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Persepolis Coming Of Age Essay

943 Words4 Pages

Coming of age is a common theme throughout Night and Persepolis. In both books a tragedy happens to the main characters forcing them to mature faster than the average teenager. The war had shaped Marji so that she would be able to leave her country for safety, and for Eliezer he had been going through the Holocaust and was forced to develop faster and gain the strength to carry himself and his father through all of it. Both Eliezer and Marji had to overcome adversity and each of them took a different path to coming of age. In Night, Eliezer had to overcome the weight of losing all of his family at first and then later on seeing his father suffer. For a teenager that is a very brutal situation to be put through. Eliezer had to watch others …show more content…

At the beginning of the Holocaust they went through their first selection and Eliezer describes it as something he’ll never forget by saying, “ Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever” (Wiesel 22(pdf) ). The detail he put into his experience brings the reader to a full understanding of just how bad Eliezer’s conditions are. After getting through a couple more selections Eliezer’s dad showed he was unable to march in step, and the officers took advantage of that as an excuse to confiscate Eliezer’s gold tooth. The officer would, “ torment him and, on a daily basis, [decide] to thrash him savagely” (Wiesel 55). After seeing his father tormented, Eliezer learned to hide his emotions and put his mind over matter. Later on the officers try tormenting his father again but Eliezer just waits till the end and helps his father afterwards. Religion is a big part of Eliezer’s life, and throughout the book his perspective about God changes due to his maturity. Before the Holocaust he thinks if God will help you whneer because you have always been loyal to him. Unfortunately, Eliezer will come to realize

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1) As Night begins, Eliezer is so moved by faith that he weeps when he prays. He is also searching for a deeper understanding of the mystical teachings of the Kabbalah. How does Eliezer's relationship with his faith and with God change as the book progresses? At the beginning of the book, Eliezer is very strong in his faith, as shown by his weeping and his yearning for a teacher to teach him the Kabbalah.

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Eliezer’s best traits come out and allow him to survive his terrible ordeal, which are adaptability, determination, patience, and perseverance. Elie uses his father as his reason to persevere and keep on going through. For example, whenever Eliezer’s father dies, Eliezer loses all function and does not even want to recount how empty and lonely he felt. On page 32, Eliezer describes how great his fear of

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(4). The answer Eliezer gives shows how his faith in God is not something he has to think about, doing just like living and breathing which he compared it to. During his time in the concentration camp however, his faith becomes tested. He is treated brutally and struggles each day to live to see the next. The time he spent in the concentration camp made it hard for him to maintain his faith.

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How Does Elie Wiesel Change Throughout The Book Night

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In the novel it talks about how Eliezer always wanted to give his ration of food to his father. However on page 115 it states, “It’s too late to save your old father, I said to myself you ought to be having two rations of bread, and soup.” On page 117 it states, “I no longer thought of my father or of my mother.” This shows an emotional change because when Eliezer first arrived at the camp, he couldn’t stop thinking about his mom and dad. On page 62, Eliezer had witnessed the beating of his father with an iron bar, but didn’t do anything other than watch.

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Night By Elie Wiesel Quote Analysis

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Firstly, the quote of Eliezer's religious and moral nadir. Eliezer says "... Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes..."(Wiesel 34). The horrific, indefatigable moments that Eliezer endures destroyed his beliefs.

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Change Of Religion In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Just like other Jews, Eliezer's faith begins to falter by watching others be harshly treated, like himself, and viewing the horrific death of innumerable innocent lives. In the beginning, the 12 year old Eliezer starts out immensely religious, he's determined to learn more about the Torah and his own religion overall. However, when Eliezer and his family get taken to death camps, he begins to question his faith. As the days pass by, Elie Wiesel's faith

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Childhood In Elie Wiesel's Night

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Eliezer, the main character and narrator of Night, thinks that God has forgotten about his children. This look on childhood is present throughout the whole story since most of it Eliezer is a child himself, but it is very clear in the scene where the young boy is being hanged. The boy in

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Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

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During a time of great struggle, there is no doubt that the event will cause the person to change. In something so horrible and traumatizing as the Holocaust, where the Nazi soldiers inflicted so much fear on the Jews, there is no doubt they would feel forced to change in order to survive. Since the Nazis committed such heinous crimes, the victims of the holocaust began to deny their faith, go against their morals in order to survive the stress, and their physical appearances changed due to the little food the Nazi’s gave them in the Concentration camp. Eliezer, the main character of the novel Night, goes through an intense character change from the beginning to the end of his story as a holocaust victim. This event in his life causes a change

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How Does Eliezer's Life Change Throughout The Book Night

1311 Words | 6 Pages

Eliezer eventually accepts that he is on his own, without the presence of God. “Never shall I forget those moments that butchered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into

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All children loved their parents and Eliezer was no exception, but all the torment had caused him to start to think about himself more than his dad. He started to see his dad as extra baggage and began getting ideas of how life would be easier and more peaceful without him. He no longer cares for family. He could only think of ways on how he could get rid of his dad. When he says, “If only I didn’t find him!”

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It shows the grueling torture Eliezer went through to the point of forgetting who his God was. The concentration camp effectively extinguished his bright ambitions, halting future possibilities of achievements. The impact of this traumatizing experience transformed Eliezer in ways that were previously unimaginable, altering his inner being and external behavior beyond recognition. He becomes a changed man. “One day, when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror opposite the wall.

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Theme Of Broken In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Elie was only fifteen when he was forced into concentration camps with his family, at such a young age he had to experience things that forced him to grow up. The theme of Night is brokenness and shattered character. On page 5, Moshe the Beadle a jewish leader at the synagogue had been taken into a camp, by the hungarian police. After several months later, Moshe the Beadle had returned to Sighet, and shared his story with the other jewish people. “To live?

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Dialectical Journal For Night By Elie Wiesel

471 Words | 2 Pages

"It's past the point where it is possible to spare your old father, I said to myself..."(pg 105). He felt remorseful in light of the fact that he couldn't help his dad, yet he knew the best way to live is to watch out for himself. " Here, every man needs to battle for himself and not consider any other person. Indeed of his father..."(pg 105). He considers himself, and Eliezer loses trust, trust, and his convictions.

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Eliezer and his father rely on one another to survive through the Holocaust. Together they encounter the cruelty of the Nazis, the lack of compassion from the prisoners, as well as the difficulty of simply surviving. They remain strong together unlike other father-son relationships seen in the novel. A majority of the prisoners gravitate towards self preservation while Eliezer chooses to remain with his father. Eliezer does exhibit ambivalence in continuing to help his father because the conditions of the Holocaust continually make it harder to make others a priority than oneself.

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