The crime against humanity known as The Holocaust started with the initial establishment of concentration camps in 1933, and was brought to an end in 1945 with the conclusion of World War II. In May of 1944, Elie Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz, and in January of 1945, Elie and his father were evacuated to Buchenwald. Night is a personal memoir that follows Elie’s journey through this Dante-esque Hell. Elie Wiesel’s autobiography is a perfect example of bildungsroman, as its entire premise is to show the effects of the Holocaust on the psyche of an idealistic young man whose faith undergoes the most severe test one could imagine. Elie applies literary strategies such as characterization, conflict, irony, juxtaposition, suspense …show more content…
“I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves. ‘Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba…May His name be celebrated and sanctified…’ whispered my father. For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (33). Elie is starting to lose his faith in and devotion to God. He manages to hold onto his faith, but he does change his perspective in how he views God. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (34). By claiming that his god was murdered, he implements personification to make a point and drive home exactly how extreme Elie’s shift from his initial self was. He feels that his God was murdered. He maintains a tenuous hold on his faith, though. The reality is that his view of God has changed from the way he viewed Him as a child. Personification, juxtaposition, irony, and imagery are not the only devices used, as the author also uses antithesis to show the contrast between characters personalities before and during the
Introduction Throughout World War 2 Germany was living and thriving in a sea of repression. Hitler and his followers blamed the Jewish for many things that had gone wrong during World War 1 and the germans believed that the Jewish needed to be punished for that. Nazi’ started forcing the Jewish out of their houses, stealing their valuables, transporting them in overpacked transport cars, relocating them to concentration camps, and it is at those concentration camps where they were starved, beaten, and destroyed. Before all of these actions were able to happened Hitler’s SS officers had to be trained to repress the Jewish and it is from that point of view that you should “read” my documents. In Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” we were told that the reason that the Jewish did not fight back was because they could not believe that human beings could do such things and that is why I chose to write my documents from the view of a SS officer who is completing his training and learning how to treat the Jewish.
The book Night is a autobiography told from Elie Wiesal’s perspective. It talks about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944-45. Wiesel writes about how his faith is degrading to the point he believes there is no God, and how he is disgusted at humanity. The book starts in Sighet, Romania, You learn about Moshe the Beadle who is a poor man, but very religious. He was expelled like the rest of the Jews onto a cattle train and taken to Poland.
ight The choices we make, even the most mundane, affect our lives. Sometimes big, sometimes small. Normally, they’re small & inconsequential. In the novel, “Night” Eliezer’s family is taken away to a concentration camp.
Hundreds lead to thousands and thousands lead to millions, more innocent people taken to camps due to being different. On religion, sex, or not being tied down to a town. Auschwitz was the worst camp of all, 1.1-1.5 million people died there. People were forced out of their homes into cramped cattle carts with up to 100 other people for days even weeks. With little water and no food unknown were there destination would be.
How did the execrable setting, the concentration camps, alter those involved? Good people were manipulated and changed into performing heinous acts. “Night,” is written from the perspective of Eliezer, as he navigated through the survival of the Holocaust, with his father. Eli became aware that people who neglected their morals thrived, this revelation troubled him deeply. The inhumane atrocities that took place during the Holocaust resulted in corrupt mindsets among those involved: the German soldiers, the Jews and Eliezer himself.
showing his anger at that moment and when he was writing it, but would end up coming back to his religion sometime later. After he had given up hope for his god, he had felt alone, this showed sadness, and gave the reader an idea of how much his religion meant to him during this period; however, he still threw it away. Elie thinks on pg. 68 “But look at these men you have betrayed, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You!
It is a common assumption among numerous people in the world that the Holocaust never existed. In fact about half of the world’s population never even heard of the Holocaust. Through the creation of a book called “Night”, Elie Wiesel successfully helped people around the world learn about the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel wanted to show the courage, bravery and guilt of the Jews through this book. Night graphically portrays the malicious and horrific acts in German concentration camps during the Holocaust.
He eventually reaches a point where “[he] had ceased to pray… [he] was not denying His existence, but [he] doubted His absolute justice” (45). Although Elie does not completely abandon his religion, the dawning realization that God was doing nothing to help them and that they were the only ones that could save themselves further challenged his diminishing
I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long.” (page 68) So, at this point, God, who Elie had once considered to be everything, was now lesser than ashes and practically dead to him. He also expressed this the night the young pipel was hung, “’For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is?
Elie has many internal conflicts, the largest is with God. At the beginning of Night, Elie is seriously studying the Talmud, putting specific focus on the mysticism of the Jewish faith. Elie's father is not only a devout Jew, he is a person to whom people come for advice. Elie's faith is not only a comfort to him, it connects him with not only his father, but the people of his community. He takes tremendous pride in his studies because that is how he was raised and it is all he knows, which is why the horror of seeing his fellow Jews being systematically exterminated by the Nazis makes him question the very existence of God.
As a naive child with an unwavering faith in God, the barbaric acts executed by the SS officers in Auschwitz, traumatizes Elie, initiating the gradual destruction of his beliefs and moral confidence in God. Elie and his father undergo their first of many selections, saving them from death for now, but does not liberate them from witnessing the terrible acts occurring. Elie would never “forget that night... those flames that consumed my faith forever...even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself,” (Wiesel 34). As a child devout to studying God, the harrowing experience of the first night in the concentration camp, leads Elie to question Him as he watches the wrongful deaths of so many individuals.
During the beginning of Elie’s time at the concentration camps he noticed, “some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice. ”(45)
They praise Your name!” Elie is angry at God for what has happened, and shows
By the end of the book Elie 's faith in God or in anything for that matter is dead. The metaphor "from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me" used in the last few sentences of the book supports the claim that Elie 's faith has ceased to exist. The corpse that Elie is seeing is himself because he was so severely starved, but it also can symbolically represent his faith. The holocaust did not physically kill Elie but it took with it his reasons to live.
Eliezer has not only lost faith in god but he has begun to feel hatred towards him for letting innocent men and women be slaughtered and burned. Elie now feels strong hatred towards god for not protecting the Jews. Elie’s view of god changed for the worse. He was very religious and close to god in many ways. He slowly began to lose faith and hope in god.