Rising Above Hatred

821 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: fear in night by elie wiesel

Night Essay

Night, a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, and the Twilight Zone episode “He’s Alive” are both depictions of the Holocaust. Night describes Elie’s account of the concentration camps, and “He’s Alive” features a man named Pete who wanted to purify the United States by eliminating all foreigners, which is essentially an allusion to the genocide of European Jews during World War II. The message of “He’s Alive” is that humans are responsible for the creation of hatred but are also capable of destroying hatred. Rob Serling warns that hate stems from prejudice and ignorance, and similarly, Elie’s memoir portrays actions of hate that are caused by bigotry and oblivion.

The central theme conveyed in the Twilight Zone episode “He’s Alive” is that humans are responsible for the creation of hatred but also have the ability to destroy it. Rob Serling says, “Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare - Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York?” Hate is symbolized as a phantom because it is sinister and intangible. Hate doesn’t have a solitary location where it resides; like a phantom, it lurks everywhere. People also incite hatred by spreading derogatory ideas about another person or group of people, hence the comparison of hate to “a resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare.” In addition, Pete’s friend, Ernst, insulted Pete during his speech by stating the detrimental effects of his movement. The audience that was previously listening to Pete’s speech followed Ernst when he leaves. Ernst’s courage to challenge Pete’s ideas demonstrates the potential effect of a person’s words; he changed the opinion of an entire audience and ...

... middle of paper ...

...many people have been victims of bigotry.

In conclusion, Night and the Twilight Zone episode “He’s Alive” represent the discrimination of the minority through the Holocaust. The central theme of “He’s Alive” is that people are responsible for creating hate but they also have the ability to destroy it. The episode portrays the harmful effects of hatred and the reward of defiance against such an unreasonable movement. When Ernst voiced his opinion during Pete’s speech, it persuaded the audience to view against Pete’s beliefs. Night and “He’s Alive” also shows how hate is caused by prejudice and ignorance, creating chaos and injustice. The characters in both Night and “He’s Alive” face hardships because they succumbed to others’ ideas of hatred and didn’t resist them. Ultimately, acceptance is the most effective solution to cease hate from forming and spreading.

Show More
Related

  • Character Change In Night By Elie Wiesel

    1208 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book, Night, by Eliezer (Elie) Wiesel, entails the story of his childhood in Nazi concentration camps all around Europe. Around the middle of the 20th century in the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army traveled around Europe in an effort to exterminate the Jewish population. As they went to through different countries in order to enforce this policy, Nazi officers sent every Jewish person they found to a concentration camp. Often called death camps, the main purpose was to dispose of people through intense work hours and terrible living conditions. Wiesel writes about his journey from a normal, happy life to a horrifying environment surrounded by death in the Nazi concentration camps. Night is an amazingly

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel's Survival in Night

    781 Words  | 2 Pages

    Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Holocaust was the mass murder of Jews during the period of 1941 to 1945 under the German Nazi regime. More than six million European Jews were murdered out of a nine million Jewish population. Out of those who had survived was Elie Wiesel, who is the author of a literary memoir called Night. Night was written in the mid 1950’s after Wiesel had promised himself ten years before the making of this book to stay silent about his suffering and undergoing of the Holocaust. The story begins in Transylvania and then follows his journey through a number of concentration camps in Europe. The protagonist, Eliezer or Elie, battles with Nazi persecution and his faith in God and humanity. Wiesel’s devotion in writing Night was to not stay quiet and bear witness; on the contrary, it was too aware and to enlighten others of this tragedy in hopes of preventing an event like this from ever happening again.

    Read More

  • 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 challenges 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. At a conference in 1986 Elie explains “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference”. (Elie Wiesel), meaning that opposite of love is not hate, it’s getting used to use to the situation, to the point that the person doesn’t care whether what is happening is right or wrong. In the novel Elie experience physical, mental, and spiritual pain, that test his humanity and morality.

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel Dehumanization In Night

    805 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Human Nature In Night By Elie Wiesel

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Dehumanization in Night, by Elie Wiesel

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald writes “He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized”. This idea of how people could become almost unimaginably cruel due to dehumanization corresponds with the Jews experience in the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the ruthless massacre of Jewish people, and other people who were consider to be vermin to the predetermined Aryan race in the 1940s. One holocaust survivor and victim was Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Night. Wiesel was one of the countless people to go through the horrors of the concentration camps, which dehumanized people down to their animalistic nature, an echo of their previous selves. Dehumanization worsens over time in Night because of how the Jews treated each other, and how Elie changed physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

    Read More

  • Important Quotes In Night By Elie Wiesel

    1425 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 as Wiesel goes from a faithful, kind Jewish boy to a survivor. As he experiences these events they change him drastically. We first see a boy with a feeling of hope and ignorance as his hometown is occupied and he’s moved into the ghettos. Then as he’s transferred to a concentration camp he questions his faith and slowly loses a sense of who he once was. But all of this puts him in an important position, he knows that he must share with the world what

    Read More

  • 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.

    Read More

  • Loss of Faith and Religion in Ellie Wiesel’s Night

    1731 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Themes In Night By Elie Wiesel

    1599 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • What Is The Effects Of Torture In Night By Elie Wiesel

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, narrates his experience as a young Jewish boy during the holocaust. The Jews were enslaved in concentration camps, where they have experienced the absolute worst forms of torture, abuse, and inhumane treatment. Such pain has noticeable physical effects, but also shows psychological changes on those unfortunate enough to experience it.These mutations of their characters and mortality showed weaknesses of the Jews’ spirit and mentality, leading them to act vigorously and being treated like animals. However, these actions proved to Jews that the primary key to surviving their tortures was to work selfishly towards one another.

    Read More

  • Night By Elie Wiesel Analysis

    1059 Words  | 3 Pages

    The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel gives an in depth view of Nazi Concentration Camps. Growing up in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel, a young Jewish boy at the innocent age of 12, whose main focus in life was studying the Kabbalah and becoming closer in his relationship with God. In the memoir, Elie Wiesel reflects back to his stay within a Nazi Concentration Camp in hopes that by sharing his experiences, he could not only educate the world on the ugliness known as the Holocaust, but also to remind people that by remembering one atrocity, the next one can potentially be avoided. The holocaust was the persecution and murder of approximately six million Jew’s by Aldolf Hitler’s Nazi army between 1933 and 1945. Overall, the memoir shows

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Hate In Flight By Sherman Alexie

    1331 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hate is a powerful tool: it can break barriers, create violence, establish revenge, or destroy people entirely. Leaving behind rationality; “hatred is a way to shut down the mind to a degree, in order to handle overwhelming stress or trauma”(Wilson 2014), through hatred people detach themselves from practicality and inevitably ensue themselves with violence and revenge. The main character Zits in the novel Flight by Sherman Alexie goes on a spiritual journey to find out what hatred, violence, and revenge can cause. The cause of Zits hate, the violence from his past, the effects violence has, the symbol of Zits hate-Justice, and the change seen in Zits at the end of the novel all shows how hate develops throughout the story. Confronted with

    Read More

  • The Dangers of Fear

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.

    Read More

More about Rising Above Hatred

Open Document