Six to ten million people died during the Holocaust all because of Hitler. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, the reader learns about the difficulties, from a survivor’s point of view, in the concentration camp. Wiesel experiences what it’s like to be beaten down physically, mentally, and emotionally. The SS guards stripped him of his identity and religion. In the beginning of the story, Wiesel believed very deeply in God.
For my creative response to Night by Elie Wiesel, I decided to make an alternative book cover. The theme that I chose to portray in my adaptation of the cover is the journey from darkness to light. My cover is black at the top and the amount of black reduces towards the bottom of the cover. I did this to show the transition from darkness to light that is shown during this novel.
Elie Wiesel has a somber mood in the text ‘Night’. He does this by using imagery and symbolism, Wiesel does this so curiously, as not to plunge into a sad mood, but slowly eases the reader into the despair. The author describes a boy as “angel faced” that slowly moves towards a tragic ending. The angel is a power symbol throughout all cultures, and using that symbol to be placed onto a boy, and expressed through imagery creates a sense of dread and despair. Eliezer depicts a young boy to a “sad faced angel”, in the sense that the boy seems holy, and innocent, yet being in a labor camp, reinforces our idea that the Nazis have no respect for anything good or sacred in the world.
Prisoners in Auschwitz received about three “meals” a day. Half a liter of “coffee” for breakfast, and a liter of soup for the noon meal. For dinner, the prisoners usually received about 10 ounces of black bread, with 25 grams of sausage or margarine, or a tablespoon of marmalade of cheese. The small amount of food prisoners got in concentration camps caused them to starve. In the story, Night, the absence of food caused Eliezer and others around him to slowly change themselves and their morales, hoping for a little extra soup or a crust of bread.
Symbolism in Night Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. In the book Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the narrator’s father doesn’t see a problem with wearing the yellow star on his coat because he says that “no one has died from it”, but he doesn’t know or understand that it’s a symbol for something with a hidden meaning. The yellow star made the Jews easy to identify when deporting them to the camps. A different and deeper interpretation is that the yellow star represents isolation and was intended to humiliate the Jews and mark them out for humiliation and discrimination. There are many examples of symbolism in Night.
During the Holocaust, food played a significant part. It was important for the way people took care of themselves and survived. The reason being was that in the concentration camps it was every man for himself and they sought food to stay healthy. Elie Wiesel had managed to keep himself strong and healthy for his father.
The symbol I chose was God for Eli because he does talk about God quite often during his days in the holocaust from the book Night. This picture I choose is a pile of dead bodies to represent death for the symbol God. The reason I choose this picture because Eli had witnessed a lot of cruel things at a young age. He had worshipped God so much and had trust and love for him.
Elie Wiesel concluded his memoir, Night, by describing his feelings when he sees himself in the mirror for the first time since he left the ghetto. The purpose of this is to portray the state his body and mind is in. Elie describes himself as a corpse because his humanity had been stolen from him after so many years of suffering. Elie also was at the brink of starvation and death, which would have contributed to his corpse-like appearance. Elie went nearly an entire week without eating, and this is detrimental to his body.
Symbolism can be seen through both good and bad alike. Though when it comes to instances that have to do with the holocaust, it’s almost always, if not always, a painful connotation. The holocaust is one of if not the the largest instance of mass genocide in recorded history. Leaving each Jew that survived with a different story to tell. While their story’s remained different, the pain that they each experienced was not.
in the book “night” Eliezer Weisel says, “night fell, night had fallen, and night was falling. Eliezer Weisel means that by night people were dying and passing away. This has a reference to death because when people die they close their eyes, and its night forever. There were people dying left and right. Some people believed that if they died they would be with God.
In the story Night by Elie Wiesel, we follow Elie between 1941 and 1945 across Europe. Elie is an adolescent Jewish boy in tune with his faith. He would study Talmud by day and by night he would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple. In Sighet 1941, Elie was nearly thirteen when he met someone who everyone called Moishe the Beadle. Elie was so interested in learning more about his faith that he asked his father to find a master to help guide him in his studies of Kabbalah.
The night is a motif in the novel, appearing again and again in the text. While Elie is in the process of moving into the ghetto and becoming accustomed to their new home he says "Night Fell". A second instance that night is used is when the train is taking the Jewish people to the concentration camp. Elie says "Only the darkness of night". While at the concentration camp, the last day in the Jewish calendar is drawing near so everyone is gathering around to pray.
“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” There he stands looking at himself in the mirror, unrecognisable after 1 year in Nazi concentration camps. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel horror takes on a whole new meaning, when a 15 year old Elie Wiesel is sent to Auschwitz, separated from his mother and sisters, and put through unimaginable horrors in the form of Nazi concentration camps. He is psychologically beaten and thrown down a horrible path.
Although the German dictators are trying to destroy the minds of their prisoners in order to create more compliant slaves, the Jews find ways to rebel and reasons to live. The Nazi soldiers take away everything they can from the jews except the basic human needs, but however hard they try, they can not take away their faith, hope, and friendship. These forces can not simply be taken away and they have become a coping mechanism for the repressed Jews because they are reasons to live and they make the grueling work easier. Most of the Jews in Night come from religious backgrounds, so they pray to get through difficult situations. Practicing their religion is a way of “escaping from reality” and “not feeling the blows” from the truncheons that
The well-spoken Quintus Horatius Flaccus, more commonly known as Horace, once professed that hardship has the ability to provoke hidden skills that otherwise would have never displayed themselves. This philosophy is especially true in comparison to the life of Elie Wiesel, a courageous Holocaust survivor. Wiesel writes to all who haven't lived through the horror that is known as the Holocaust, in efforts of “transmitting the history of the disappearance” of those who were brutally and unrightfully killed. With a tone of gloom and mourning, Wiesel argues that if it wasn't for the fire that was ignited under him to relay the stories of those who were lost at Auschwitz, he would have never become the descriptive writer that he is. Many find that
