Elie Wiesel Night Theme

The small town of Sighet, also known as Sighetu Marmatiei, is located today in Transylvania, Romania. Through the years, Sighet has had strong ties to the Jewish religion, just as it does today. The town has been part of both Romania and Hungary at times, and has seen a decreasing number of residents since 1944. During the 1940s, anti-Jewish sentiment was at its peak, with Adolf Hitler being the face of the anti-Jewish movement. By 1944, World War I had started, and more than 14,000 Jews resided in Sighet, but by the end of May of the same year, none remained, and Sighet was comparable to a ghost town. The Jewish citizens of Sighet had embarked on a well-traveled path that would lead to tragedy, clinging to the last threads of hope as the war becomes an evolving threat for

Elie Wiesel uses a number of themes in his account of his life during World War I, one of them being survival. To me, survival is defined as fighting or beating the odds to stay alive, and it seems to be the topic best worked on by Elie. A very simple and easily understandable example of survival in Night is when a veteran inmate at the concentration camp Birkenau tells Elie he is 18 instead of 15, and Elie’s father that he is 40 instead of 50. “‘Hey, kid, how old are you?’ … ‘Fifteen.’ ‘No. You’re eighteen.’ … Then he asked my father, who answered: ‘I’m fifty.’ ‘No… Not fifty. You’re forty. Do you hear? Eighteen and forty.’”(p. 30, Night). This example is easily the first step at keeping Elie and his father alive, simply because those too young or too old wouldn’t work as well as others. Even though this is a painless change to Elie’s life, it is possible that the veteran saved his life. His simple act, whether it be of kindness or not, set Elie and his father on the path of survival. Another example Wiesel shows for survival is brought to the story by a French girl Elie meets