Night by Elie Wiesel is the terrifying testimony of Elie’s memories of the death of his family, innocence, and faith. In the novel, Elie Wiesel uses the grotesque images of men collapsing from the torture of the S.S. and their mocking and ironic comments to not only display the pain and unjust cruelty that the victims of the holocaust endured, but to convey the theme of strength through syntax in the use of first person plural and allusions. At the beginning of chapter six, the prisoners are forced to run through the cold, winter snow by the S.S., to travel to another camp. As they are running the S.S. yell at them, “Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs…Faster you filthy dog!” (Wiesel, 85) The use of animal imagery evokes the reader to …show more content…
During the run, Elie notes, “We pressed on. We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs. Condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth. We were without strength, without illusions.” (Wiesel, 87) Syntax is used to alternate to first person plural in order to describe the prisoners’ godless worldview, which holds survival to be the highest principle and all other morality to be meaningless. Wiesel uses an allusion to Jewish prayer because God is often referred to as “Master of the Universe” to exemplify that the prisoners have replaced God in that role; they themselves are the masters of nature and the world. Elie’s experiences have instilled in him the despairing sense that he is alone in the world, a “mere number,” responsible solely for his own survival. The last sentence suggests that illusion—perhaps the illusion of faith—can give one strength. Some Holocaust victims still believed that God could see their anguish and would save them from perishing. Elie, however, produces a deeply nihilistic tone about faith; for him, it is a mere illusion, a deluded belief in an omnipotent creator who doesn’t exist. Along similar lines, the phrase “condemned and wandering” is an allusion to the entire history of Jewish suffering, a history defined in the Babylonian captivity, a period of exile and …show more content…
Despite his professed lack of faith, Elie focuses on their strength as victims, in turn, conveying the theme of strength. The prisoners were constantly in the face of death but managed to survive this far. Despite the bleak chances for survival and their degradation as human beings, they were still men—desperate to survive. The further into the novel, the more Elie contemplates the benefits of death in comparison to continuing his oppression underneath the Nazis. While Elie is running, he thinks, “I’ll fall. A small, red flame…A shot…Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. The idea of dying, ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue not cold, nothing.” (Wiesel, 86) Wiesel personifies death by using diction to show the temptation that Elie faced as he saw death providing a way of ending the pain. Furthermore, Elie’s desire to die shows the horrific experience he endured. The Nazis have taken everything away from him and have broken him down so much that death sounds like a better option to Elie. Ultimately, the author uses the personification of death to make the readers realize that the Holocaust tore its victims apart mentally as well as physically to the point that even a young, teenager didn’t want to live to see the future ahead of him. The entire passage is also a striking parallel to the beginning of the novel, when all he wanted was to survive but after
In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel the strategic use of syntax contributes to the ongoing theme of the novel that relationships with family and friends can help one get through the toughest of times. Wiesel wants readers to understand how depending on your loved ones can help motivate you to keep trying and never give up. For example, when Wiesel and his father met up with their family member, he writes, “The only thing that keeps me alive," he (Stein) kept saying, "is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up” (45). In this quote Stein, Wiesel’s relative, is declaring that if he had not know that his family members were alive, then he wouldn’t have the will to keep fighting.
From the time where Elie had to decide to fight for his father’s life, to the time where he questioned his beliefs, Elie has had to make many life-changing decisions. As some of his decisions left negative consequences, some were left a positive outcome. In the end, all the decisions Elie had made in the camps has made his life miserable or at its best. For better or for worse, the events that Elie encountered makes his life unforgettable as realizes there was more to life than he had thought of
A3 Suzy Kassem once wrote, “The gut is the seat of all feeling. Polluting the gut not only cripples your immune system, but also destroys your sense of empathy, the ability to identify with other humans.” The destruction of the human sense of apathy, as mentioned by Suzy Kassem, is the same kind of emotional desensitization that Auschwitz caused Elie to experience. Night by Elie Wiesel uses symbolism, personal conflicts, and flashbacks to show how desensitization leads to people becoming emotionally dormant, as he experienced during his time at Auschwitz. Through his use of symbolism, Elie exposes the emotional dormancy he experienced during his time at Auschwitz.
The book Night is a story of family, religion, violence, and hope. This book tells the story of Elie Wiesel’s journey through the holocaust. During the novel, Wiesel writes with the purpose of teaching us several lessons. This lesson is conveyed through Wiesel’s actions, other character’s actions, as well as quotations. The lesson Wiesel taught in Night is to persevere and never lose hope up no matter how hopeless the situation may seem.
In every religion, the holy text or the preachers ask that their worshippers believe in some form of God. Most people can blindly pursue and believe in God without question, without inquisition. Then there are those who cannot aimlessly worship a possibly fictional God. The struggle comes when there is no validation, no confirmation, of God or anything that He ever did. During the Holocaust, an estimated six million Jews struggle with their faith in every concentration camp, including Elie Wiesel. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses tone, diction, and characterization to expose his internal battle with believing in his faith and seeing the others battle with their faith as well.
Night by Elie Wiesel is an autobiography about his experience during the Holocaust when he was fifteen years old. Elie is fifteen when the tragedy begins. He is taken with his family through many trials and then is separated from everyone besides his father. They are left with only each other, of which they are able to confide in and look to for support. The story is told through a series of creative writing practices. Mr. Wiesel uses strong diction, and syntax as well as a combination of stylistic devices. This autobiography allows the readers to understand a personal, first-hand account of the terrible events of the holocaust. The ways that diction is used in Night helps with this understanding.
The book opens with Elie’s life before him and his family were taken away. The story continues talking about how when they arrived in Auschwitz his mother and sister were taken to the crematorium with other women and children who were not strong enough to work in the camps. The only people left from Elie’s family were him and his father. Throughout the whole book Elie talks about how his father was his only motivation to keep going. When Elie’s father dies he contemplates to keep going or just to give in. In the end he is liberated and is freed.
Faith is like a little seed; if you think about the positive aspects of a situation, then it will grow, like a seed grows when you water it. However, if the seed does not receive water anymore, it will die, which serves as a parallel to the horrors and antagonism of the concentration camps that killed Elie’s faith. After the analysis of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the reader can visualize the horrors and slaughter of millions of innocent people that occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains how his faith in God was tested, as he was forced to leave his home, separated from his family, and observed the death all around him; he even witnessed children being thrown into huge ditches of fire alive. Elie felt abandoned, betrayed, and deceived by the God that he knew who was a loving and giving God. It was then he started to doubt His existence. Elie tried to hold on to his faith, but the childhood innocence had disappeared from within him, and he lost his faith in God completely.
The appeal to emotion is the strongest by far. It seems almost impossible for a reader not to cry at the words of Wiesel. Elie paints a portrait of life in the camp, which included hours of back-breaking labor, fear of hangings, and an overall theme throughout the book: starvation. His vivid description of a child being hanged, how he was still alive, “struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes”, truly captures the ghastly occurrences of the death camp. His own discussion of how he had lost faith in a God, and how other sons were leaving or even beating their fathers with no care enlightens the reader to the true despair that surrounded the people that inhabited these camps. Also, his description of himself in a mirror as “a corpse” that “gazed back at me” installs in the reader the overwhelming sense of how this event so completely ravaged the human soul.
Elie first recalls Dr. Mengele’s “eight short, simple words” (Wiesel 27) when he enters the camps: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27) In this part of the book, Elie and his father are separated by his mother and sisters. This metaphorically kills Elie because he is very attached to his family as are they to him. A piece of Elie has been taken away from him forever. Later in his memoir, he mentions the cruel hanging of the Pipel. Previous hangings that day did not phase Elie, but when the young, angelic Pipel was hanged, Elie said his once flavorful soup “tasted of corpses.” A man near Elie was saying “Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows…”(Wiesel 62) This is a powerful quote that shows how Elie has also began to question his faith. This brings about the mindset of the death of God in Elie. Elie begins to show distrust and rebellion in his God. This is a sharp contrast to Elie’s former beliefs. When Elie’s father dies, Elie emotionally shuts his mind off. He says “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” He had finally given up. His father was his rock tied to the balloon, his reason to keep going. Without his father, Elie gave up and became zombified like the rest of the broken souls. Elie fully turned into the emotionless man that he was set to become as a result of surviving
The book Night is a memoir about Eliezer Wiesel’s greuling holocaust experience. This book discusses the the grim conditions and treatment that Mr. Weisel endured during this dark time period. Elie changed in many ways while in the camp because of the dreadful things he experienced. This essay will be focusing on the physical, spiritual, and mental changes that Eliezer went through.
Inhumanity. The cruelest of people are responsible for this. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses imagery, tone, and characterization to show the effects of inhumane actions. Night is about a young boy and his father who get separated from the rest of their family during selection of the Holocaust. This story tells how Elie survived his times in the concentration camps, even with all of the inhumane actions of the Germans.
As Elie gets used to his new life in such a hellish state, he realizes that the trusting and faithful child that he once had been had been taken away along with his family and all else that he had ever known. While so many others around him still implore the God of their past to bring them through their suffering, Wiesel reveals to the reader that although he still believes that there is a God, he no longer sees Him as a just and compassionate leader but a cruel and testing spectator.
If all the prisoners were to join as one and oppose the cruel oppression of the Nazis, Elie believes maybe then he could understand the german menace as an evil aberration. He would then be able to maintain the belief that humankind is For the most part good. But he sees that the Holocaust shows the selfishness, evil, and cruelty of which everyone and not only the germans, but also in the prisoners that surrond him, his fellow Jews, even himself is capable of this evil and un God like structure. If the world is so disgusting and cruel, he feels then God either must be disgusting and cruel or must not exist at all.
This book interested me because it is a great example of what so many people went through in concentration camps throughout Europe in World War II. So many books have been written about personal accounts of war hardships suffered by the Jews but so few capture the true problems faced by prisoners. The impossible decision between survival and family was a difficult one faced by many during this time. Elie had an unfaltering will to live when his father was alive with him but once his father died the reason for living disappeared. But he once was faced with the decision of helping to keep his father alive or let him die and have an extra ration of food. How can one be stuck with a decision like this and not choose survival? Only true unselfishness can cause you to help someone