Night
Religion has always explained the unknown in knowable terms. It has created symbols for that which could not be known. This symbolism is so deeply imbedded in our minds, cultures, and cosmology that it is rarely questioned from inside the religious paradigms. From outside that paradigm, the religious imagery loses its impact, its subliminal meaning. Religion functions to relieve the anxiety of the absolute fact for each of us that we will die, that our family will die, that our friends will die. Religion promises us that although we may die, we will continue. And, if we believe, then our afterlife will be glorious. Spirituality offers another perspective to this 'man-made' solution. The spiritualistic belief is that of love for the fellow man instead of god; hospitals instead of churches; deeds done rather than prayers said. Spirituality, although bordering on atheism, seeks to understand and love, to find an ethical way of life rather than turning to a higher being for the easy way out. In "Night" by Elie Wiesel we see death of religion in a child because of absolute evil and consequently, the embrace of spirituality. Separated from man made institutions, the core of religion and spirituality must be preserved, if one is to survive in the midst of horror.
The Jewish religion was a key motivation to the citizens of Sighet. To Jews religion is not only a method to achieve immortality, but a way of life that must be holistically embraced. This all-consuming religion demands total obedience and is a key motivation in the Jewish deportation and personal surrender to Germany . Analyzing history, one sees the pattern of a Jewish nomad lifestyle ,so deep is their faith, and moving on. "Night" is the first episode where this blind faith could not save them. Spawning from this failure of God is the genocide of millions at the hands of the Nazis. As young Eliezer visits Auschwitz and witnesses this genocide first hand, his blind faith is quickly revoked and in its place remains doubt, question and bitterness.
"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into a wreath of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Night is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There are many examples in the beginning of Night where people are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but there are many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion.
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
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.
Compassion and empathy are often described as human-kind's greatest quality. Yet, many things can distract or overpower our compassion to allow room for things like cruelty, selfishness, and the need for vengeance. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein has no compassion for his creation; however, his creation is born with large amounts of compassion, but Frankenstein ignores and abuses his monster. Victor’s lack of compassion towards the monster, makes the monster lose his own compassion in a need for vengeance to make his abuser feel the same pain he does.
...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.
The use of symbols and themes within the story serve the purpose to further analysis and to give a more complete understanding to the reading audience. Symbols and themes often complement one another to articulate the author’s purpose. In Elie Weisel’s “Night”, Elie uses both symbolism and theme to develop the story as it progresses. The use of symbolism throughout the story range from the constant reference of fire, the rising of smoke from the chimneys and even the presence of night itself.
Having faith in something can help one with survival in tough times. Elie and his family were taken from their home to the concentration camp Auschwitz. His mother and sisters are killed and he and his father go to labor camp. They get little food and are transported to many camps. Elie undergoes operation for a foot injury. In the end his father dies of a sickness and he is liberated. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience - first believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father.
“NEVER SHALL I FORGET that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about a man in the concentration camp, “He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized”, and this only reveals how sadistic people were. Dehumanization is as plain-spoken as denying food and water to someone, denying social connection or limiting someone's ability to sleep. People who had suffered did not get any freedom and it was a life filled with torment and misery. Night is written by Elie Wiesel and it is a memoir. Through the process of dehumanization, including treating the Jews like animals, taking away their identity and being denied justice that Hitler and his accomplices were able to break the will of millions of Jewish people and largely succeed with their fiendish and diabolic plan of mass genocide of Jews, known as “the final solution”.
Since I spent last weekend in Vancouver attending the funeral of a beloved aunt who died on Good Friday, you could say that I've been pondering a lot about death and dying lately. It didn't help either that I chose to bring my copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with me to read on the plane rides there and back, seeing as this story deals with the creation of a new form of life and the deaths that result from it. Being in this rather morbid frame of mind, I decided for this commentary just to take a closer examination of life and death as contained within the kind of gothic narrative of this early science-fiction horror story. It's almost like a Yin-Yang pairing between the two: Victor controls the ability to create Life (an ability that is usually looked on as being feminine) through his scientific and medical knowledge, and the Creature controls the ability to create Death (an ability usually looked on as being masculine) through his incredible strength and physical abilities. But although the Yin-Yang of Taoist thought brings harmony to the universe, this pairing of light and dark brings nothing but destruction to those it touches.
• At the beginning of Night, Eliezer describes himself as someone who believes “profoundly.” How have his experiences at Auschwitz affected that faith?
The Nazi party’s main goal was to exterminate all Jewish people, first from Germany and then from the world. In the preface for the latest version of Night, Wiesel writes, “It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.” (Wiesel, viii). When Hitler set out to exterminate an entire group of people, he wasn’t just killing bodies but also killing their culture and therefore their souls. Without this culture people may feel as though they have nothing, as though life isn’t worth living. Throughout Night, Elie himself struggles to understand his views towards his own religious beliefs. Shortly after arriving in his first concentration camps Elie thinks, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” (Wiesel, 34). Elie’s persecution for his religious beliefs caused the loss of a fundamental pillar of his identity. This left him feeling as though the basis of his whole life may not be legitimate and that his God is not there for him. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 made an annual report of religious observance in 192 countries mandatory. During one report it was noted that “a Saudi teacher
Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein is a novel narrated by Robert Walton about Victor Frankenstein and the Monster that he creates. Frankenstein grew up surrounding himself with what he loved most, science. He attended Ingolstadt University where he studied chemistry and natural philosophy, but being involved in academics was not enough for him. Frankenstein wanted to discover things, but did not think about the potential outcomes that could come with this decision. Frankenstein was astonished by the human frame and all living creatures, so he built the Monster out of various human and animal parts (Shelley, 52). At the time Frankenstein thought this creation was a great discovery, but as time went on the Monster turned out to be terrifying to anyone he came in contact with. So, taking his anger out on Frankenstein, the Monster causes chaos in a lot of people’s lives and the continuing battle goes on between the Monster and Frankenstein. Throughout this novel, it is hard to perceive who is pursuing whom as well as who ends up worse off until the book comes to a close.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus can be interpreted as a chilling warning of the dangers of scientific overreaching and ambition. Mary Shelley was already aware of the works of scientists such as Erasmus Darwin and was being influenced by writers such as Byron when, at “the age of nineteen, she achieved the quietly astonishing feat of looking beyond them and creating a lasting symbol of the perils of scientific Prometheanism” (Joseph, 1998, p, xiii). The fact that Shelley parallels her story of Frankenstein with the myth of Prometheus is interesting and gives an immediate insight into the extent of criticism she bestows on Victor Frankenstein’s scientific ambition. In one version of the Prometheus myth (Prometheus Pyprphoros) he brought down fire from the sun to succour mankind, and was then punished by being chained up with an eagle feasting on his liver in a perpetual cycle. In another version (Prometheus Plasticator) he animated a man from clay in an act of usurping God. The undoing of Frankenstein can be taken as a metaphor for either version and is key to understanding that as Shelley orchestrates Victor’s downfall she is presenting his actions as a warning of what horrors blind scientific ambition can wreak upon mankind.
Many people may think that if someone were to create life as complex as humans it would beneficial to humans. In the story Frankenstein, Victor creates an intelligent new species of life. This “monster” is rejected by society and seeks revenge on humans and Victor. Throughout Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the theme of the creation and destruction of life to illustrate how the creation of life can be a threat to many other lives.