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Night, By Elie Wiesel: Literary Analysis

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The Holocaust was a horrific human act carried out by Adolf Hitler, taking place from 1941 to 1945. This was a time period in history where Jewish individuals were exempt from humanity and their basic human rights. During this extreme ethnic cleansing, Jewish people were erased of their identity, killed, and forced into concentration camps. This is displayed in Night, a memoir written by Elie Wiesel as he journeys and fights for his life during this tragic genocide. Due to the devastating circumstances of the Holocaust, we read as Elie changes from a faithful and lively boy, to an emotionally numb man. “By day I studied Tallmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple” ( Wiesel 3 ). At the beginning …show more content…

What is “ The Yellow Star”? So what is the difference? It’s not lethal..? Wiesel 9. Elie comes to question if these events are so significant as he states, “ Little by little life returned to “normal” ( Wiesel 16 ). Elie thinks that these events are nothing out of the ordinary as the only rules issued were a certain curfew as well as wearing a yellow star. Later in the text, we see Elies opinion changing as he realises how large this genocide had become. After the Holocaust came to an end, Elie lost the ability to cry over the tragedies he had endured, including the death of his father. During his time in Auschwitz, Elie had been clinging to his father as a source of humanity and a will to live, but as his father had died nothing mattered to Elie anymore, we see this as he says “It no longer mattered, nothing mattered, since my fathers death nothing mattered to me anymore” (Wiesel 113). Elie has lost the total ability to cry or feel and type of emotion of the tragic loss of his father, this is evident as he says, “ I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep, But I had no more tears, and in the depths of my being in the recesses of my weakened conscience, Could have I searched, I might perhaps have found something like free at last” (Wiesel 97). We see that Elie has gone through so much during the Holocaust that he has gone

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“And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: free at last!...” (Weisel 112). When the Jewish people of Sighet, Transylvania were first being transported to concentration camps, Elie and his father were separated from the rest of his family, never to see eachother again over the course of the book. Elie’s strained connection is exemplified when his father, his only family member remaining with him, dies. Instead of feeling depressed, or even the tiniest bit of sadness, Elie does not feel at all.

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Elie was faithful and did what he was supposed to do. He wonders why God would punish him and so many others by letting them suffer and be killed. In class we talked about people losing their faith in the Holocaust and that if you lose your faith you have nothing to hold on to and

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Elie Wiesel is one of the few thousand people who survived the tragedy caused by the war, the Holocaust. Wiesel was just 15 years old when his family and the rest of the Jewish population were placed into two ghettos. While reading the book “Night”, reviewing many of his speeches, and the pink timeline cards we have been studying, we learn the deep truth of what went on during the Holocaust. Elie doesn’t take that he made it through the horrible tragedy lightly. He feels the responsibility to share the story of what happened to him and others.

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This memoir is a depiction of Eli’s life as a young boy who survived the Holocaust throughout the 40’s. Elie educates and engages his readers by providing very detailed images of the actual events throughout the book. His use of personifications such as, “My throat was dry and the words were choking me, paralyzing my lips” (Wiesel 15), or “Death enveloped me, it suffocated me” (Wiesel 86). helps to keep the reader engaged. From page 15, Elie made sure to overemphasize the situation by using descriptive words.

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Elie: Throughout the book we see Elie change from a relatively normal teenage school boy and into a emotionally hardened young man who has become so accustomed to death that he rarely gives it a second thought, even if the person dying was a friend . This change took place because of the tortuous conditions that the Nazi´s subjected him to and that he lost so many family members and friends along the way. My passage shows Elie at a time when he is just starting his journey, yet you can tell that the concentration camps and the Nazi´s have already had a very serious effect on him. ¨He must have died, trampled under the feet if the thousands of men who followed us.

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When Elie saw what was happening to good people and wondered how these things could happen to innocent people, he lost faith in God. God permitted these things to happen to innocent people. Elie changed into an unemotional man because of the Holocaust, which deeply impacted him emotionally in a very negative way. I can’t imagine how he felt as a young teen seeing his loved ones die.

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Slowly throughout the book, Elie loses himself, his identity, and survives alone with nothing left of him. Although the Holocaust did do these things to Elie, he and the Jews were also all dehumanized through those terrible acts of hate. All was good in the beginning, the Jews were happy, even when the Germans settled in. But they were there for a terrible cause because Elie eventually says, “Hungarian police used their rifle butts, their clubs to indiscriminately

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From Auschwitz, the two are moves to two other camps, and participate in a death marth to Buchenwald. As Elie spends more time in the camps, he becomes angry and resentful, toward the camp itself, as well as his father for falling ill and not being able to care for him. In Buchenwald, his father dies, from illness and a beating from the SS, only three months from liberation. As the story progresses, Elie also begins to lose sight of his faith, becoming bitter, and stating “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust” (Wiesel, 32). Being subject to the cruel and continuous torture of the Holocaust left Elie

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For every individual, it is difficult to give up two than one. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, Elie magnanimously inputs his blood and sweat by sacrificing his strength and rations for the survival of his father. He holds unconditional hopes of believing that he will be able to make not only himself survive through the brutal camps under German control, but also his father through his efforts. Through this, Elie uses the relationship with his father to suggest that individuals should be independent for better survival because it is more efficient to create a single, strong individual rather than two weak ones. Elie may have continuously helped his father in lengthening his endurance, but failed to straighten his father’s will.

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This shows how Wiesel wants to have a connection with his religion. Along with his inexperience and lack of education in the real world. Still being dependent on his parents while being curious regarding himself and his religion. Eventually finding himself a master of the Kabbalah within a boy called Moishe. A foreign Jew who never had a surname and lived in utter penury.

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Elie was held captive in concentration camps from 1944-1945. During his time in the concentration camps, he became grateful for what he had, overcame countless obstacles, and more importantly kept fighting until he was free. [The Holocaust is very important to learn about because it can teach you some important life lessons.] You should always be grateful for what you have, no matter what the circumstances are. This lesson can be learned when Elie says, “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me any more”(109).

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Night Critical Abdoul Bikienga Johann Schiller once said “It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons”. But what happens when the night darkens our hearts our hearts? The Holocaust memoir Night does a phenomenal job of portraying possibly the most horrifying outcomes in such a situation. Through subtle and effective language, Wiesel is able to put into words the fearsome experiences he and his father went through in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. In his holocaust memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes imagery to show the effect that self-preservation can have on father son relationships.

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Night by Elie Wiesel shows when humans are put in horrible situations, the acts of selfishness greatly increase. The book shows that when humans are in crisis like the Holocaust everyone is desperate to survive, so they will do anything they can to get their basic needs. The people forgot who they are as human, and how it made Elie and others act differently towards each other. Elie Wiesel, and everyone who he meets along the way want to survive this, at times they forget why they want to live. But no one wants to get defeated by the Germans.

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Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.

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To find a man who has not experienced suffering is impossible; to have man without hardship is equally unfeasible. Such trials are a part of life and assert that one is alive by shaping one’s character. In the autobiographical memoir Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, this molding is depicted through Elie’s transformation concerning his identity, faith, and perspective. As a young boy, Elie and his fellow neighbors of Sighet, Romania were sent to Auschwitz, a macabre concentration camp with the sole motive of torturing and killing Jews like himself. There, Elie experiences unimaginable suffering, and upon liberation a year later, leaves as a transformed person.

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