Night by Elie Wiesel

833 Words2 Pages

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see…” When analyzed literally, this quote appears to contradict itself. After all, doesn’t darkness impair vision? However, when applied to Elie Wiesel’s Night, this paradox certainly rings true. It implies that in times of despair, humans often view life in a different light. Sheathed in darkness, the truth becomes illuminated. In Night, the Jews’ “dark time” entails being stripped of their freedom, rights, family, food, shelter, religion, and identity. With the loss of each of these precious possessions, the Jews begin to recognize the worth of such elements. Wistfully, they realize that these belongings should not be taken for granted, that they are truly priceless. As stated by Elie on page 23,“Our eyes were opened. Too late.”

At first, the Jews believe the Germans to be harmless. It takes dark times and drastic measures for the German’s true wickedness to be unveiled. One of the first instances in which the Jews are exposed to the true evil of their antagonists is the first moment they get off of their cattle cars at Birkenau-Auschwitz. Consumed by Madame Schachter’s prophesied “fire,” the sky symbolizes the flaming hell that the Jews are about to endure. At this moment, as the Jews stare silently at the ravenous chimneys spouting out flames, their worst nightmares evolve into reality. At midnight, the witching hour, the Jews’ eyes finally begin to see the evil that surrounds them.

The Germans can only be described as monsters, for their horrific acts of cruelty are wholly inhumane. During the Holocaust, the Germans strip the Jews of everything in their possession, to the point where the Jews are completely dehumanized. This is all a part of the Germans’ scheme to massacre the Jews with...

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...mans’ mass murders? During a paramount man vs. himself conflict, Elie allows the darkness to swallow his final piece of light.

When Elie loses faith, darkness becomes an increasingly dominant piece of imagery in Night. Darkness reflects Elie’s sullen mood and dreary outlook on life. Nighttime entails fear and death, two things that Elie has become greatly accustomed to in Auschwitz.

Elie is the main dynamic character throughout Night, leaving the story deeply changed by his horrendous experiences. As an author, Elie Wiesel refuses to let people forget about the Holocaust. His ultimate “dark time” caused his eyes to see one final truth: no matter how much agony it may entail, he must share his story with the world. Otherwise, history might repeat itself. It is safe to say that Elie Wiesel has surpassed his goal.

Works Cited

Night by Elie Wiesel

Loss Of Innocence In The Book Night
1849 Words | 4 Pages
Elie’s loss of innocence and childhood lifestyle is very pronounced within the book, Night. This book, written by the main character, Elie Wiesel, tells the readers about the experiences of Mr. Wiesel during the Holocaust. The book starts off by describing Elie’s life in his hometown, Sighet, with his family and friends. As fascism takes over Hungary, Elie and his family are sent north, to Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie stays with his father and speaks of his life during this time. Later, after many stories of the horrors and dehumanizing acts of the camp, Elie and his father make the treacherous march towards Gliewitz. Then they are hauled to Buchenwald by way of cattle cars in extremely deplorable conditions, even by Holocaust standards. The book ends as Elie’s father is now dead and the American army has liberated them. As Elie is recovering in the hospital he gazes at himself in a mirror, he subtly notes he much he has changed. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie loses his innocence and demeanour because he was traumatized by what he saw in the camps, his loss of faith in a God who stood idly by while his people suffered, and becoming selfish as he is forced to become selfish in the death camps to survive.
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Commentary On Night By Elie Wiesel
560 Words | 2 Pages
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
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Indifference in Night by Elie Wiesel: A Poison That Spreads
1050 Words | 3 Pages
In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the author displays the transformation and the evolution of the average human being, through a horrible experience that he personally went through. When he is transported from one place to another, forced to leave everything behind, to go live in the ghettos, then in a horrible concentration camp. In the concentration camp, Elie experiences numerous events that challenge his physical and mental limits. Some of these events made him question his faith, and whether there is such a thing as God, turning him from a conservative Jew to a reform Jew. Elie doesn’t love the concentration camps, yet he doesn’t hate it, in fact he does not care anymore.
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Night In Elie Wiesel's Night
939 Words | 2 Pages
The significance of night throughout the novel Night by Elie Wiesel shows a poignant view into the daily life of Jews throughout the concentration camps. Eliezer describes each day as if there was not any sunshine to give them hope of a new day. He used the night to symbolize the darkness and eeriness that were brought upon every Jew who continued to survive each day in the concentration camps. However, night was used as an escape from the torture Eliezer and his father had to endure from the Kapos who controlled their barracks. Nevertheless, night plays a developmental role of Elie throughout he novel.
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Elie Wiesel's Night
679 Words | 2 Pages
Inked on the pages of Elie Wiesel’s Night is the recounting of him, a young Jewish boy, living through the mass genocide that was the Holocaust. The words written so eloquently are full of raw emotions depict his journey from a simple Jewish boy to a man who was forced to see the horrors of the world. Within this time period, between beatings and deaths, Wiesel finds himself questioning his all loving and powerful God. If his God loved His people, then why would He allow such a terrible thing to happen? Perhaps Wiesel felt abandoned by his God, helpless against the will of the Nazis as they took everything from him.
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Elie Wiesel's 'When Evil Closed In'
444 Words | 1 Pages
Could you imagine a cold breeze that just cuts you up left and right? Or perhaps long days of starvation, with the sight of grass pleasing your stomach. For Elie Wiesel this was no imagination, nor a dream, this was in fact reality. Such a horrifying experience in his life he felt he had to share in a book called Night. Gertrude Samuels, who wrote the review, "When Evil Closed In," tries to help you depict on what devastating situations Elie was put through.
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Night by Elie Wiesel
988 Words | 2 Pages
...e has to deal with the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God at the very young age of fifteen. He retells the horrors of the concentration camp, of starvation, beatings, torture, illness, and hard labor. He comes to question how God could let this happen and to redefine the existence of God in the concentration camp. This book is also filled with acts of kindness and compassion amid the degradation and violence. It seems that for every act of violence that is committed, Elie counteracts with some act of compassion. Night is a reflection on goodness and evil, on responsibility to family and community, on the struggle to forge identity and to maintain faith. It shows one boy's transformation from spiritual idealism to spiritual death via his journey through the Nazi's failed attempt to conquer and erase a people and their faith.
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Elie Wiesel Change In The Book Night
719 Words | 2 Pages
When the Holocaust happened there were many Jews killed due to gas chambers and fires that hid their remains. The book Night is about Elie wiesel (a survivor of the Holocaust) and what had happened to him in auschwitz. Elie wiesel is an actual survivor of the holocaust who wrote this book to show the horrors of auschwitz. He was very changed after he came out of the concentration camp known as Auschwitz(the biggest concentration camp during the holocaust). In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, was affected by the events in the book because he didn't care if he died, he wasn't mournful over death, and he was psychologically affected.
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Night Elie Wiesel Quotes
1135 Words | 3 Pages
“Even in darkness, it is possible to create light”(Wiesel). In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, the author, as a young boy who profoundly believed in his religion, experiences the life of a prisoner in the Holocaust. He struggles to stay with his father while trying to survive. Through his experience, he witnesses the changes in his people as they fight each other for themselves. He himself also notices the change within himself. In Night, it is discovered that atrocities and cruel treatment can make decent people into brutes. Elie himself also shows signs of becoming a brute for his survival, but escapes this fate, which is shown through his interactions with his father.
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Examples Of Imagery In Night By Elie Wiesel
598 Words | 2 Pages
A story of a young boy and his father as they are stolen from their home in Transylvania and taken through the most brutal event in human history describes the setting. This boy not only survived the tragedy, but went on to produce literature, in order to better educate society on the truth of the Holocaust. In Night, the author, Elie Wiesel, uses imagery, diction, and foreshadowing to describe and define the inhumanity he experienced during the Holocaust.
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Examples Of Change In Night By Elie Wiesel
780 Words | 2 Pages
When people are placed in difficult, desolate situations, they often change in a substantial way. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist, Elie, is sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he undergoes many devastating experiences. Due to these traumatic events, Elie changes drastically, losing his passion in God, becoming disconnected with his father, and maturing when it matters most.
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How Does Elie Wiesel Change In The Book Night
663 Words | 2 Pages
Did you know you could kill 6,000,000, and capture about 1 million people in one lifetime? In “Night” Elie Wiesel talks about the life of one of those 7 million people, going into detail about the living conditions, and also talking about the experiences in the book that happened to him. The book explains how it felt to be in a concentration camp, and how it changed a person so much you couldn’t tell the difference between the dead and the living. Elie Wiesel is the author and he was only around 15 when this story happened, so this is his story and how the events in the story changed him. So in the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, “Elie,” is affected by the events in the book such as losing faith, becoming immune to death, and emotionally changing throughout the course of the book.
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Holocaust
3103 Words | 7 Pages
Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote Night with the notion for society to advance its understanding of the Holocaust. The underlying theme of Night is faith. Elie Wiesel, for the majority of this work, concerns the faith and survival of his father, Chlomo Wiesel. The concept of survival intertwines with faith, as survival is brought upon Elie’s faith in his father. Both Elie and Chlomo are affected in the same manner as their Jewish society. The self-proclaimed superman race of the German Nazis suppress and ultimately decimate the Jewish society of its time. Elie and Chlomo, alongside their Jewish community, were regarded as subhumans in a world supposedly fit for the Nazi conception. The oppression of Elie and Chlomo begins in 1944, when the Germans constrain the Jews of Sighet into two ghettos. During the time of Nazi supremacy, Elie and Chlomo are forced to travel to various concentration camps, including Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald.
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Elie Wiesel's Night
438 Words | 1 Pages
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
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Dehumanization in Night
2056 Words | 5 Pages
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize men and cause them to revert to basic instincts. Wiesel and his peers devolve from civilized human beings to savage animals during the course of Night.
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Night by Elie Wiesel

Loss Of Innocence In The Book Night

Commentary On Night By Elie Wiesel

Indifference in Night by Elie Wiesel: A Poison That Spreads

Night In Elie Wiesel's Night

Elie Wiesel's Night

Elie Wiesel's 'When Evil Closed In'