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Themes In Night By Elie Wiesel

624 Words3 Pages

Hardships, Relationships, and a Harbour of Issues
Often in stories and in real life the environments of a situation can affect people's experience and how they relate to other people. Positive experiences usually affect relationships in a positive manner. Likewise, bad experiences affect relationships in a negative manner. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, the setting creates significant hardship for the characters which changes their relationship with others.

The concentration camps, the physical man-made setting of Night, are dark and muddy. They are guarded by armed men and barbed wire fences. In the camps prisoners are burned in chimneys, beaten by inmates and guards, and worked harshly. The constant pain, death, and exhaustion felt …show more content…

The anti-Semitism, execution, and persecution of Jews create a hostile atmosphere for the story. This piece of setting elicits extreme fear, distrust, and anxiety for the Jewish inmates which creates tensions between them. Some examples of this are mostly harmless, such as "the inmates making fun of [Elie and his father]" (pg.55). However, in most cases the consequences are more severe. The anxiety and stress caused by the current situation compel the inmates to taunt and belittle each other. On a more extreme scale, people are beaten and sometimes killed. For instance, the execution of the dentist who "had been dealing with the prisoners gold teeth for his own benefit" does not trouble Elie in the slightest (pg.52). Elie feels "no pity for him. In fact, [he is] pleased" (pg.52). Furthermore, the inmates not only take joy in the execution of other Jews but make threats and beat those who refuse to comply. In the instance of Franek, who threatens Elie to "give [him Elie's] gold crown, [or] it will [him] costing much more" (pg.55). when Elie refuses Franek "[torments Elie's father] and on a daily basis [and thrashes] him savagely" (pg. 55). These examples show that the mood of the story creates fear and distrust that forms a kill or be killed mentality where the oppressed must become the oppressor to survive. As the saying goes, "the weak are meat, and the strong do eat" (David Mitchel, Cloud

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Lack Of Empathy In Elie Wiesel's Night

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Throughout Night, Elie Wiesel demonstrates the indifference and lack of empathy created by extreme conditions. Wiesel develops this theme as early as in chapter two when Elie is packed into the back of a cattle car and is being transported to Auschwitz. With everyone's nerves at their breaking point, when Mrs. Schächter began having a mental breakdown, they resorted to violence, and “when they actually struck her, people shouted their approval”(26). The stress and distress caused by being trapped in the cattle car brought a tight knit, religious community to beating an older woman. This loss of empathy even impacts familial bonds, this is illustrated vividly during the death march, Rabbi Elihau’s son abandoned him.

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Metaphors In Night

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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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Humanity In Elie Wiesel's Cruelty

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The cruelty and hardships Elie experiences brings forth a distrust in humanity. During Elie’s first exposure to the anti-Semitic movement, “all he [feels is] pity”(Wiesel 7). Eli’s reaction exemplifies his progressive severance of relationships to prolong his illusions of hope. Within the “hermetically sealed cattle car”, Elie encounters the “shattered” Mrs. Schachter (24). The insane woman highlights the Jews disgust towards the somewhat inevitable insanity they face.

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Examples Of Antisemitism In Night By Elie Wiesel

620 Words | 3 Pages

During the book Night Idek explodes and started to beat Elie's father, “And he began beating him with an iron bar”(Wiesel 54). This scene shows how Jews and other prisoners were treated on a daily basis. The Germans or Kapo would take their anger out on the Jews and prisoners in concentration for just doing the little things wrong. During the train ride, Mrs. Shachter kept repeating the word fire until the others had enough, “She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal”(Wiesel 26). This scene shows how horrific ways people were beaten, even women were beaten.

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Tragic Events In Night By Elie Wiesel

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He didn’t do anything wrong, they wanted to beat up someone to set an example for the rest of the Jews. Lastly Elie was marching towards a big ditch with dead bodies everywhere. As they’d walked he noticed something that the soldiers were doing. “Without passion or haste, they shot the prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns”(6)

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Examples Of Inhumane Punishment By Ellen Fine

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This violence and inhumane punishment clearly demonstrates how the men were turned into animals, being whipped just as a farmer would whip his cattle. Any punishment whatsoever was unnecessary to start with, as Elie simply walks in by accident on a Kapo sleeping with a girl. However, because the Nazis are attempting to turn the prisoners into animals, Elie is not allowed any benevolence or mercy, and is publicly whipped to the point of fainting. This is a clear demonstration of how the Nazis utilize physical abuse to dehumanize prisoners like Elie and his father. Moreover, Ellen Fine describes how during the time that Elie is witnessing his father being beaten, “rage against the aggressor has been displaced onto the victim, and concern for

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Night Research Paper

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When he first arrives at the camps, Elie writes about a particular Nazi guard named Idek. Idek used his status as guard to lash out at prisoners for no reason. In example, Elie was just minding his business, Idek started beating, “One day when Idek was venting his fury. I happened to cross his path; he threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood.” (Wiesel 45).

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Injustice In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

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The prisoners are starved, shaved, beaten, and treated as “filthy dogs,” all while working forcedly throughout the day. Eliezer and Shlomo had to move heavy stones to wagons without having strength left. Family members were separated just because they didn’t fit the age range. Many just died because they could not last anymore, like Wiesel’s father. There was this thing called selection.

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The Dehumanization Of Prisoners In Night And Life Is Beautiful

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“What happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent” (Wiesel 39). Many of the prisoners were subject to abuse both mentally and physically and were in turn affected both mentally and socially. Prisoners commonly became dehumanized and in the case of Elie and his father, became more distant socially.

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Themes In Night Elie Wiesel

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“ You don 't need religion to have morals. If you can 't determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy not religion. ”- unknown. Night by Elie Wiesel, during World War II, in Germany and Poland, Jewish people taken to concentration camps and forced to do labor.

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Visual Analysis Of Night By Elie Wiesel

789 Words | 4 Pages

Elie had a first hand experience of seeing this happen in the work camp Buna. One day the gallows had been set up in the middle of the camp,and all the prisoners were called there. There were many hangings, but Elie described the worst as the hanging of a young boy who is involved in resistance activities. Because he is very light, the hanging doesn’t result in instant death, the prisoners watch the boy as he struggles for some time before he

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The Role Of Guilt In Night By Elie Wiesel

1157 Words | 5 Pages

When Elie watches Idek beat up his father, he says that if he “felt anger”, it would be at his father because he feels guilt that he can’t stand up for his father and is showing anger towards his father because he got into this situation. Elie’s inability to do something makes him feel guilty since he loves and cares for his father. However, he is unable to do anything about it since “life in a concentration camp” had changed him to a point where he greatly struggles with the internal conflict between life or death, and he is stripped of his innocence as a result of his experiences there. Elie questions whether it’s worth it to see people struggle or it's better to die, so the haunting memories and guilt can be relieved. Living at a concentration camp dehumanizes Elie and many others, leading Elie to feel guilty that he is alive while other people are treated poorly and killed.

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Theme Of Suffering In Night

891 Words | 4 Pages

Suffering not only forces people to make inhumane decisions but it also causes people to lose hope and give up on themselves. In this section of the book, Elie describes a time where he was devastated to see his father beaten and hurt in the camps. Throughout his time in the camps, Elie saw and heard the abuse that was given to people in the camp killing his hope. The biggest turning point in the story was when he saw his father getting beat. When Idek “began beating [Elie’s father] with an iron bar … [Elie’s] father simply doubled over under the blows, but then [Elie's father] seemed to break in two like an old tree struck by lightning”

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Dehumanization In Night And Maus By Art Spiegelman

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Elie and the other prisoners were robbed of their identity and branded like cattle. Due to the tattoo that was pierced into their skin, their identity was taken from them and they were no longer considered human. Because of this act of torture the Jewish people were considered anything less than a person or even human which is the dehumanization the nazis were doing. Another method of dehumanization that the nazis used is the public hangings of a young child in front of the whole camp. It dehumanizes the boy who is known by as pipel by hanging them and leaving him as a show.

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Evil In Night By Elie Wiesel

2172 Words | 9 Pages

Because of the horrible conditions that the people in the concentration camp are in, people believe it is right to act evil. After all, it is for their survival. Earlier, we see when Elie is not willing to give up his gold crown to Franek, a worker there, he searches for a way to manipulate Elie into giving it

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