The Holocaust is known to be one of the most horrendous happenings in the world’s history. Not only did it kill many people, it also killed their hopes, dreams, and faith along with it. In his novel, Night, Elie Wiesel wrote, "Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." This quote covers the thoughts of the prisoners in camp for it talks about how its torturement is not only affecting their health but also their belief in God. In Night, Wiesel looked back at his experience during the Holocaust. Similarly, in the movie, Life is Beautiful directed by Roberto Benigni, it gives us a glimpse of …show more content…
The tone of his novel differs from the movie as it is more serious and dark as the word choices and descriptions called for a vivid understanding of the camp. Unlike the innocent death of Guido in the movie, Wiesel described the deaths that he had seen and the events leading up the deaths with a lot of details. For example, he described a death of a young boy as, “And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, withering before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.” (Wiesel, 65) His description of this death was more mature compared to Life Is Beautiful as it was made for the mature audience. As Wiesel wrote about his experience, he talked about some of the jobs that he and the people there were forced to do; some included Kapos, foremen, workers in factories, etc… Since the book is more detailed than the movie, it is able to describe and characterize each job specifically. Compared to Life is Beautiful, the novel is reserved for the older audience.
All in all, even though the movie and the novel each wanted to spread the word about the Holocaust to the world and inform the audience about the cruelty of the camps, the two sources each took a different approach to doing so. The movie was directed so that audience of all sorts of ages are able to access it while the novel was written for the matured audience based on its vivid descriptions. Yet, both sources carry a lot of information to the
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Night and Life is Beautiful were written with a strong bond between the father and son. Wiesel and Joshua are dependent on their father, as each respective man tries as hard as they can to protect their son from the horrors of the 1940’s. This shows how special and important family was to the Jews during that awful time. It also showed how much they needed each other. When Joshua’s father died, he didn’t ever notice, because he was too busy enjoying being reunited with his mother. However, when Wiesel’s father died Wiesel didn’t know what to do. Wiesel even said, “I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat,” (Wiesel 113). Wiesel had lost the want, even the desire to live. His father was gone. The only person who had helped him through the Holocaust. This is what the Holocaust really was. The death of a parent with no one to comfort h...
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel remembers his time at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Elie begins to lose his faith in God after his faith is tested many times while at the concentration camp. Elie conveys to us how horrific events have changed the way he looks at his faith and God. Through comments such as, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, my soul, and turned my dreams into dust,” he reveals the toll that the Holocaust has taken on him. The novel begins during the years of 1942-1944 in Sighet, Transylvannia, Romania. Elie Wiesel and his family are deported and Elie is forced to live through many horrific events. Several events such as deportation, seeing dead bodies while at Auschwitz, and separation from his mother and sisters, make Elie start to question his absolute faith in God.
Faith is tough to keep strong, especially because it is difficult to trust something you cannot see. In the nonfiction historical account “Night,” Elie Wiesel discusses what he went through in the tragic tale of the German concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Buna, and Gleiwitz. Throughout this novel, one defining theme is shown throughout the rest. No matter how devout one is, most will doubt their god in the face of such atrocities. The best example we have is from Elie himself, especially right after entering the first camp, when he was walking toward the flames, expecting to die.
Inked on the pages of Elie Wiesel’s Night is the recounting of him, a young Jewish boy, living through the mass genocide that was the Holocaust. The words written so eloquently are full of raw emotions depict his journey from a simple Jewish boy to a man who was forced to see the horrors of the world. Within this time period, between beatings and deaths, Wiesel finds himself questioning his all loving and powerful God. If his God loved His people, then why would He allow such a terrible thing to happen? Perhaps Wiesel felt abandoned by his God, helpless against the will of the Nazis as they took everything from him.
The novel did not show nor did it offer any hope, because just about everyone lost all that mattered to them, some stopped with their religion, and Wiesel wrote in a very disturbing tone; thus, adding emphasis to the theme of hopelessness. So many people died during this time, and it was very heart breaking, because of all the hopelessness the holocaust created. Also, the hopelessness that was created, during the Holocaust really stayed with these people for a very long time. It is very important for people to understand the causes of hopelessness, so they can try and thwart its effects.
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel gives an in depth view of Nazi Concentration Camps. Growing up in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel, a young Jewish boy at the innocent age of 12, whose main focus in life was studying the Kabbalah and becoming closer in his relationship with God. In the memoir, Elie Wiesel reflects back to his stay within a Nazi Concentration Camp in hopes that by sharing his experiences, he could not only educate the world on the ugliness known as the Holocaust, but also to remind people that by remembering one atrocity, the next one can potentially be avoided. The holocaust was the persecution and murder of approximately six million Jew’s by Aldolf Hitler’s Nazi army between 1933 and 1945. Overall, the memoir shows
The tone of the novel is greatly influenced through the fact that the story is autobiographical. There seems to be only one agenda utilized by Elie Wiesel in regards to the tone of the story as he presents the information for the readers’ evaluation. The point of the story is to provide the reader an emotional link to the horror of the holocaust through the eyes of one whom experienced those horrors. Wiesel speaks with a distance that is often found in autobiographies. He presents the facts as to what he saw, thought, and felt during those long years in the camps. Wiesel, in essence, is now the same as Moshe the Beadle, one of the first Jewish deportees and the only one to return to the city to warn others. “He told his story and that of his companions," (page 4, 5th paragraph). Elie has become Moshe. He tells his story, not for himself for he has already experienced the horrors, but to make sure that people are aware of what has happened, and so that it never happens again.
“He’s the man who’s lived through hell without every hating. Who’s been exposed to the most depraved aspects of human nature but still manages to find love, to believe in God, to experience joy.” This was a quote said by Oprah Winfrey during her interview with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. No person who has not experienced the Holocaust and all its horrors could ever relate to Elie Wiesel. He endured massive amounts of torture, physically, mentally, and emotionally just because he was a Jew. One simple aspect of Wiesel’s life he neither chose or could changed shaped his life. It is important to take a look at Wiesel’s life to see the pain that he went through and try to understand the experiences that happened in his life. Elie Wiesel is a well respected, influential figure with an astonishing life story. Although Elie Wiesel had undergone some of the harshest experiences possible, he was still a man able to enjoy life after the Holocaust.
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.
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
In both the play and the movie you learn that it is important to enjoy what you have, because it could get much worse, and that if you spend enough time around strangers, you will eventually become close to them. You also learn about what the holocaust and how millions of innocents were killed, which is important to know about so that hopefully nothing like it ever happens again. Although the way that the story is told and even some actions and dialogue is different between the play and the movies they are still the same story and share the same life
Although our past is a part of who we are nowadays, we will never be happy if we can never let go of the painful feeling attached to our suffering. In addition, “suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us” (Wiesel 96). We should not be afraid to let go of our haunting past and grow closer to others because “man carries his fiercest enemy within himself. Hell isn’t others. It’s ourselves” (Wiesel 15). The wise advice this book gives its audience is one reason it won a Nobel Peace Prize. The books are also part of a very famous Holocaust trilogy, which is one reason it has been so widely read. In addition, it blends everyday stories with Holocaust stories.Therefore, readers are very compassionate towards the narrator and readers create a bond with this character due to his hardships and the similarities he shares with us. Lastly, Day speaks to the needs of the human spirit by intertwining a love story. Readers wonder if his girlfriend will change his attitude towards life because he tells the doctor, “I love Kathleen. I love her with all my heart. And how can one love if at the same time one doesn’t care about life” (Wiesel
World War II, known as the largest armed conflict in history, began in Europe in the 1930s and led to effect many people. The war resulted in not only the involvement of more countries than any other war but also introduced powerful, new, nuclear weapons that also contributed to the most deaths. As Hitler rose to power in 1933 the Holocaust began, his quest for the ‘perfect’ race resulted in the use of concentration camps, which would help to create the largest genocide of people in history.