Night: Heart-Wrenching and Traumatic Themes

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Some take life for granted, while others suffer. The novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel, contains heart-wrenching as well as traumatic themes. The novel unfolds through the eyes of a Jewish boy named Eliezer, who incurs the true satanic nature of the Nazis. As the Nazis continue to commit inhumane acts of discrimination, three powerful themes arise: religion, night, and memory.

As the novel begins to unfold, Anti-Semitism does as well. As Wiesel demonstrates in the novel, “Three days later, a new decree: Every Jew had to wear the yellow star.” (Wiesel, 11) The yellow star was a cloth patch to mark a person as Jewish. It was intended to be a badge of shame associated with Anti-Semitism or discrimination against the Jews. It showed that while in public, they were to be mistreated simply because of their religion. However, these were only the first steps of their plan. The Holocaust began to surface after months progressed slowly. Eliezer’s strong faith began to waver as Moishe the Beadle, a pious old Jew, explains: “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.” (Wiesel, 5) Moishe’s words frame the conflict of Eliezer’s struggle for faith. He conveys two concepts key to Eliezer’s struggle: the idea that God is everywhere, even within every individual, and the idea that faith is based on questions, not answers. Eliezer’s struggle with faith is, for the most part, a struggle of questions. He continually asks where God has gone and questions how such evil could exist in the world, after having witnessed millions being slaughtered in the concentration camps. Moishe’s statement tells us that these moments do not reflect Eliezer’s loss of faith; instead they demonstrate his ongoing spiritual com...

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...enced from the callous hearts of the Nazis. From the three, memory has the greatest impact on representing a theme through evil in the novel, Night, as the author’s intent was to preserve the record of the ordeal, for it should never be repeated. This powerful novel demonstrates how evil is an irremovable as well as unpredictable concept, which will always lurk in the hearts of man, and in nature.

Work Cited

"Analysis of Major Characters."SPARKNOTES. SparkNotes LLC, 2011. Web. 19 Nov

2011. .

Wiesel, Elie. Night. 1st ed. New York City: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.

Work Cited

"Analysis of Major Characters."SPARKNOTES. SparkNotes LLC, 2011. Web. 19 Nov

2011. .

Wiesel, Elie. Night. 1st ed. New York City: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.

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