In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesal presents the readers with many theme’s throughout the long journey of Elie, and his miraculous survival of one of the toughest experiences known to man. The major theme throughout the whole story is Elie’s struggle to maintain any sort of faith in god or a god like figure. As we meet Elie in the beginning, we see that God is a constant in this young boys life. He even stated “Why did I pray? . . . Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Wiesal) Here we see that there is no second guessing his faith in god and how strong it was. But after few experiences during the Holocaust it becomes apparent that his “faith” in god seems to be lessoning day after day. After his first days in the camps, Elie wonders how God could make life this terrible for people. The cruelty he witnessed and the hardships he fought made an impact on his faith and beliefs. Questioning is fundamental to the idea of faith and belief in God. The Holocaust forced Elie to ask terrible questions about good and evil and about whether God really does exists. But just him asking these questions shows his true belief in God. So Elie questioned whether he really was faithful to God, but as he did this, he soon realized questioning belief makes him know God is really there. The next theme that became apparent throughout the story was Silence. Although not seen always throughout this book, Silence is always there. For example when Elie asks the fellow prisoners, where is God? At this moment everyone became silent. Everyone was thinking the same thing, how a man this powerful, could let somethin... ... middle of paper ... ...g. But after reading this novel, and wondering why Wiesal picked Night as its title, I finally figured out my idea. This could be far fetched, and maybe even completely wrong, but I believe the title night is for a few reasons. One theme was silence, I think that night serves as silence, each night its silent outside, everyone sleeps and its for the most part motionless and soundless. I also believe night serves as dark, as in the dark side of this world. The holocaust is known to be one of the roughest time periods ever lived in. Night is also when you dream, and when most people dream, they dream of the happiest place they could be. This was the only time these people were happy, there dreams kept them alive. So this could be a far fetched idea but I think the word night sums up many different aspects of this book. And for that I believe it was an appropriate title.
Elie explains that the book has been translated a few times, and demonstrates this with a powerful and effective sample. Here is a portion of it. “My father no longer felt the club’s blows; I did. And yet I did not react. I let the SS beat my father, 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.”(preface xii). Elie tries to clarify that this book is his point of view, not proven statistics. These personal statements are why the story is so effective. The emotions you feel for Elie’s hardships are hard not to relate to. Throughout the whole book, Elie lives through many hardships and tells you them from his point of view, or something he learned from someone else. From the peaceful town of Sighet, to the grim introduction into selection, and later he tells you about concentration camp life. “The march towards the chimneys looming in the distance under an indifferent sky. The infants thrown into fiery ditches... I did
In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, a bunch of relationships change dramatically according to Elie. This novel shows many changes with people that really affects the story. His relationship with with his father is the biggest change of all. It can be seen from the beginning to the end. Elie’s relationship with God changes as well. He had strong faith in God but yet as the story goes on, the camp starts to affect him and slowly loses faith. Another is the relationship with his friends. As the the story progresses, he slowly grows apart. He became more more independent except for being with his father.
In night Elie is thrust into to situations that cause him to question his faith. One literary device that describes this is repetition.Repetition is starting a sentence with the first same few words to express how people are feeling and have you better understand the situation. “Never shall i forget the smoke that consumed my faith (34). Never shall I forget the moments that murdered my god and turned my dreams into ashes (34). These two quotes clearly show a loss in faith in Elie using repetition. The first quote is basically saying all of the carnage and hardships he faces the first night made him lose some of his faith. A few
Night at the beginning of the novel is described as though Elie was having a difficult time realizing that everything that had happened to
The book, Night, is a story following a Jew living in Auschwitz during World War II. The book title is a metaphor for how the holocaust felt to him.
The Holocaust was a test of faith for all the Jews that were involved. There were several instances in the book Night when Elie’s faith was hindered. Not only was his faith in God tested, but also his faith in himself and his fellow man. Although the trials of the Holocaust were detrimental to Elie’s faith at the time, a number of the Jews’ strengthened by the test. Whenever the Holocaust began, Elie was very young and wasn’t sure what to believe or understand everything yet, causing him to go back and forth on how he felt and what he believed. The people around him were a tremendous impact on what he was thinking and believing. The state that people came out of the Holocaust heavily depended on who they were when they went in and what they
He applies tone by quoting the men who are questioning God. they are angry and frustrated that God is not there to set them free. Moreover, Elie uses repetition to utilize the theme. He repeats the same line over and over again to get the reader to commemorate. Lastly, he employs irony in his story. Elie realizes how ironic it is to worship someone who will not even give you mercy. The Jews that went through Holocaust experienced more pain than anyone should ever go through. It was very hard for more of them to hold onto their
During their journey, Elie loses his father due to illness however does not feel much emotion. After witnessing his own die, Elie “did not weep” and “deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!...” (Wiesel 112). While going through the camp Buna, Elie and his father had develops a strong relationship with one another. However, after his father’s death, Elie “did not weep” and displays very little towards the event. Elie had felt that his father was a liability for his own survival and did not feel the need to weep over his death. Elie also states that he was “Free at last” showing that throughout the course of the novel Elie had thought as his father as pulling him back from survival. The reason for Elie feels this way is because Elie is still on his journey and his primary goal is to survive through the camps. Elie has become quite desperate through his journey of survival and searches the “recesses of my feeble conscience” for his most inner thoughts. Throughout the novel, Elie had been storing these thoughts in the back of mind. These thoughts include him thinking of his father as liability and him being free from him. At their first arrival at the camps, Elie and his father had been very close to one another going through their journey of survival. However, after
One reason great reason, which clearly explains why there is no hope offered in this novel, is the fact that everyone lost everything that had value in their lives. This created a lot of hopelessness, because where could the Jews go to after, if they did survive, they could not go back home, because they had no home to go back to. Throughout the entire novel there are many examples that perfectly illustrate this going on. A perfect example, that clearly illustrates this, is when Elie’s mom and sister died. “And I walked away with my father, with the men. I did not know that this was the moment in time and place ...
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.
The book, Night, by Elie Wiesel, explains one account of the Holocaust and the totalitarianism that flanked the planned annihilation of the Jews. In this book, the Nazi Party threatens humanity when the government commits attempted genocide. Evil triumphs over Good in Night because Elie believes that his humanity is worthless upon spending a year in the clutches of the Nazis. Victimized by the Germans and Hungarians, Elie and other Jews swiftly lose faith in God, who allegedly created the German concentration and extermination camps. During a makeshift Rosh Hashanah service in the camp with ten thousand inmates present, many prisoners bless their eternal sovereign. Elie regrets this process alongside many others, for:
The theme of Night is resilience. To be resilient is to be strong and able to bounce back when things happen. Elie shows resilience many times throughout the course of Night, and some of these times included when Elie and his block are being forced to run to the new camp, when somebody attempts to kill him and when he loses his father to sickness. When Elie is with the group of people running to the new camp, he knows that he needs to persevere and be resilient, even when the person that he is talking to gives up (Wiesel 86). Elie tries to tell somebody that they need to keep going, and that it will not be much longer, but when they give up, Elie does not seem to pity the boy, and he stays strong. Somebody also attempted to strangle Elie while
The video I watched had many connections to the book “Night” by Elie Weisel, whether that be extreme opposites to almost exact similarities. I picked the video of Sally Roisman mainly due to curiosity of how women were treated in concentration camps at this time.
In the final moments of Night, Elie has been broken down to only the most basic ideas of humanity; survival in it of itself has become the only thing left for him to cling to. After the chain of unfortunate events that led to his newfound solitude after his father’s abrupt death, Elie “thought only to eat. [He] thought not of [his] father, or [his] mother” (113). He was consumed with the ideas of survival, so he repeatedly only expressed his ideas of gluttony rather than taking the time to consider what happened to his family. The stress of survival allocated all of Elie’s energy to that cause alone. Other humanistic feelings like remorse, love, and faith were outcast when they seemed completely unimportant to his now sole goal of survival. The fading of his emotions was not sudden mishap though; he had been worn away with time. Faith was one of the most prominent key elements in Elie’s will to continue, but it faded through constant. During the hanging of a young boy Elie heard a man call to the crowd pleading, “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64). It snapped Elie’s resolve. From this point on, he brought up and questioned his faith on a regular basis. Afterwards, most other traits disappeared like steam after a fire is extinguished. Alone in the wet embers the will to survive kept burning throughout the heart ache. When all else is lost, humans try to survive for no reason other than to survive, and Wiesel did survive. He survived with mental scars that persisted the ten long years of his silence. Even now after his suffering has, Elie continues to constantly repeat the word never throughout his writing. To write his memoir he was forced to reopen the lacerations the strains of survival left inside his brain. He strongly proclaims, “Never shall I forget that night...Never shall I forget the smoke...Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the
There are several instances in the book Night by Elie Wiesel where Elie has an internal conflict about his spirituality. Elie is the witness of many horrors and there are times when he questions God’s presence. However, there are other times where Elie thanks and prays to God. Elie’s beliefs change throughout the course of the book and he is uncertain about what to think.