Elie Wiesel wrote “Night” as a memoir, in his perspective living as a child in the holocaust. After reading this work, I felt like I could see everything through his eyes, as a child. There are many psychoanalytical approaches in which this novel could be seen, especially looking at how Wiesel came about writing such a heavy book after ten years of silence.
Whenever I read a book, I try and read it like I am the author, looking over a final copy. That is the way I believe literature should be read, through the lenses of the author and when reading, you must think through the author’s memories, and thoughts while writing. The author wrote this book after taking a self inflected ten-year oath of silence, never to speak of his experiences in the holocaust or with his family again. This may have been from the idea, “Instead of an attenuation with growing temporal distance from the event, we have witnessed an increase in memory activities during the last two decades” (Assmann, 262). Something changed in him, as an adult instead of a child and that change is an important thing to incorporate in thinking when reading Night. Because this book is written in the first person, as himself as a fifteen year old boy, that is how I read it, as a child. There has been a lot of research on children development regarding their psychological manors.
One psychoanalytical critic is Sigmund Freud and his structural model of the psyche. After reading and understanding his model of the growth of children’s sense of self, I saw an impact on Elie’s story from different stages in his life. While reading Night, there are many things to focus on, but from a psychoanalytical view the effects of looking at psychological types and principles present throug...
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...through the gates of Buchenwald. This reference gives a youthful and hopefully outlook on the lucky few that will live to see another day outside the walls of hell.
“Children” is a word to describe a young person who has not lived long. This word can also refer to a person’s mental capacity and level for example to say “that was a childish thing to do”. This word has a extremely important meaning and reference to this work, Night. The connection made between the actual children, young boys and girls brought in, who immediately were sent to death, and the negative connotation it formed to all the men working in concentration camps. The use of this word throughout is used often to strip any confidence or manliness in any souls in the camps. Regarding these men as “children” gave them a demeaning outcast and successful made them feel inferior to their leaders.
In the 1930s-1940s, the Nazis took millions of Jews into their death camps. They exterminated children, families, and even babies. Elie Wiesel was one of the few who managed to live through the war. However, his life was forever scarred by things he witnessed in these camps. The book Night explained many of the harsh feelings that Elie Wiesel experienced in his time in various German concentration camps.
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.
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.
Elie Wiesel has gone through more in life than any of us could ever imagine. One of my favorite quotes from him says, “To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” In his novel “Night” we are given an in-depth look at the pure evil that was experienced during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. We see Wiesel go from a faithful, kind Jewish boy to a survivor. As he experiences these events, they change him drastically.
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.
All humans are supposed to have emotion, but when people don’t have anything to hold on to positive emotions can become dormant. The memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, is Wiesel’s story from surviving the Holocaust with the help of his father and fighting to stay alive day by day. Wiesel suffered from brutal conditions in labor camps and managed to survive through the agony while watching others perished every day. The unnatural behavior by the S.S. led to dehumanization that shattered the faith of Elie Wiesel and many other prisoners.
In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel faces the horrors of the Holocaust, where he loses many friends and family, and almost his life. He starts as a kind young boy, however, his environment influences many of the decisions he makes. Throughout the novel, Elie Wiesel changes into a selfish boy, thinks of his father as a liability and loses his faith in God as an outcome his surroundings.
In the novel, Night, a journey of a young boy who teetered between life and death for so long is told. The struggle he faced, the strive to survive, and the desire to remain by his father’s side are all difficulties he encountered. The holocaust was a horrifying time- millions were murdered because they were considered a subspecies slowing down the evolutionary processA time of misery and fear for people of the Jewish religion, Wiesel shares his experience during this petrifying time.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
Upon analysis of Night, Elie Wiesel’s use of characterization and conflict in the memoir helps to illustrate how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and
Why did Elie let it happen? What could Elie really have done as an alternative to save his father from dying? He could not have helped his father from being beaten up by the SS guards but he did try to help him from being attacked by his own men in his sleeping barracks. Elie really wanted his father to live. Elie does everything possible to help his father unless it would do harm to himself.
Change is an unpredictable and inevitable thing. One cannot know what alteration it may bring but it can, without doubt, be expected said Hazel M, an Honor English student (par.1). Eliezer, the protagonist in Night, encounters change numerous times. One of the mainly considerable changes he comes across, while in the concentration camps, is that of his relationship with his father. Before the Holocaust, Eliezer’s relation with his father was very distant, I will say non existent.