Every single human being, at some point in time, goes through various troublesome experiences, be it a natural disaster, illness, an abusive relationship, a violent incident, or the loss of a loved one. However, some experiences are more devastating than others. Each survivor has his/her way of coping with the trauma and maintaining sanity. Elie Wiesel, one the survivors of the Holocaust, gives us some insight into dealing with extremely difficult experiences. He spent a year imprisoned in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, the same camps where he lost all his family members (Wiesel 15). After his liberation, he moved to France where he learned French and studied Literature, Philosophy, and Psychology. Then, he then worked as …show more content…
Surviving such an experience usually leaves an individual with permanent sequels. “Why do I write? Perhaps, in order not to get mad. Or, on the contrary, to touch the bottom of madness” (15). Anything which is not logical is usually referred to as insanity. Since no logic can be derived from the extermination of millions of Jews, the Holocaust can be considered as an epitome of madness. A survivor may choose to run away from the madness of such a traumatic experience. On the other hand, the survivor may decide to fully embrace madness to make sense out of an experience of madness. Madness generates constant questioning which in turn fosters deciphering. Hence, touching the bottom of madness does not necessarily mean a mental breakdown. It also implies the achievement of full understanding and a sense of closure. The great philosopher Aristotle once said, “No great mind ever existed without a touch of madness” which infers that madness is a relatively subjective term. It can be seen as a disease, or simply as an extremity. Elie Wiesel might have been referring to madness as the mental illness. He had to write because containing that experience might have made him mad. At the same time, he might have been writing to fully immerse himself in the madness, so as to get to the deepest level of …show more content…
Paragraph 11 demonstrates this struggle. It portrays the survivor as being unresolved and confused. He is a survivor, but he is also a human being. Maybe he should stop mourning the past, go on with his life, and be genuinely happy. He, too, wants to celebrate the beauty of love and life. As human beings, we are usually drawn to success and personal achievements. Abraham Maslow, a great psychologist, calls this the need for self-actualization. Though being a survivor, Elie Wiesel felt the need to achieve his goals and realize his full potential without necessarily speaking the language of the night. Even with his writings, Wiesel attempted to explore other prospects like the Bible and the Talmud. “In my other books, I have tried to follow other roads. For it is dangerous to linger among the dead, they hold onto you, and you run the risk of speaking only them” (18). He was, probably, trying to run away from his memories. The survivor wishes he could leave the darkness and enter the light, but he is afraid he might be betraying the dead. There are times of doubt for the survivor, times when he has no idea about which path to take. Nevertheless, the survivor decides to remain loyal because he “…owes nothing to anyone, but everything to the death” (17). For them, he would, incessantly, keep
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Most people have never experienced anything near as awful as what Wiesel experienced. He was one of the only people who found a way to hold onto their faith. Many made excuses not to perform rituals and eventually lost all faith. Wiesel was weakened, but remained faithful. Akiba Drumer, a friend of Wiesel, tried to convince himself that it was a test by God. However, Akiba also lost faith. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (Wiesel 34) This quote was from a small portion of Wiesel’s “Never Shall I Forget Poem.” It showed how Elie lost faith in God when he saw what the Nazis were doing to families and children. This quote shows how the religious part of Elie was “murdered.” Elie seemed to become foreign and isolated from his people. He seemed to be just going through the motions during his time in the camps. “In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.” (Mauriac XXI) This quote shows how Wiesel felt like he was a stranger to the religion, community, and faith. Elie Wiesel couldn’t understand why God would hurt people, and most of all why he was spared. “And question of questions: Where was God in all this? It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God.” (Hope, Despair and Memory) This shows how Wiesel couldn’t grasp the reasoning behind God. He wanted
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Through the death and destruction of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel survived. He survived the worst of it, going from one concentration camp to it all. He survived the beginning when thousands of Jews were forcefully put under extremely tight living quarters. By the time they were settled in they were practically living on top of one another, with at least two or three families in one room. He survived Madame Schächter, a 50 year old woman who was shouting she could see a fire on their way to the concentration camp. He survived the filtration of men against all the others, lying his was through the typical questions telling them he was 18 instead of nearly 15; this saved his life. He survived the multiple selections they underwent where they kept the healthiest of them all, while the rest were sent off to the furnaces. He survived the sights he saw, the physical
In his memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel describes the horrors he experienced during the Holocaust. One prominent theme throughout the work is the evolution of human relationships within the camp, specifically between fathers and sons. While they are marching between camps, Elie speaks briefly with Rabbi Eliahu, who lost sight of his son on the long journey. Elie says he has not seen the rabbi’s son, but after Rabbi Eliahu leaves, he remembers seeing the son. He realizes that the rabbi’s son did not lose track of his father but instead purposefully ran ahead thinking it would increase his chances of survival. Elie, who has abandoned nearly all of his faith in God, cannot help but pray, saying, “ ‘ Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done’ ” (Wiesel 91). In this moment, his most fervent hope is that he will remain loyal to his father and not let his selfishness overcome his dedication to his father. However, he is soon no longer able to maintain this hope.
Imagine being trapped in a ghetto, seeing communities leaving in trains, families being split up, never to see each other again.. The emotions that each and every Holocaust survivor must’ve gone through is overwhelming. Some things that are taken for granted, will never be seen again. While reading the two texts, Night by Elie Wiesel and “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Pavel Friedman, The two predominant emotions that prevailed most to Holocaust victims and survivors were hope and fear.
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
“He’s the man who’s lived through hell without every hating. Who’s been exposed to the most depraved aspects of human nature but still manages to find love, to believe in God, to experience joy.” This was a quote said by Oprah Winfrey during her interview with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. No person who has not experienced the Holocaust and all its horrors could ever relate to Elie Wiesel. He endured massive amounts of torture, physically, mentally, and emotionally just because he was a Jew. One simple aspect of Wiesel’s life he neither chose or could changed shaped his life. It is important to take a look at Wiesel’s life to see the pain that he went through and try to understand the experiences that happened in his life. Elie Wiesel is a well respected, influential figure with an astonishing life story. Although Elie Wiesel had undergone some of the harshest experiences possible, he was still a man able to enjoy life after the Holocaust.
...igher being, or achieving a lifetime goal. People can survive even in the most horrible of situations as long as they have hope and the will to keep fighting, but when that beacon begins to fade. They will welcome what ever ends their plight. The Holocaust is one of the greatest tragedies in human history. Elie Wiesel wrote this memoir in hopes that future generations don't forget the mistakes of the past, so that they may not repeat them in the future, even so there is still genocide happening today in places like Kosovo, Somalia, and Darfur, thousands of people losing their will to live because of the horrors they witness, if Elie Wiesel has taught us anything, it is that the human will is the weakest yet strongest of forces.
The best teachers have the capabilities to teach from first hand experience. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel conveys his grueling childhood experiences of survival to an audience that would otherwise be left unknown to the full terrors of the Holocaust. Night discloses mental and physical torture of the concentration camps; this harsh treatment forced Elie to survive rather than live. His expert use of literary devices allowed Wiesel to grasp readers by the hand and theatrically display to what extent the stress of survival can change an individual’s morals. Through foreshadowing, symbolism, and repetition, Wiesel’s tale proves that the innate dark quality of survival can take over an individual.
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl explores what happens to the human mind when placed in the cruel conditions of a concentration camp. In his book, Frankl explains that the prisoners who lost hope and meaning quickly withered and died. He quotes Friedrich Nietzsche when he says, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” (Frankl 97). As an example, Elie Wiesel survived living in a concentration camp because he had a ‘why’. Through Wiesel’s story, it is evident that his father was one of the only reasons he survived. Wiesel needed to take care of his father and help him survive. His father gave him a purpose.
Man’s Search for Meaning captivated my interest within the concept of self-love, and hopefulness while in a dehumanized , self loathed, hatred environment, which ultimately ruminates, my self awareness and acknowledgments within the existential belief theory and the power capacity of the human brain. Viktor E. Frankl details readers in his own horrific predicament during World War II, expressing the harsh treatment and imprisonment of Jews in Auschwitz concentration camps. While at camp Frankl expressed multiple stages in which individuals faced within these difficult times while also accompanying for psychological