Ishan Pradhan English Block H Feb 27 2014 How has your character changed in the book? What main events those lead to this change? How does the author show this change in writing? Night by Elie Wiesel is a novel about a Jewish boy and how he changes as he struggles through the horrifying Holocaust. In the beginning he is an innocent, observant Jewish boy knowing death only for the minute form found in literature. When he enters a concentration camp, Elie begins to see more death than most adults would see in 10 lifetimes. That’s when he starts to question his faith. As Elie loses his innocence he seems to stop caring about anything other that surviving. Every time Elie experiences something new, he changes, he loses part of his childlike innocence, his faith and even shreds his humanity. These changes are what bring forth the extreme changes within Ellie during his experiences at the Nazi concentration camps. As the book progresses Elie’s childlike innocence starts to dissipate as shown by, “In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smells of burning flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau.” (28). As that night went on the first horrors of Birkenau came alive to him. It was literally like walking through the burning inferno people called hell. That was the moment when innocence became a thing unheard to Elie and all around him in the concentration camp. The night he asked his father “when will it be our turn” (18) at that lonely night in the ghetto was the first time he began to understand the depth of the situation he was in. Then the real blow to his innocence came when he is standing at the fire pit and saying the Jewish death rights words“Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba…” m... ... middle of paper ... ...n so much as get up to see what his father wanted, which was just to see Elie again before he died. “The officer wielded his club and dealt him a violent blow to the head. I didn't move. I was afraid of another blow, this time to my head. My father groaned once more, I heard. Eliezer... I could see that he was still breathing- in gasp. I didn't move."(111) Over the years Elie spent in concentration camps, he changed drastically. He lost his unbearable Jewish faith, his innocence and could not call himself a human being anymore as he had lost so much of his humanity. After the liberation as Elie was looking at himself on a mirror" from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me."(115) Bibliography: Wiesel, Elie, Elie Wiesel, and Elie Wiesel. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.
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.
As much as Eliezer tried to deny it, he knew the point was coming where he would have to leave his father behind. Had he not done so, his own life could have come to an end. At one point in the book the prisoners are being marched to another camp. When Rabbi Eliahu starts falling to the back of the procession, his son marched ahead and abandoned his father. Eliezer witnesses the boy trying to rid himself of the burden his father, Rabbi Eliahu, has become.
Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy, lives in Sighet during World War II with his mother, father, and two sisters, and he is very religious and wanted to study Judaism. However, there were warnings by some people that Jewish people were being deported and killed. Although no one believes these warnings, Elie and his family are taken to a ghetto where they have no food. After being in the ghetto Elie and his father are separated from Elie’s mother and sister because of selection and were placed in cattle cars where they had no room. They are taken to Auschwitz where they suffer from hunger, beatings, and humiliation from the guards which causes Elie’s father to become weak. By now Elie loses his faith in God because of all he has been through. Lastly, Elie’s father dies just before the Jews are liberated and Elie sees his reflection in the mirror but does not recognize himself because he looks like a skeleton.
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.
..., which made him more upset because it was his own father. Also, he speaks about reaching down into his inner conscious to find out why he really was not as upset and he would have been if it were the first week in the camp. Elie believes that if he reached into his thoughts he would have come up with something like: “Free at last!...”(112).
Samuels starts out explaining the background of Elie, a child who has a great love for religion. Then, Nazis come and occupy his native town of Sighet. Although held captured and clueless to where they were going, the Jews were indeed optimistic. They had no reason not to be, the Nazis were treating them as they were of importance. However, the optimism was to come to a halt. After arresting the Jewish leader, the Jews were sent to ghettos, then into camps. It wasn't until they reached Auschwitz where Elie for the first time smelt burning flesh. Then the eight words that Elie couldn't forget, "Men to the left! Women to the right!" He was then left with his father, who for the whole trip he would depend on to survive. It was this, in which made him lose his religiousness. In the months to come Elie and his father lived like animals. Tragically, in the end his father past away, and to amazement Elie had not wept. Samuels did an overall remarkable job on this review; however, there were still some parts that could have been improved.
Also, he remained calm when his father was harassed by the guards. In the book, Elie said “Then I had to go to sleep”(Wiesel 112) and after his father’s death, the thing he said wasn’t about his sadness. It was about his freedom. He said, “Free at last”(Wiesel 112). Elie is not the old Elie anymore.
...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.
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.
In Eliezer Wiesel’s novel “Night”, it depicts the life of a father and son going through the concentration camp of World War II. Both Eliezer and his father are taken from their home, where they would experience inhuman and harsh conditions in the camps. The harsh conditions cause Eliezer and his father’s relationship to change. During their time in the camps, Eliezer Wiesel and his father experience a reversal of their roles.
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.
In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie goes through many changes, as a character, while he was in Auschwitz. Before Elie was sent to Auschwitz, he was just a small child that new little of the world. He made poor decisions and questioned everything. Elie was a religious boy before he
First of all, the father-son relationship between Eliezer and his father in the novel experiences an emotional change. At first, the relationship between these two characters is rather stressed and awkward. They were ever close to each other, and Eliezer illustrates the painful atmosphere by describing, “My father was a cultured, rather unsentimental man. There was never any display of emotion, even at home. He was more concerned with others than with his own family” (Wiesel 2).
...o adulthood. When Elie was finally released and for the first time in years seen himself in a mirror and “from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating” (115) him. Despite the fact that Elie physically survived Auschwitz, he was emotionally dead. The many traumatizing experiences he had been through affected Elie in such a way that made him lose his innocence along with the will to live. His reason of survival was purely luck.