Night by Elie Wiesel In this tiny novel, you will get to walk right into a gruesome nightmare. If only then, it was just a dream. You would witness and feel for yourself of what it is like to go through the unforgettable journey that young Eliezer Wiesel and his father had endured in the greatest concentration camp that shook the history of the entire world. With only one voice, Eliezer Wiesel’s, this novel has been told no better. Elie's voice will have you emotionally torn apart. The story has me questioning my own wonders of how humanity could be mistreated in such great depths and with no help offered. The effectiveness of this compacted novel is greater than those of a thousand paged. The story within this book is not entirely unfamiliar, …show more content…
but one that shook a nation, or even the world. The efficacy of the title itself describes it all, “Night”.
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 …show more content…
allow such catastrophe happen to man. They had no one to turn to for help or guidance. All everyone knew was to stay alive as long as possible. Elie and his father, Shlomo, were transferred to a different part of the camp within Auschwitz. As the Red Army approached, the prisoners were prepared for another long journey to leave behind Auschwitz and head further into Germany to Buchenwald. While in Buchenwald, Elie did not explain much about his life during that period due to the death of his father. Nothing had seemed to matter to him after that. “Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore”, (p.113). The power of Eliezer Wiesel’s voice is much more than behind the story. It has a meaning of sorrow and woe. What Elie expresses in this volume of terror is substantial. If Elie was to present this novel in a listing of just statistics, it would not have any allusive meaning to it. There would be absolutely no feelings or emotions within this book. Reading in a statistics point of view adds a huge strain on the meaning of the novel. Yes it could express the major events, but without significant meaning. How Elie exposes his story seems unfair to him. He carries a heavy burden and is powerful enough to tell his experiences. The suspense is amazing, but still not as accurate to how Mr. Wiesel felt during his presence at the camps. In his ‘Never Shall I Forget’ poem explains his voice in a hard manner. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself. Never’’ (p. 34). Overall Elie wanted to express himself so that the world would feel a glimpse of his pain and hope that an evil event will never arise again. The impact of Elie telling his story the way it is, is unforgettable and haunting. As reading through the novel, I found myself asking what the point of this catastrophe is.
Why did so many people, young, old, sick, wealthy and even convicted felonies had to experience firsthand of the worst evil man could ever pursue to one another. What was the point? Surely there have been many explanations, but those did not answer mine. I understood why the prisoners questioned their faith in God, I probably would have to. On the contrary, not even prayers to God could stop such evil. It criticizes the acceptance of human rights. This story puts a strain on trusting others. The individuals in this novel had a redundant encounter. It maddens me to the core. The hardships of what they had to go through, just for survival gives me grief. The story overall makes me feel distressed from every angle of the
book. Night, by Elie Wiesel was as astonishing. His bravery for telling a powerful and enlightening story is incredible. This experience will now be told in every part of the world and will help to create peace on earth.
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.
The brutality the Germans displayed in the 1930s through the 1940s was utterly horrifying. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author’s harrowing experience is shared. The Holocaust is worldly known as being one of the largest genocides in history, but not many truly understand what it was like to live through and witness. A lot of people had their life taken away whether figuratively or literally and many discovered so much loss that they became unphased by it after a while. Many who encountered the cruelty and merciless of the Germans have passed but a few remain that live to tell their story to the world and try to explain the feelings that coursed through them during the genocide and even now. Wiesel, who lived in Auschwitz for
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 Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
Elie Wiesel’s Night recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control, and the effect the Holocaust had, not just for the Jews, but to overall to humanity. The disturbing disregard for human beings, still to this day, induces consternation, and the Nazis’ gruesome actions has scarred mankind eternally. The Jews, as Elie Wiesel describes in Night, had to overcome numerous difficulties: they are forced to abandon their homes, all their personal possessions, and eventually their humanity. The Jews were separated from their families, Such as Elie, who never saw his mother and sister Tzipora again. Elie's suffered in the concentration camp of Auschwitz for 4 years before finally being liberated, having his faith shaken and
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
In this report you will see the comparisons between the novel Dawn and the life of Elie Wiesel, its author. The comparisons are very visible once you learn about Elie Wiesel’s life. Elie Wiesel was born on September28,1928 in the town of Hungary. Wiesel went through a lot of hard times as a youngster. In 1944, Wiesel was deported by the nazis and taken to the concentration camps. His family was sent to the town of Auschwitz. The father, mother, and sister of Wiesel died in the concentration camps. His older sister and himself were the only to survive in his family. After surviving the concentration camps, Wiesel moved to Paris, where he studied literature at the Sorbonne from 1948-1951. Since 1949 he has worked as a foreign correspondant and journalist at various times for the French, Jewish, periodical, L’Arche, Tel-Aviv newspaper Yediot Ahronot, and the Jewish daily forward in New York City. Francois mauriac the Roman Catholic Nobelest and Nobel Laureate convinced Wiesel to speak about the Holocaust. Wiesel wrote an 800 page memoir which he later edited into a smaller version called "Night". In the mid 60’s Wiesel spoke out a lot about the Holocaust. Later on Wiesel emerged on as an important moral voice on Religious Issues and the Human Rights. Since 1988 Wiesel has been a professor at Boston University. Some of Wiesel’s greatest novels has been "Night", "Dawn", "The Accident", "The Town Beyond The Wall", "The Gates Of The Forest", "The Fifth Son"...
During the 1930’s, The Holocaust physically, mentally, and emotionally scarred the lives of all mankind. Elie Wiesel is one of the few who has been able to turn his tragic experience as a concentration camp survivor into a memoir. Although Wiesel’s story isn’t like many others, his use of diction influences the tone and meaning of the story; Wiesel’s attitude in the book is calm, shocking, and thoughtful; capturing attention and spreading awareness to readers all around the world.
In Night Elie Wiesel begins at the concentration camp as a young teenage boy only fifteen years old where he has to view and endure the horrendous trauma of the war. Elie has to witness gruesome events unfold, as now that is where he was living and he has to confine to the rules. In a specific example, Elie witnesses as SS officers place “nooses around [the] necks” of a child and two other men. As they tip over the chairs and the horrific images of their “tongues hanging out … swollen and bluish” appear, as well as the lonesome child, “lingering between life and death” remains into his memory forever (Wiesel 64). After witnessing such horrendous acts, Elie’s innocence is completely lost. Not only that, but on many occasions Elie is treated with cruel punishment, such as violence for something he might have not done right. Idek once took his fury out on Elie and began to throw “violent blows” and “ [threw] him to the ground,” beginning to“crush” him, until he was “in blood” (Wiesel 53). These despicable actions and cruel punishment will have a toll on anyone if they continue to experience it everyday, which is exactly what happens to Wiesel and becomes a huge reminder on how he lost his innocence. These actions all led up to Wiesel changing as a character in his memoir and in real
Elie Wiesel’s book “The Night” is an autobiography of the complete destruction of the Jews, in which he had experienced with his father. Elie Wiesel writes about his disturbing experiences and the how he and his fellow Jews were tortured by the Nazis. Wiesel describes the inequality, brutality, inhumanity and how they were treated worse than any human. The Jews were dehumanised and they were taken their identity from them, this happened when they first arrived at the first camp and they were given all the same clothes, haircuts and tattooing a number on them. The destruction of Eliezer’s town, his family and his faith in god were all taken away from him. This is portrayed throughout the book by using symbols, quotes, images which signify the horrors and devastating experiences the Jews and Eliezer experienced.
How can people overlook such a horrible event happening, and not do anything about it? This paper will follow a young man, Elie Wiesel, whose terrifying journey was carried on throughout the Holocaust. Wiesel uses imagery and vividly describes many of the horrific sights he saw at the camp when he was younger, to establish and describe the tones fear, shock, and gloom (darkness).
The horrific events in Europe, from 1933 to 1945, produced a ruthless dictator who initiated nazism, the German form of Fascism, Hitler tried to create what he believed to be a “perfect race” in Germany. He was responsible for imprisoning and murdering those who did not fit his cookie cutter mold, which involved disabled people, homosexuals, and mainly the Jews. As a result, this dictator only deemed the people within the strict confines of the Aryan race. While Hitler was constructing this genocide, the average German citizens, who were not already in the SS (Schutzstaffel) or were military officials, knew that Jews were stripped of their rights and sent to camps. Because of this mentality created by Hitler, it gave the impression that
The choice to use this first person account establishes an intimate, descriptive, and almost relatable picture of life under Nazi rule. In addition to this first person point of view, Wiesel’s tone of writing shows great honesty. Rather than paint himself in an even more favorable light, he shares and describes moments that bring about feelings of guilt in himself. For example he doesn’t hide the fact that he didn’t defend his father from the SS officer that smashed his father’s head. He shares that “I left him alone in the clutches of death. Worse: I was angry with him for having been noisy, for having cried, for provoking the wrath of the SS”. The combination of Eliezer’s perspective and the honest tone shows readers almost firsthand how the situation influenced the behavior of himself and other prisoners at the
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
William Frederick Halsey Jr., a navy seal of WWII, once said, “There are no great people in the world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.” Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel and the movie Life Is Beautiful, readers and viewers observe that when people are faced with great challenges, the belief in a higher power is shaken or proven in order to survive.