice of working in Auschwitz or death is not a real choice. Neither option is a good option; no matter what the Jews choose, it would result in a loss. If they choose to work, they will inevitably become weak, which would cause them to be sent to the crematorium anyway. Due to the extremes of the options, with death being an option, the natural instinct of survival would stop them. This choice is presented so that they feel less oppressed and have some control over their current situation. In reality, they have no voice and are instead forced to work, just like before. Second, there is tarnished faith and identity. In the text, it states, “Why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. He caused thousands of children to burn. Six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days. who chose us among all nations to be
An estimated 11 million people died in the Holocaust. 6 million were Jews. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel tells his story as a Holocaust survivor. Throughout his book he describes the tremendous obstacles he overcame, not only himself, but with his father as well. The starvation and cruel treatment did not help while he was there. Elie makes many choices that works to his advantage. Choice plays a greater factor in surviving Auschwitz.
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
Night is an autobiography by a man named Eliezer Wiesel. The autobiography is a quite disturbing record of Elie’s childhood in the Nazi death camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald during world war two. While Night is Elie Wiesel’s testimony about his experiences in the Holocaust, Wiesel is not, precisely speaking, the story’s protagonist. Night is narrated by a boy named Eliezer who represents Elie, but details set apart the character Eliezer from the real life Elie. For instance, Eliezer wounds his foot in the concentration camps, while Elie actually wounded his knee. Wiesel fictionalizes seemingly unimportant details because he wants to distinguish his narrator from himself. It is almost impossibly painful for a survivor to write about his Holocaust experience, and the mechanism of a narrator allows Wiesel to distance himself somewhat from the experience, to look in from the outside.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize men and cause them to revert to basic instincts. Wiesel and his peers devolve from civilized human beings to savage animals during the course of Night.
The ground is frozen, parents sob over their children, stomachs growl, stiff bodies huddle together to stay slightly warm. This was a recurrent scene during World War II. Night is a literary memoir of Elie Wiesel’s tenure in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel created a character reminiscent of himself with Eliezer. Eliezer experienced cruelty, stress, fear, and inhumanity at a very young age, fifteen. Through this, he struggled to maintain his Jewish faith, survive with his father, and endure the hardships placed on his body and mind.
Some of the most fabled stories of our time come from individuals overcoming impossible odds and surviving horrific situations. This is prevalent throughout the Holocaust. People are fascinated with this event in history because the survivors had to overcome immense odds. One, of many, of the more famous stories about the Holocaust is Night by Elie Wiesel. Through this medium, Wiesel still manages to capture the horrors of the camps, despite the reader already knowing the story.
Mr. Wiesel had intended this book to describe a period of time in his life that had been dark and sorrowful. This novel is based on a survivor of the greatest Holocaust in history, Eliezer Wiesel and his journey of being a Jew in 1944. The journey had started in Sighet, Transylvania, where Elie spent his childhood. During the Second World War, Germans came to Elie and his family’s home town. They brought with them unnecessary evil and despair to mankind. Shortly after young Elie and thousands of other Jews were forced from their habitats and torn from their rights of being human. They were sent to different concentration camps. Elie and his family were sent to Auschwitz, a concentration and extermination camp. It would be the last time Elie sees his mother and little sister, Tzipora. The first sights of Auschwitz were terrifying. There were big flames coming from the burning of bodies and the crematoriums. The Jews had no idea of what to expect. They were not told what was about to happen to them. During the concentration camp, there was endless death and torture. The Jews were starved and were treated worse than cattle. The prisoners began to question their faith in God, wondering why God himself would
Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote Night with the notion for society to advance its understanding of the Holocaust. The underlying theme of Night is faith. Elie Wiesel, for the majority of this work, concerns the faith and survival of his father, Chlomo Wiesel. The concept of survival intertwines with faith, as survival is brought upon Elie’s faith in his father. Both Elie and Chlomo are affected in the same manner as their Jewish society. The self-proclaimed superman race of the German Nazis suppress and ultimately decimate the Jewish society of its time. Elie and Chlomo, alongside their Jewish community, were regarded as subhumans in a world supposedly fit for the Nazi conception. The oppression of Elie and Chlomo begins in 1944, when the Germans constrain the Jews of Sighet into two ghettos. During the time of Nazi supremacy, Elie and Chlomo are forced to travel to various concentration camps, including Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald.
These examples show dehumanization towards the Jews as they themselves would forget who they are and would give in to the fact that they are just not human anymore. Besides being treated like animals and losing their identity, Jews are also threatened with death if they do not comply. This is shown when inside the Gypsy camp, an SS officer gives orders to the prisoners telling them that if they don’t work, they will be sent to “the chimney”. To the crematorium of the sacrament. Work or crematorium- the choice is [theirs]” (Wiesel
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel shares the experiences Elie faced throughout the Holocaust. At the start, Elie and his family live in Sighet, Romania, but when the Nazis arrive, they place all the Jews in the town in ghettos and issue restrictions. The Nazis deport Elie to a concentration camp where he sticks with his father and where he faces cruelty, terrible sights, and inhumane actions while his mother and sister die. In the end, Elie and his father go through drastic circumstances, including when Elie’s father dies, but ultimately, Elie and the prisoners of the concentration camps are freed. Throughout everything Elie faces in the concentration camps, the most significant attribute about him that changes is his faith in God.
In one instance, when everyone arrived at the Auschwitz camp for the first time, they received the brilliant news, “There was a labor camp on site”. The conditions were good, and the weather was good. Families would not be separated.” (Wiesel 27). This quote demonstrates irony due to the fact that later in this novel, they receive treatment opposite to what they had expected, treatment worse than the rest of the camps and experiences they have ever faced in their lives.
When people are placed in difficult, desolate situations, they often change in a substantial way. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist, Elie, is sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he undergoes many devastating experiences. Due to these traumatic events, Elie changes drastically, losing his passion in God, becoming disconnected with his father, and maturing when it matters most.
The contrast between his youthful naivety and the harshness of the world around him underscores the devastating impact of the Holocaust on innocence and belief. As the narrative unfolds, Elie's innocence becomes a casualty of war, replaced by a hardened resolve to survive and bear witness to the atrocities perpetrated against humanity. Elie Wiesel's religious faith and devotion play a significant role in the narrative of Night. At the beginning of the memoir, Elie is deeply religious and seeks to understand the mysteries of
The memoir, Night, was written by Elie Wiesel and is about his experience in Auschwitz. The memoir starts with an introduction to the people who lived in Wiesel’s town. It shows the reader how Wiesel lived and his relationship with his family. Whilst introducing the reader to Wiesel’s life pre-Auschwitz, the opening scene also introduces strengths and weaknesses in Wiesel’s community. The opening scene introduces the theme that to be a leader is to be selfless, and this theme is prevalent in the rest of the memoir.