From the small town of Sighet in Transylvania to the huge concentration camps of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, the author and victim of the book Night, the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Wiesel is a 15 year old Jewish boy who was captured by the Germans or “Nazis” during WWII. He went through an overwhelming amount of trauma, like when he got separated from his mother and sisters and watching his father suffer an unbearable amount of pain that eventually killed him. The fact is, power is a tool that can corrupt itself and others, it can ruin people’s lives and it can do that without people even realizing it.
In Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, he displayes a theme of desperation and confusion. It tells the story of the Jewish race from the point of view of a teenage boy. Their family then gets split, so the sister and the mother go to one concentration camp and the brother and the dad go to another. When they arrive to the camp, they get split into different sleeping quarters. Throughout the rest of their journey, they experience hardship and torture as in having to be “Pressed tightly against one another, in effort to resist the cold,” (Wiesel 98).
Power is addictive to humankind, people can not help but crave more than their share. Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir that bears witness to the abusiveness of control. The book follows the author, Elie Wiesel, in his horrific experiences of the Holocaust and how he survived. In many situations people with higher status took advantage of people subordinate to them. Although many believe that fear is a person’s main downfall, power is an extremely manipulative source that causes the decline of people who have it and who do not.
Indian social reformer B.R. Ambedkar once said of individuality: “Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.” Furthermore, Webster’s dictionary defines it as “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual.” In Night by Elie Wiesel, it seems that both the author and his fellow Semites’ sense of selves are virtually erased by Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Perseverance is a theme evident throughout Elie Wiesel's Night, as the author's survival in the concentration camps is a testament to his unwavering determination. In chapter 7 of Night, Elie and his father are transferred to a new concentration camp, where they are forced to endure grueling labor and terrible living conditions. Despite their situation's physical and emotional tolls, Elie remains determined to survive and keep his father alive. " I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me?
Despite some people being in such drastic situations, they still show humanity in their actions. In the book “night” by Ellie Weisel. It talks about his life during the holocaust and what he had to go through while they put him in a concentration camp. Many of the inmates that Elie Wiesel was in camp with had shown humanity in their own ways and actions, despite being in such dangerous situations. And many of those actions could have impacted their survival.
World War II has no shortage of examples demonstrating man’s inhumanity to man: the atomic bombs, the Holocaust, the fire bombings, and the war itself all evidence the horrors that humans can visit upon other humans. Night, by Elie Wiesel, establishes certain examples of cruelty, like tossing infants into fire and using babies as target practice. Fire is the common theme in these examples, as much of the death resulting from the war and genocide is attributable to fire. Thus, inhumanity and fire are linked by the human capacity for violence. When the people of Sighat learn of the horrors Moishe the Beadle witnessed, they didn’t believe it; they couldn’t even imagine one human doing the things he described to another human being.
Sydney J. Harris once said, “The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts : to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say ‘I was wrong.” But how do people learn what is wrong or right, what is unjust, and what is morally acceptable? Life experiences of injustice give us a feeling that something is just not right, but it takes a truly powerful story or person to truly persuade a person what injustice truly means. In Sounder by William H. Armstrong, when the Boy’s father is arrested he learns that even though people are good at heart it does not mean they are not subjected to racial prejudice and harsh laws and punishments. Elie Wiesel writes of his first hand experiences
For years, our society has been driven to identify who is “like you”. Often times, this includes excluding and judging others because they are not similar to you. Every person is a complex bunch made up of objectives, feelings, and other characteristics that can be different than ours. It is easier to disregard a person as less human and less worthy than we are. The term othering is when one views or treats someone as different from oneself because the group or individual is mentally classifies as “not one of us”.
When humans are faced with repressive situations, they tend to lose hope and as a result, they fall into the hands of their intimidators out of fear. In the memoir Night, taking place during the holocaust, Elie Wiesel recounts his experience of Nazi abuse and the few individuals fighting to escape Nazi persecution while maintaining their humanity. Ultimately, Elie argues that despite existing in a world of oppression, certain individuals defy their identity as victims and, instead, take part in acts of resistance that display what is left of their humanity. In the face of imminent death, a condemned prisoner whom Elie describes is still able to wage a protest through the form of expressing the free will and passing on hope to those around
Elie Wiesel’s Night, shows how hard it was to live and be a Jew during the time of the holocaust due to all the deaths, camps, and losses. Elie’s book shows readers what kind of events and actions were the cause of death of some prisoners and the thing that caused the survival of others. Throughout the book, many prisoners ended up giving up the hope to continue living, while others were able to find enough hope and love in family and friends to find a reason to hold on to life and try to survive. The weather, the selections, and family, were the three biggest things that costed some prisoners their lives and affected the will of others to live. Elie uses dialogue and examples of items and family members that the prisoners lost or were afraid to lose to show what caused some prisoners give up all hope of survival and why other prisoners were able to endure.
In the span of a lifetime one often faces many adversities that stand within their path. While some challenges will be overcome easily, others will take a lot more tenacity. When in the face of adversity it is key not to give up. One should always strive to persevere through their hardships, no matter how severe they seem to be. The author of the memoir “Night” Elie Wiesel, vividly describes his experiences in the concentration camp of Auschwitz.
Courage is a word that used often or not, has it’s own meaning. Having courage to do the impossible is experienced in our everyday lives without even thinking, such as, taking out the trash, going to school, taking a step onto a unknown street, it happens to us all and can even have a dramatic impact on yourself, your future, and your life. In the book Night courage is experienced every single day of torture. Prisoners, such as Elie, face and fight for their own survival not knowing that their best weapon possessed in their hands was courage. Courage was a weapon, a very powerful weapon that could change your fate in an instant.
Imagine knowing your fate ahead of time. That single moment would be stuck in your head, replayed every second to prevent it. This would obstruct your feeling of morals, making you only focus on your own survival. Nothing would get in your way of trying to survive. During the Holocaust, many people were faced with this moment when they stepped in a concentration camp.
Once liberated from these concentration camps, Elie has done much to make people around the world more aware of the indescribable events that occurred during his time in these camps, and make sure that people will speak out against these events instead of staying silent, so that these events may be prevented in the future. He wrote many pieces and delivered many speeches in attempt to lift the world out of indifference. I believe that Elie’s novel Night communicates his message more effectively than his speech, Perils of Indifference. Not only does it convey his message of that we all must speak out against
