John Luke Godino Mr. Smith English 1-D May 11, 2017 Helping hand Throughout the freshman year I’ve read a plethora of books and few of them have a common theme that can be connected to each book. Although the three books I have chosen for my final essay are so drastically different the theme of needing help is found in all of them. Night by Elie Wiesel, “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien are seemingly too different to relate to each other, but Elie Wiesel, Madame Loisel from The Necklace and Frodo Baggins from the Shire all have moments in their story where they either needed help but refused to receive it or either struggled with overcoming a problem with help. Night is a tragic story of a Jewish family being incarcerated in the Holocaust. When Elie Wiesel’s family is transported to the Ghetto, they have many chances of accepting help from their previous maid who suggests they could hide in her house to save themselves, but sadly they refuse, “The ghetto was not guarded. One could enter and leave as one pleased. Maria, …show more content…
When the plot progresses, she losses a necklace that she borrowed from her friend, and she cannot muster the courage to ask the price of the necklace so she can pay for a replacement. "You must write to your friend," he said, "and tell her that you've broken the clasp of her necklace and are getting it mended. That will give us time to look about us. “She wrote at his dictation. (4 Maupassant). Out of embarrassment, she refuses the easy help of just asking for something so simple. "Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . " (6 Maupassant). The cost of just admitting that you failed to uphold a task is nothing compared to the amount of time trying to mend it the hard
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
In the beginning of the novel, Elie’s father Shlomo Wiesel is a respected Jewish community leader in Sighet. He was held in the highest esteem by the community and his advice and knowledge was frequently sought (Wiesel 22). Unfortunately, Shlomo Wiesel made the same mistake as other Jews, and decided to ignore the warnings about the Nazis. Before everything started, Elie even asked his father to sell everything and move to Palestine, but his father told him, “I am too old, my son, too old to start a new life. Too old to start from scratch in some distant land…”(Wiesel 27) . Soon after, the Nazis come into Sighet and formed two ghettos. While been in the smaller ghetto waiting to be moved, the Wiesel’s family former maid, Maria, offers to hide the family in her village, but once again Elie’s father declines the opportunity.
Since the publication of, Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the holocaust has been deemed one of the darkest times in humanity, from the eradication of Jewish people to killing of innocents. Wiesel was one of the Jewish people to be in the holocaust and from his experience he gave us a memoir that manages to capture the dark side of human nature in the holocaust. He demonstrates the dark side of human nature through the cruelty the guards treat the Jews and how the Jews became cold hearted to each other. Wiesel uses foreshadowing and imagery, and metaphors to describe these events.
In his memoir “Night”, Elie Wiesel recalls his experience leading up to, in the middle of, and immediately following his forced servitude during the Holocaust. One of the most remarkable parts of Wiesel’s story is the dehumanization that occurs over the course of his imprisonment. In a system built to take away the identity of its subjects, Elie constantly grapples with his sense of self during the Holocaust and even finds himself lost by the end of the book. This loss of innocence and selfhood is a key element of Elie’s physical, emotional, and spiritual journey throughout the story.
In the 1940s, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, German soldiers caused great destruction throughout Europe. Elie Wiesel, a young boy at the time, was caught in the traumatic crossfire of the devastation occurring in that time period. The memoir, Night, tells the horrific stories that Elie Wiesel experienced. Elie was forced into concentration camps with his dad where he soon had to grow up fast to face the reality of his new life filled with violence, inhumanity and starvation, many of which he had never endured before. In Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, he validates his theme of violence and inhumane treatment toward Jews through the use of excessive force such as the brutal beating to show Eliezer that he should not have been roaming the camp and see Idek sleeping with the girl; killing in the camps for no reason to show the hatred toward the Jews; and the limited food portions to starve them and the constant psychological torture.
In Night, Elie Wiesel descriptively portrays the Holocaust and the experiences he has in each part of his survival. From the ghettos to the Death March and liberation, Elie Wiesel shares his story of sadness and suffering. Specifically Wiesel speaks about his short experience in the Sighet ghetto, a historically accurate recount illustrating the poor living conditions, the Judenrat and Jewish life in the ghetto as well as the design and purpose of the two Sighet ghettos. Wiesel’s description of the Sighet ghettos demonstrates the similar characteristics between the Sighet ghetto and other ghettos in Germany and in German-annexed territories.
There are times when people are hurting and feel like giving up, but then they think of their family and they keep trying. In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie the narrator and protagonist is at a concentration camp. Although he lost his mother and sisters the first day, he still has his father with him. As the story goes on, readers learn of the hard experiences he goes through and what is going on his mind the whole time. He struggles with his faith and belief in God and he learns what it means to live not just for himself, but also for the one’s who love him. By examining the novel Night, we can see that family is the key to survival, which is important because those who do not have family often end up not surviving because they don’t have someone to push them and someone to live for besides themselves.
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.”
Wiesel’s family was socially active within the community and well trusted. When World War II began, the town of Sighet was forced to live within two ghettos. However, Wiesel and his family were able to live wi... ... middle of paper ... ...
A simple act of kindness and support can possibly be the savior to someone else’s misery. In the novel, Night, written by Eliezer Wiesel, Elie portrays the daily lifestyle of the Jews during the Holocaust, and shares his personal experiences. He goes through hardships as he travels from the ghettos to the concentration camps with his one and only family member remaining, his father. The S.S. soldiers take the author’s mother and his two sisters away from him as they arrive at the ghetto because they separating women from men. Throughout the novel, Elie experiences personality adaptations and loses his faith in God all due to the loss of humanity in his world. With this in mind, he bases his survival on his determination and not his luck. Eliezer survives the Holocaust as a result to the hope he provides for his father and the support he receives from others throughout his journey.
5. (CP) Madame Loisel borrows seemingly expensive necklace to satisfy her arrogance and attend a party that was way above her social class, only to lose it. She has been blessed with physical beauty, but not with the lifestyle she desires. She may not be the ideal protagonist, but she went through a tough time after she lost the necklace and had to make money to replace it.
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.
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.
At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.
In the short story “The Necklace”, the main character, Loisel, is a woman who dreams of greater things in her life. She is married to a poor clerk who tries his best to make her happy no matter what. In an attempt to try to bring happiness to his wife, he manages to get two invitations to a very classy ball, but even in light of this Loisel is still unhappy. Even when she gets a new dress she is still unhappy. This lasts until her husband suggests she borrows some jewelry from a friend, and upon doing so she is finally happy. Once the ball is over, and they reach home, Loisel has the horrible realization that she has lost the necklace, and after ten years of hard labor and suffering, they pay off debts incurred to get a replacement. The central idea of this story is how something small can have a life changing effect on our and others life’s. This idea is presented through internal and external conflicts, third person omniscient point of view, and the round-dynamic character of Loisel. The third person limited omniscient point-of-view is prevalent throughout this short story in the way that the author lets the reader only see into the main character’s thoughts. Loisel is revealed to the reader as being unhappy with her life and wishing for fancier things. “She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries.” (de Maupassant 887) When her husband tries to fancy things up, “she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls…” (de Maupassant 887) As the story goes on her point of view changes, as she “now knew the horrible existence of the needy. She took her part, moreover all of a sudden, with heroism.” (de Maupassant 891) Having the accountability to know that the “dreadful debt must be paid.” (de Maupassant 891 ) This point-of-view is used to help the reader gain more insight to how Loisel’s whole mindset is changed throughout her struggle to pay off their debts. Maupassant only reveals the thoughts and feelings of these this main character leaving all the others as flat characters. Loisel is a round-dynamic character in that Maupassant shows how she thought she was born in the wrong “station”. “She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station.