Six million Jewish prisoners were dehumanized, abused, and murdered from 1933 to 1945. Elie Wiesel wrote about his experiences as one of these Jewish prisoners, in Night, the tree imagery helps convey the physical, emotional, and spiritual toll that dehumanization takes on the Jewish prisoners. First, the tree imagery illustrates the physical toll on Elie, his father, and the other Jewish prisoners. Idek is in a bad mood and beat Elie’s father with an iron bar: “At first my father simply doubled under the blows, but then he seemed to break in two like an old tree struck by lightning. I had watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent” (54). Wiesel compares his father to an “old tree struck by lightning.” Typically old trees lose …show more content…
The Jewish prisoners arrive at Auschwitz and finally get to leave the cramped cattle car after about 2 long days. Elie says, “We were withered trees in the heart of the desert” (37). This imagery suggests the Jews feel stranded, out of place, and helpless at the camp.This is an allusion to Exodus, manna from heaven. In the bible the Isrealites were stranded in the dessert and received the “manna” from God. Elie, and the other Jewish prisoners, feel especially anbandoned by God, while the food they are receiving is not from God, but the Germans. After the raid, the young pipel and two other prisoners are hanged. Elie says, “The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…Behind me, I heard [a] man asking: ‘For God’s sake. Where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where-hanging from these gallows…” (65). Gallows are made from wood harvested from trees; fruit hangs from trees, and the pipel is hanging from the gallows. Thus, the pipel is a representation of the young Jewish population, the “fruit” of Israel, and how the future of Judaism is dying. When Elie mentions that God is with them, it shows that he thinks that God no longer cares about the Jewish people and what they are experiencing. When the Jews are celebrating the last day of Rosh Hashanah, Elie says, “Thousands of lips repeated the benediction, bent over like trees in a storm.” (67). Like a relentless destructive storm, the Germans have done so much to destroy the Jews. Although the Jewish prisoners have stayed stgrong, they will soon be blown over and uprooted. Later during the death march, Elie describes the Jews as “rootless”
Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer, the protagonist, is transported and moved to numerous concentration camps. His story, which is corresponding to Wiesel’s biography, is representative to the lives of a billion other Jews. Jews were stripped away from their families, beliefs, identity, and freedom. They could no longer express their faith in God or have the human right to live where desired. During the holocaust, nothing was fair, everything was dark and cruel.
In Night, written by Elie Wiesel, the hanging of the little Dutchman pipel in chapter 4 symbolizes the death of faith in religion among Elie and other Jews who witnessed the act. In the plot, the young pipel was killed mercilessly by SS officers. During his execution, carried out alongside two other inmates, all found to be in possession of arms, onlookers were desperate for God to offer his supreme help. “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64) and “For God’s sake, where is God?”
People are more likely to commit inhumane acts when they are not seen as human beings. Dehumanization is one of the main themes in Night by Elie Wiesel, which means taking away someone's humanity and values. Wiesel illustrates the dehumanization of prisoners in concentration camps through characterization. In addition, he emphasizes that demonization continues to threaten society today. Through inhumane acts, Wisel shows the prisoners being stripped of their humanity throughout the book.
Throughout the text, Elie creates a sense of normalcy in the camp by glancing over routinely details and emphasizing critical points that reflect his emotions. After the hanging of Pipel, Elie describes the soup that he ate saying, “That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 65). Wiesel describes the soup as being different from usual. The change of taste represents the feeling of Elie and how is full of sorrow after the hanging of Pipel. After injuring himself, Elie describes his food in the infirmary, “Actually, being in the infirmary was not bad at all: we were entitled to good bread, a thicker soup.
The prisoners seem to become cold-hearted and turn their backs towards each other; their only concern is survival. These horrid events in the multiple concentration camps and the inevitable deaths of many lead Elie to wonder how the world can hold so much grudge and fury, only to make matters worse, instead of making
The officers at the camp force the prisoners to watch the hangings of people and to look at them after. They do this in order to insinuate fear and show the punishment of being disobedient. Elie describes his thoughts and the words of other prisoners. “I heard the same man asking: For God’s sake, where is god?
As an adolescent, Elie is forced to bear witness and experience unspeakable horrors; things that no child should ever have to go through. Seemingly overnight, Elie and over six million other Jews are stripped of their identity, faith, and humanity. Starting at his arrival in Auschwitz, Elie realizes the world’s capability of cruelty as he helplessly watches hundreds of men, women, and children alike being thrown into pits of flame. Left in utter horror, Elie questions “how it [is] possible that men, women, and children [are] being burned and the world [keeps] silent” (Wiesel 32). Years in malicious concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald, result in detrimental physical and mental repercussions as prisoners are deprived of the most basic human rights.
They are a dying tree that is hanging on to its last leaf, their free-will. Some viewed their time in a labor camp as a test of their faith. They believed if they stuck with God through such suffering, that they were truly dedicated to the Jewish religion. The book, Night, is a great testament to this. Elie Wiesel’s time in the camp may have weakened his faith, but a number of his fellow Jews were strengthened by the whole experience.
Elie's faith is quickly questioned after the first night in the Auschwitz concentration camp, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (34). When he arrives at Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp, he is instantly affected by the sights he and his father have observed, such as babies, family, and friends being burned into ashes, and his faith being consumed by the crematoria flames. Elie's first night at the concentration camp caused him to question God, making it difficult for him to understand why God would put him in such a place.
In Elie’s early teenage years he was an extremely religious person. Going to the Synagogue and wanting to study the Torah. As the Nazi’s captured Elie and his father and forced them into a concentration
In the beginning of the novel readers learn the background of Elie, such as the community he resides in and his religious background. The story quickly turns depressing as foreign jews begin to be expelled from the town and treated in a uncivilized manner, foreshadowing what is going to happen to the Jews. The Jews are soon told to evacuate the town and forced to run and be stuffed in cattle cars with little space and lack of oxygen. Elie uses this situation to reflect how the Germans view him and his
Normally, they are to celebrate and rejoice because it was a new year, but the prisoners begin to worry that it might actually be the last day as in their last day of life. During their special gathering with some ten thousand men, they pray and he asks, “How could I say to him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?” (67) and it shows Elie’s view on how contradictory God is. Elie wonders why someone so great could allow crematoria to work day and night and allow thousands of children to burn even during Sabbath and Holy Days.
It was a new low for the German soldiers to kill a child, and it was this execution that made many of the Jews’ question the presence of God. Wiesel says, “That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (62). They felt remorse at the hanging of the pipel because he had been kind to them and was “loved by all” (Wiesel 60). So even though the prisoners had to watch similar hangings in Wiesel’s
The horrific scene of everyone seeing the pipel being hanged, and him being too little he didn’t have enough weight for his neck just to snap when dropped. Therefore he just hanged there for half an hour. Elie wondered, if God was so good and merciful then why would he allow this to happen? The
Here He is-He is hanging here on this gallows”(Wiesel 62). Elie also says “That night, the soup tasted of corpses”(Wiesel 62). Elie says the soup tasted like corpses because he knows that if he does anything wrong or something that the guards disapprove of, it could be him being hung while the whole camp watches. All of the people in the concentration camps- Jewish or not- are being forced to do work that they would never do or are forced to see death all because they do not want to