In the autobiographical Holocaust novel, Night by Elie Wiesel, the motif of Jewish people being animals illustrates how genocide makes people resort to animalistic senses. When Soviet forces were approaching the concentration camp where Elie Wiesel was enslaved, Buna, the Nazis forced the Jews to walk for hours to another camp in Germany. While on the march Wiesel describes how “if one of us [Jews] stopped for just a second, a quick shot would eliminate the filthy dog”(Wiesel, 85). Wiesel is referring to his own community as a “filthy dog”, the connotations of this phrase imply submission and inferiority. The non-human connotations of this phrase demonstrate how torture and harrassment from the Nazis is making him see himself as less than
The second “kiss” from God Elie received was in the Rabbi’s words. When his life began to progressively become worse in the camps moments like the ones in the ghettos were not common; he began to become more despair. The book Night states, “He was the only rabbi whom nobody ever failed to address as "Rabbi" in Buna. He looked like one of those prophets of old, always in the midst of his people when they needed to be consoled. And, strangely, his words never provoked anyone.
Furthermore, Eli presents the same theme from his perspective. Within this scene, Eli is entering Auschwitz. Eli goes on to characterize the soldier parading them toward the camp, this is where Eli narrates: “He looked over us as if we were a pack of leprous dogs hanging onto our lives.” (Wiesel 36). Pertaining to the thesis statement of “Animalization of humans”, is a clear representation of the views of the prisoners coming to the realization that they were no longer going to be treated as human beings.
The symbol is Night, the title of the book is also a symbol. Wiesel wanted to use this symbol to respond to what happened at night. Wiesel wanted to tell the reader what he had to do with his new headlines in the evening. Wiesel said the evening experience "made my life a long night, sealed seven times. " The author began to doubt that God could help him get rid of despair and pain, because he appeared in a long suffering and never saw the so-called God.
Elie Wiesel writes about how he and others had been dehumanized and acted more like animals from what they had suffered at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The men fight each other for the bread like “Beasts of prey unleashed, [with] animal hate in their eyes” (Wiesel, 101). Wiesel personifies the men's eyes with animal hate. The word animal specifically shows that the
Symbolism a lot is shown in the novel and winner of the Nobel peace prize Night by Elie. Wiesel. In this book the author is Elie and he tells about his life in the holocaust with his family mostly his dad. His mom died his sister was not with him but after the years they found each other and his dad died with multiple ways the first one the water the second was a bonk to the head the last is fire. Anyways he escaped and he wrote this pretty good book I liked it and with that let’s get started with symbolism in Night.
Before I begin discussing about the symbolism in Night, I want to point out the importance of symbolism in any form of storytelling, and even in reality. In a way, symbolism is what makes ordinary objects or symbols into meaning. Symbolism can make anything as powerful as actual words. In that sense, symbolism creates the story being read. I believe a story can become more powerful and more touching if there is a very symbolic object or symbol involved.
Night Literary Analysis Death, destruction, terror, and family. All things that Elie Wiesel dealt with in his autobiography, Night with Connections. By examining the novel Night, we see that family is the key to survival, which is important because those who do not have family often are not able to survive because nobody is helping them push forward and keep an optimistic view.
For me, the greatest moment of sadness in the memoir is when Elie’s father dies. His death is gruesome and much suffering is shown throughout the last pages of the memoir. A dramatic shift is made in Elie’s perspective after this traumatic event. His father serves as his sole motivation to continue on in their cruel conditions and without him Elie is hopeless and alone. I feel Elie's father's death also symbolizes the unjustness of their situation.
Eliezer Wiesel was a fifteen-year-old boy deported to the Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944-1945 along with the Jews from his hometown in Sighet. He demonstrates the personal struggles to maintain faith along with the struggle of silence, all of which are presented through the theme of Night by Elie Wiesel. His character develops a loss of innocence as he encounters inhumanity and the death of his father. Elie was a believer in God and learned the secrets of Jewish mysticism with the help of Moishe the Beadle before being sent out to the concentration camps. As he maintained his survival, he lost his faith in God.
Eliezer is a young Jewish boy who studies Talmud and Kabbalah. The next day, his teacher Moishe the Beadle a group of deportees are on a train that get hijacked and everyone is taken captive. A very awful, tragic event occurs, the Gestapo (the group that hijacks the train) executes the deportees who were “used as targets” (6). Moishe survives the massacre but is very unstable and is driven to despair and cries “tears, like drop of wax” because the people do not believe him (7). There are now new laws to abide by, every Jew has to wear the yellow star and no longer has the right to perform certain acts.
Dehumanization in the Memoir Night The human race is classified as an animal, although under normal circumstances, humans do not operate in the way that an animal does. The people in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night are an exception. During the Holocaust the Nazis associated the Jewish race as inferior to wild beasts and treated them as such in widely spread concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe that gassed, burned, beat, or in cold blood, shot thousands of Jews every new day. Wiesel explains his experience with restraint one would not expect as he recounts what he has seen and how appallingly evil the Germans treat his kind. Sadistic Nazi treatment of the prisoners in Night tears the mentality of the Jews apart leaving animalistic instincts
Night is a memoir written by Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel. The Holocaust was a grueling time in history in which the purpose was to wipe out the Jewish population and race. Wiesel titled this memoir Night to symbolize a world without God's presence, lack of hope, and a loss of sense of humanity. Night symbolizes a world without God’s presence because Wiesel’s experiences during the holocaust made him lose his faith and god and feel the emptiness that follows. The Jewish New Year had just arrived and the Jews were gathered around the camp praying for new beginnings as well as safety from their god.
God Help Us Through its survivors, memories of the Holocaust live on today. During World War II, Adolf Hitler was destined to exterminate all Jewish communities in occupied Europe. Nazi Germany began this exterminated in concentration camps, which eventually became death camps. Elie Wiesel, a fifteen year old Jewish boy, becomes mindful to the corruption of human nature caused by concentration camps, which eventually become death camps. The remembrance of the Holocaust is resurrected in Elie Wiesel’s Night, where Elie proves to lose faith in God by evoking his feelings about the corruption of humanity.
“Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. ”- Shania Twain.
In this memoir, Elie Wiesel uses imagery in order to develop the presence of animal-like behavior on people when they are being dehumanized. At this point of the story, Elie and the other prisoners are in a wagon traveling to a different concentration camp, and they are trying to survive in inhuman conditions. To begin, Wiesel describes, “We were given bread… We threw ourselves on it… Someone had the idea of quenching his thirst by eating snow.”