The Meaning behind, the tittle Night
Elie Wiesel is the author of the memoir, Night, which is written about his experience as a religious Jew during the holocaust. In the story he goes into detail explaining how he and his family were tormented, how they were treated and how he tried to survive day by day while in the concentration camps. In the memoir, Wiesel struggled with many things such as his belief for his religion and what the Nazis were doing to them; he couldn’t quite understand it all. When you think of the tittle Night, one begins to think how this compares to the story, but there is a metaphoric connection of the title to the memoir. The fact that Wiesel name his story night was not a coincidence because night alone can stand
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Each night, while Elie Wiesel was in the concentration camps, brought death. Each night he saw and witness people around him dying. The Nazi had mad it there business to break everyone down and if you was not strong enough to fight for your life at night you will be dead by the morning. The Nazi made them work very hard during laborious work. They took their time dehumanizing the Jews. They strip them of their identity by making them shave their heads, remove tattoos and strip them of all the belongings that they had with them that made them. They then will brand them with a number and force them to wear the clothes they wanted to wear making them all one and losing their self of identity …show more content…
In the memoir, he struggles with his understand of god. Eli is born in a family whom are of orthodox Jewish religions. He explains that at a young age he spent his time prating Jewish text and the oral laws even though it was against his father’s wishes. The crudity and the gruesomeness of the concentrations camps is what cause Wiesel to feel the way he feels about his religion. That is what causes him to reflecting and question is there really a god. Eli couldn’t understand how, in the mist of this all that the god he served was not there in the time of need to protect and serve himself and the others who worship him too. He couldn’t understand how the god he serves was allowing all of these acts of crudity to happen to him and his family over and over. Wiesel write, “I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice." (Wiesel, 42). By this, he meant he doesn’t stop believing in god but he questioned his reasoning and purpose. Wiesel couldn’t comprehend how a god, his god, who was so merciful, could be blind to the human suffering that was going on. Wiesel wasn’t the only one suffering from the act of believing in his religion, so were the rest of the Jews. It was very hard for anyone in the concentrations camps to have any faith or hope
Before he was ever sent to the camps, he was asked why he prayed to which he thought it was a “strange question,” (Wiesel 4) it was as if asking “Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (4) as he explains. Though later experiencing such terrors in the camps, he often compares them to hell on earth. Through the novel he switches from blaming his god to humanity for such horrors, he early on claims that he will never “forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.”
Poetic Perspective of the Word ‘Night’ in the book ‘Night’ The word ‘night’ could have multiple meanings other than the time we have to unwind to sleep and the moon rises with the stars. Although, some people see night as the most dangerous time throughout the day because you have the shadows to cover you from commiting a crime and successfully get away with it. This is the case for Elie Wiesel, except, his and millions of other jew’s perpetrators were caught and punished for their crimes. One speculates that Elie decided to title his book ‘night’ because the atrocity that Elie endured started during the night for him by witnessing the crematorium burn human bodies on his way to the concentration camp.
(Wiesel 4) Elie has asked his father to learn more about his religion, as he desired to increase his devotion. He was motivated, and his devotion was strong, before his capture. “We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark from the Shekhinah's flame; that every one of us carries in his eyes and in his soul a reflection of God's image,”(Wiesel 14) Ellie explains how he still felt Gods presence while entering the camps. Even when he first faced the reality of what was happening, he still believed that God was in control and was still a part of him.
Many of the books we read today always contain some backstory to it. Whether it was just for fun or informational about an important topic or event. Many of these stories somehow or someway tie into an author 's life. Edgar Allan Poe is just one of these authors who have written works like The Cask of Amontillado, and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Another author is S.E. Hinton which wrote the book The Outsiders and a Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel who wrote Night.
Fortunately, some prisoners managed to live through the hardship and told the world about their stories. One of those stories is Night, the story of a teenager who survived The Holocaust losing everything dear to him in the process. In Night by Elie Wiesel, his mental and physical grown was developed through symbolism. In Night by Elie Wiesel, “Last Night” conveys development in the main character.
In order for the readers, to properly empathize with the characters, the story must first have some credibility to it which, in this case, is given by the theme of loss of faith in god. In the holocaust, while it was a massacre of all non-aryan races, Hitler particularly targeted the jews, putting the Jews into ghettos, granting them nonperson status and eventually, shipping to concentration camps where countless brutal, inhumane things were done to them including being put in gas chambers, thrown in the crematorium if they weren't fit and worked without any regards to their comfort or rights. Essentially, the Jews weren't treated as humans due to their faith. It would be strange if all of the jews continued to believe in god, a being supposedly all good and all powerful, when they have went without any signs of him for so long and faced persecution due to their believe in him. Thus, Wiesel uses the theme loss of faith in god in order to give credibility to the events in his memoir, for the ultimate purpose of getting the readers to empathize with the
Wiesel's loss of faith was brought on by the absence of God. This resulted in him questioning why it was God's will to allow Jews to suffer and die the way they had. Another portrayal of religious confliction within Wiesel was the statement of his faith being consumed by the flames along with the corpses of children (Wiesel 34). Therefore, he no longer believed God was the almighty savior everyone had set Him out to be or even present before them. To conclude, his experiences within Nazi confinement changed what he believed in and caused him to change how he thought and began questioning God because of the actions He allowed to take
In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.
Night by Wiesel was written to ensure the horror and cruelty work of Hitler. Throughout his novel, we saw how many people lost the faith in God during their lives in the concentration camp. Wiesel was one of the victims who survived during World War II. Wiesel loses his faith in God during the Holocaust because of the horrible things that happen to him.
Wiesel changes vastly throughout the book, whether it is his faith in God, his faith in living, or even the way his mind works. In the beginning of his memoir, Wiesel appeared to be faithful to God and the Jewish religion, but during his time in concentration camps, his faith in God wavered tremendously. Before his life was corrupted, he would praise God even when he was being transferred to Auschwitz, but after living in concentration camps, he began to feel rebellious against his own religion. In the book, Elie
Elie Wiesel saw no sense at being and keeping faithfulness to God. A book of life and death does not rests in the hands of God, but in the hands of the executioner. Author expressed himself from leaving his ancestral faith, showed hatred referring to the Creator, whom he loved and worshiped before finding himself in the camp. He (God) became a stranger; sometimes considered him an enemy. Meanwhile, religious life in Auschwitz was very intense, despite the enormity of humiliation, slave labor and fear for survival during selection to the gas chambers.
Elie, once so faithful, is one of the first to lose faith in God due to the horrific sights he sees. After witnessing the bodies of Jewish children being burned, Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (34). He quite understandably has begun to doubt that his God is with him following the sight of the supposedly chosen people’s bodies being unceremoniously burned. Elie, though, was perhaps not a member of the masses with this belief; in fact, some men were able to hold on to their beliefs despite these horrendous sights. Also near the middle of the book, Wiesel reflects on the faith of other Jews in the face of these events, saying that “some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come.
Night is a powerful, first person account of the tragic horrors of the Holocaust written and endured by Elie Wiesel. In this dark literary piece, Wiesel's first hand tale of the atrocities and horrors endured in World War II concentration camps will leave an unforgettable, dark, macabre impression amongst readers that cannot be done with a simple listing of statistics. This tale of human perserverance and the dark side of human nature will cause readers to question their own humanity. Also, it will paint a vivid picture of the vile deeds that mankind is capable of expressing. Reading this book will leave a long lasting impression that is definitely not something that will be soon forgotten.
Chapter One Summary: In chapter one of Night by Elie Wiesel, the some of the characters of the story are introduced and the conflict begins. The main character is the author because this is an autobiographical novel. Eliezer was a Jew during Hitler’s reign in which Jews were persecuted. The book starts out with the author describing his faith.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, it talks about how his time in the concentration and how they were treated, and what he thought about. He talks about how they were treated brutally and unfairly just because of their religion. How they were forced to live in poor conditions, and how they were promised a better life if they came with them. That promise was broken as soon as they got to their first concentration camp. When they first go their they saw the smoke coming from the chimneys and the smelling of burning flesh.