The troubled mother who was determined to live a normal life. The wise man who dedicated his life to building boats. The young boy who played his life on the violin. And the beloved father who carried on only for the sake of his family. They were all resilient, holding onto their faith, strength, and integrity. At one time, Maya Angelou famously said, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” Carrying on, one may overcome different obstacles and struggles. In Daniel James Brown’s novel The Boys in the Boat and Elie Wiesel’s Night, characters are resilient with holding faith and reaching their goals after facing hard setbacks. Standing by trust and kind nature, resiliency in faith …show more content…
George Yeoman Pocock, a prominent boat builder in The Boys in the Boat, shows his understanding that there are things in life that are larger than himself when he is resilient after having financial trouble. Pocock had been a very tough competitor in the sport of rowing, but when his father loses his job crafting shells at Eton College, Pocock moves to America so that he is not a financial burden on his father. Even though rowing caused him to be in such a troubled state, Pocock holds faith in the sport and recognizes that he cannot control everything that happens to him in life. Pocock looks to the small things to keep his faith. “‘Sure, I can make a boat,’ he said, and then added, quoting the poet Joyce Kilmer, ‘but only God can make a tree.’ He said those separate fibers, knitted together in wood, gave cedar its ability to bounce back and resume its shape or take on a new one. The ability to yield, to bend, to give way, Pocock said, was sometimes a source of strength in men as well as in wood” (Brown 126). Pocock uses his beliefs in the power of the wood to see that he can be like the wood, too. After struggling to find his place back in rowing, Pocock realizes that he can “bend” back just as strong. While many people take small things for granted, Pocock looks to the small things to see that he does not have the power to control all. He remains humble and does …show more content…
In Wiesel’s Night, Juliek, a Jewish violinist restrained in a concentration camp, holds his own boundaries with his music and his life, even though the Nazis try to take his freedoms away. “[Juliek] was playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. Never before had I heard such a beautiful sound. In such silence. How had he succeeded in disengaging himself? To slip out from under my body without my feeling it? The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again” (Wiesel 95). While Nazi order had forbidden Jews from playing Beethoven, as it was German music, Juliek plays it anyway. He sets his own boundaries with the music he plays and does not follow the ruling of others. By putting him in the concentration camp, the Nazis take his freedoms away, and knowing that his life would soon come to an end, Juliek fulfills his life’s purpose through his one standing passion: music. Juliek would not let his life end incomplete, as many Jews in Auschwitz did, so he lives out his losses on his violin. Many other Jews in the camp spend the time before their death saying Kaddish for themselves, but Juliek’s determination leads him to use music as a supplement to the remainder of the
Nuit et Brouillard – Presentation Background. - commissioned by a specialist government commission that dealt with assembling documentary material on the period of the French occupation, and an association devoted to the memory of those deported to camps - In 1954 there was an exhibition on the camps in Paris, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Liberation. The extent of the horror was still relatively unknown - Film coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Liberation and the exhibition - Alain Resnais, at the time a young film director, was approached by the official Committee for the History of World War Two which itself was a representation of Resistance members. He turned down the offer initially because he felt that only someone who had had direct experience of the concentration camps could deal with the subject matter. He agreed to make the film with the collaboration of French poet Jean Cayrol who had been a concentration camp prisoner to write
Faith is having absolute loyalty and trust towards a tremendous power in their growth. In the biography Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer, Alfons Heck is a strong supporter of Hitler, but his relationship decreased. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, a Jewish holocaust survivor, has a wavering relationship with God that also decreases as time continues. Both Heck and Wiesel are devoted to their God’s at first; however, Wiesel is confused with his faith, while Heck continues to follow Hitler. In the end, each boy feels betrayed by their leaders.
Despite the brave front that Vladek has put in the years following the war, his story remains to be a tale of suffering, agony, and death. The story of Vladek’s survival during the Holocaust is the central aspect of the novel,
When Wiesel was at Buna he witnessed the gallows and he later says “that night tasted of corpses”. Juliek plays his violin to an audience of dying men in the dark shed. Wiesel and the prisoners ran through the pitch darkness of the night from Buna to Gleatwitz and if
His first night in the concentration camp destroyed him, crumbling down the wall of innocence until there was nothing left. Everything he had once known and loved, taken away in the blink of an eye. As Wiesel put it, “Never
In the graphic novel Maus II, Art Spiegelman reveals what hardships his father had to go through to survive his time during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel depicted what him and his father went through to withstand the suffering in the concentration camps during the holocaust in his autobiography, Night. The connection between these two works from contrasting genres is the relationships and loyalty to family and friendships shown throughout these accounts. When facing critical situations, remaining loyal to your family and friends is more essential to survival than self-preservation and resourcefulness. Having close relationships with friends and family could benefit you by granting you opportunities to receive support, resources and other components to survival.
“Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. ”- Shania Twain.
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.
World War II had been raging for two years and was bout to enter Sighet. The Germans attempted to commit genocide on the 'lesser ' races, particularly Jews. Through the brutality witnessed, acts of selfishness, the death of his father, and the loss of his faith, Elie changed. Elie became a young man with a strong sense of mortality through it all. By the end of the war, Elie claimed to see himself as "A corpse contemplating me."
In the span of a lifetime one often faces many adversities that stand within their path. While some challenges will be overcome easily, others will take a lot more tenacity. When in the face of adversity it is key not to give up. One should always strive to persevere through their hardships, no matter how severe they seem to be. The author of the memoir “Night” Elie Wiesel, vividly describes his experiences in the concentration camp of Auschwitz.
When Wiesel makes it clear that he has suffered personal loss, he is evoking an emotional response from his audience. By stating that he senses their presence “The presence of my parents, that of my little sister.” the audience empathizes with him and the horror of the Holocaust is made more clear for them. They cannot only understand his feelings; they can connect to them which strengthens their understanding of the need to act whenever they witness inhumanity.
‘Isnt it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back. Everything is different’ Quote by C.S Lewis Night by Elie Wiesel, gives out more of a gruesome setting while Elie himself describes his whole horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Do we know how that big of a darkening impact can change a normal human being to someone we all won 't even recognize? Page by page of this novel Elie adjusted differently emotionally, physically, and spiritually from beginning, middle and end.
After going through so much, many people do not have the same mindset as they did before. Being tortured and watching others being tortured changes a person’s life, especially Elie’s, his father’s, Moshe the Beadle’s, and Rabbi Eliahou’s. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, shares his own experience of going through a concentration camp, and it is clear that many things in his life changed
Comparing a religious fast to purposeful food deprivation displays the negative attitude that Wiesel is building towards his own religion. This shifting mindset displays how the Holocaust had a negative impact on ideals close to the victims ' personalities. A third example of the Holocaust 's negative impact is when Wiesel recalls Juliek playing the violin in the middle of the night, where he could only hear, "the violin, and it was as though Juliek 's soul were the bow. (Wiesel 100). In this scene, Juliek displays defiance of the Nazi authorities by playing his violin, which shows a new resistant attitude towards
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.