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Night By Elie Wiesel Research Paper

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Night: A Purposeful and Inspirational Memoir
Holocaust is defined as a destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. What Elie Wiesel endured cannot be explained by this short definition. Wiesel depicts his horrifying experiences during the Holocaust in his famous memoir Night. He begins his memoir by talking about what his life was like before the Holocaust in his hometown Sighet. Elie’s placid life changes quickly as the Germans begin to persecute Jews in other towns around his hometown. Many people around Elie continue to deny that these horrific events are reality, which certainly leads to confusion and shock when German officers appear in town and begin to organize the formation and construction of …show more content…

When Elie first arrives at Birkenau, he goes through the initial selection and walks in line with many other prisoners. After making it through with his father, they begin to march towards a pit of fire which happens to be near an electric fence. Elie then states to himself, “If I wanted to bring my own death, now was the moment...My heart was bursting, the moment had come. I was face to face with the Angel of Death.” (Wiesel 31) Elie luckily doesn’t end up killing himself in this moment, however, the thoughts that occur in his head are relevant. He plans to resist the Nazis by attempting to determine his own fate instead of being gassed or burned alive. The internal conflict of this situation causes great emotion from Elie as he goes from shocked to panicked as his heart begins to race because he is about to face death at age fifteen. The sharp contrast from where he was in his home days ago to his current situation causes Elie to mature greatly. This situation is relevant today because suicide is a large part of society as mental diseases like depression and anxiety become more prominent each year. People can learn that there is more to life; by not killing himself here, Elie learned many important life lessons throughout his journey, and in the end survives the Holocaust, an incomprehensible …show more content…

A significant example of this occurs when Elie watches Rabbi Eliahou’s son leave him behind during the forty-two mile “death march.” Elie lies to Rabbi Eliahou and said that that he had not seen his son, he soon comes a to a realization and states to himself, “A terrible thought looked up in my mind: he had wanted to get rid of his father! He had felt that his father was growing weak…” (87). Elie is appalled by what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done, he ran away from his father thinking that he would not make it and that he would be trampled most likely. This deeply affects Elie as he and his father have a strong relationship and it physically hurts him to see something like this happen. His son had put himself first instead of his family, knowing that he would probably never see him again. A truly terrifying example of what not to do when faced with adversity. Another example of negative resistance occurs during Elie’s time in the cattle car. A father says to his son while he is beating him over a piece of bread, “Meir. Meir, my boy! Don’t you recognize me? I’m your father….you’re hurting me…” (96) Yet another example of a broken father-son relationship, the son ultimately kills his father over the piece of bread, however the son is then killed by other men. Elie is mentally affected by this as he and his father’s relationship is

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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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In Night. People in concentration camps tried to protect each other but struggled very hard to do so. Sometimes, they barely had a chance to begin with. For example, Elie witnessed someone kill himself because they already committed all he had left to taking care of a family member and was stuck. “A terrible thought crossed my mind: What if he had wanted to be rid of his father?

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In this book Elie speaks of his hardships and how he survived the concentration camps. Elie quickly changed into a sorrowful person, but despite that he was determined to stay alive no matter the cost. For instance, during the death

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In the book Night, we the readers witness the hardships and struggles in Elie’s life during the traumatic holocaust. The events that take place in this story are unbearable and are thought to be demented in modern times. In the beginning Elie is shown as a normal teenage Jewish boy, but the events are so drastic that we the readers forget how he was like in the beginning. Changes were made to Elie during the book, whether they were minor or major. The changes generated from himself, the journey, and other people.

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For example when Elie says “Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me… You’re killing your father…I have bread…for you too…for you too…” He collapsed….. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died.” This shows how just for a piece of bread someone's son is willing to beat up his father for it and not care that it’s his father he is hurting.

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In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel writes about the trauma he endured at the Auschwitz concentration camp to spread awareness about the Holocaust. Due to the mass homicide of the Jewish population, the Holocaust was immense because of the amount of people that passed away in the Holocaust, which almost wiped out all Jewish population. Wiesel went through the trauma of the Holocaust throughout this memoir. He was sent to Auschwitz, which is a concentration camp where he was tortured and starved. He was being fed less than the minimum amount of food to survive.

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But above all that, he has to observe his own father, the man he says he tries so hard to live for, die a slow, unbearably painful death. Even after the death of his father, Elie somehow survives his way through the unfathomable struggles, though he does say that he felt nothing really mattered after the loss of his dad. Amazingly, Elie Wiesel is able to endure these terrible tragedies and still he survives; still he

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Although survival was a key aspect in concentration camps, Elie gradually begins to live numbly, surviving only because instinct told him to. He no longer cared for the meaning of life, and his only thoughts were of bread, much like a stray dog hoping it would find morsels of food to live off of. However, he didn't start off this way. At the start, he lived for his father. Schlomo Wiesel was Elie's only reason to live, but prior to his father's death, he slowly began to free himself of caring.

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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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The novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is an autobiography about how he drew strength from his father to survive the Holocaust. Elie, along with his father and many other Jewish citizens, were imprisoned to live a long and horrific life in the concentration camps. He had to fight each and every day to survive and

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Brother against brother, father against son, many would fight their own family for a small bite of food. This is important because Elie had to watch a son kill his father for a piece of bread, and then himself get killed by another group for the same crumb. Those men then proceeded to all fight each other for the piece of bread. Elie, though, tried his best to give his food to his sick father, but was met with bad attitudes of the other sick patients around him. They told him to not only eat his own food, but to eat his father’s portion also, as his father had little time left.

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915 Words | 4 Pages

Before he and his family were sent to the concentration camps, Elie was described as a loving, smart, and caring boy. But as months go by in the concentration camps he slowly begins to his emotions for other people, which definitely affects the way he thinks mentally. In page 112 he stated, “I did not weep, and is pained that I could not weep. But I was out of tears”, which displayed Elie’s inner emotions and meant that he didn’t have enough in him to feel sad because he went through so much during the concentration camps he felt emotionally tired to feel anything. The day after his father died he said, “Since my father’s death nothing mattered to me anymore,” meaning he had nothing to live for or no one to care for anymore.

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This proves how when you don't treat someone as a human, they will become less of a person. Additionally, Elie uses personification to describe the realization of his friend leaving his own father. In this part of the story, the dad is looking for his son when, “A terrible thought loomed up in my mind: he wanted to get rid of his father! He had felt that his father was growing weak; he had believed that the end was near and had sought this separation in order to get rid of the burden and to free himself from an encumbrance that could lessen his own chances of survival” (87). A father and son bond is very strong, especially in times of terror.

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782 Words | 4 Pages

“The bad part about being so numb is there will come a time when you’ll want to feel something, but you won’t know how to.” -Unknown Holocaust victims often became numb to all of the terrible things they have experienced. In some instances, victims have become so numb to death and destruction of those around them that they do not feel anything when a loved one dies. In Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel explains his personal experiences and struggles while being a victim of the Holocaust.

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Night Paper Assignment Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a tragic memoir that details the heinous reality that many persecuted Jews and minorities faced during the dark times of the Holocaust. Not only does Elie face physical deprivation and harsh living conditions, but also the innocence and piety that once defined him starts to change throughout the events of his imprisonment in concentration camp. From a boy yearning to study the cabbala, to witnessing the hanging of a young child at Buna, and ultimately the lack of emotion felt at the time of his father 's death, Elie 's change from his holy, sensitive personality to an agnostic and broken soul could not be more evident. This psychological change, although a personal journey for Elie, is one that illustrates the reality of the wounds and mental scars that can be gained through enduring humanity 's darkest times.

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