night by elie wiesel essay introduction

Introduction of Night

The Night written by Elie Wiesel was published in 1960, creating ripples in the literary world. It presents a realistic picture of the Auschwitz concentration camps set up by the Nazis. However, later, its English translation made Elie Wiesel a household name in highlighting the Nazi atrocities committed during the Holocaust against the Jewish people disregard their age and gender. Sprawling over more than 100 pages, this book presents the autobiography of Wiesel about his abhorrent expression of apathy, death of God, and numbness of humanity. The novel concludes that “here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends” and “Everyone lives and dies for himself alone .”

Summary of Night

Night records the happenings when Elie Wiesel was a Jewish teenager Eliezer Wiesel. He starts the story from Sighet, the Hungarian town, where his daily routine comprises reading the Torah and learning the Kaballah (Jewish Mysticism)from Moishe the Beadle who also taught him how to become closer to God and was extremely religious. However, when his popular teacher, returns after saving his life from the camp, unfolding the grotesque nature of butchering Jews by the Nazis. Moishe goes from door to door asking people not to give him money or show any pity instead just listen to him. Yet, nobody pays attention to the horrifying tales narrated by Moishe, taking him a mad person, who also declares the rule of madness.

Wiesel states that despite the arrival of these tales of butchery and bloodshed, the Jews in Sighet demonstrate optimism that the Nazis would not be able to reach this far corner but in 1944 their optimism starts fading away when the Hungarian police appear and forced the Jews to vacate their houses and live in ghettos. Soon they are packed in cattle cars to take them to Birkenau and Auschwitz with the promise to let them work in the brick factories. Most of the families get separated during this long journey. Elie is also separated from his sisters and mother but he stays with his father Chlomo at Birkenau. The first step to send a Jew to concentration chambers comprises ‘selections’ of the working and healthy Jews. However, the duo proves lucky and stays together. Later, they see a truckload of children being thrown in the furnaces.

In the beginning everyone in the camp, the fathers and sons tried to stay close to each other. took good care of their fathers in spite of the harsh conditions because they are the only family they had. But as the story progressed it became impossible for one to survive. The sons started abusing and abandoning their fathers.

The Nazis then send them to work after striping and giving them a heavy beating. When they reach Buna to work in Electrical fittings factory, Elie gets separated from his father who cries and moans, seeing his death taking hold of him, though, he expresses little remorse under these inhuman conditions which are too harrowing to be described in words. Soon his supervisor comes to know about Elie’s golden teeth which he extracts with a plier disregard of pain and trouble to him.

The conditions in the camp soon turn worse, making the prisoners suffer from the extremely cold wind, malnutrition, and dingy living conditions. They see their fellows going to gallows and gas chambers on daily basis and fight for sleeping space and pieces of crumbs, injuring and mutilating each other. Personal survival becomes a priority of every walking soul in that Elie sees all this with rapt attention and keen observation, believing that God is dead, or else He would have responded to their pleas.

During this time, Chlomo was taken off from the list of abler men and had to face the furnace. Somehow he passes the second physical examination and was let to live. After a while, the situation becomes a bit better when Elie visits the infirmary for his injured father Where the news breaks in that the Russians are liberating and the Germans decided to flee to Gliewitz along with the inmates on a death march. They were made to run forty-two miles in the snow . While resting after marching over forty miles, Rabbi Eliahou asks everyone about his son, who had abandoned his father because of he was limping and had to survive for his own life. By this time Elie has almost completely lost his faith in God. Albeit he finds himself praying, asking God to give him strength never to do what the Rabbi’s son has done. Out of 100 that was set out only twelve survive.

They reach Buchenwald’s concentration where Chlomo dies of dysentery missing his freedom by three months. The story concludes when he was liberated by Americans he looks into the mirror for the first time and what he sees is the reflection of a dead corpse staring back at him.

Major Themes in Night

• Holocaust: Cruelty in the Holocaust is at the top in Night by Elie as he recounts the horror -filled experience of his life after having gone through the torture of the Holocaust at Birkenau, Buna, and Auschwitz with his father who dies in the final episode when the freedom is just a step away. Having taken from Sighet, Elie parts with his family, seeing his mother and younger sister, Tzipora, going to another camp in which they perish. Although Madam Schachter predicts it through her occasional hysteric cries of fire, yet the Jews hide their head in the sand like ostriches and do not react. Instead, they resign to their fates and perish in the flames of hatred as well as fire. Elie’s story highlights the numbness that plays havoc with human feelings, making him feel at loss to understand the working of God and God’s teachings.
• Humanity: Night shows the theme of humanity through the narrative of Elie in that although he is trapped in the concentration camps with his father, he has lost the nerves to feel sympathy with his father and empathy with other inmates. He sees the German SS men mercilessly killing the Jews, flinging their children into the pits of fire, and butchering the old. Still, he feels nothing, thinking that such a situation demands that you do not think about others. When he sees Rabbi’s son leaving his father and he berating his father in his heart, he feels it strongly that every person lives for themselves.
• Faith: Night also breaks the narratives of beliefs while strengthening them. When Elie comes to know that everybody is praying to God, yet the cruelty, torture, and dance of death is going on, he loses his faith in God and openly says that man is here to stay as a strength rather than submitting to God’s will.
• Family: Although familial relationships are the bedrock of an individual’s personality, Elie states that when such trials happen, people often leave families and save their own skin. The same is his case that he loses faith in relations when he sees his father mercilessly beaten, yet he sees that had his father acted differently, he would have avoided Idek, the merciless Gestapo soldier. Despite his prayers the time comes and passes, leaving him emotionless, inhuman, and unkind.
• Silence : The theme of silence appears from the very first page of Night when Elie sees that Moishe and Schachter do everything to make the Jews rise up and defend themselves, but they stay silent to their pleas, wailings, and cries. When the Hungarian police round them up, they silently obey them and even silently suffer in Auschwitz. This deafening silence makes Elie question the very existence of God, transforming him into an emotionless person.
• Faith in God: Having a faith in the sense of religion is one thing, but having strong faith in God is another thing that has been broken during Auschwitz as Elie sees a child being killed in front of him despite having all of them prayed to God for his life. He questions the existence of God and leaves all of them, including his father to be battered by Idek.
• Loyalty to Relations: Night shows loyalty not only to relations but also to the family through the story of Elie. When his father is receiving a backlash from Idek, Elie merely taunts his father in his heart why he has not managed to save himself. He also consoles his relative who has come to ask him about his family, saying that he has seen his kids despite his ignorance about them. Yet, he saves himself by the end after losing his father and family.
• Insight into Human Nature: The book also gives insight into human nature as to how much human being is able to fall down into barbarism and animalism without feeling pain for others. Even the real son avoids his father after seeing him thrashed which in normal circumstances could have been unthinkable. The people were watching their children thrown into the flames without any move.
• Value of Freedom: Night shows the value of freedom from the character of Elie who sees that when he is free from that oppression at Buna and Birkenau, he finds that freedom is a great virtue as well as a blessing of God. He values it after finding his brother and sister alive.

Major Characters in Night

• Eliezer Wiesel: Elie is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. He has fictionalized his own feelings and his account to show that the Holocaust has been a cruel reality of the 20 th century and that the Nazis crossed all boundaries of inhumanity in treating the Jews worse than animals and did everything in their power to exterminate them. He learns three important lessons during this entire ordeal; life is a tale of the survival of the fittest, God has his own plans for the religious-minded people, and that everybody lives for himself.
• Chlomo Wiesel: Chlomo Wiesel’s significance in ‘Night’ lies in his relationship with the narrator in that he is his honorable and loving father who goes through this ordeal to show his son that he can still show him love. When he is slapped, he smiles at Elie, saying that it was nothing. Chlomo’s patience, stamina, and courage to tolerate the worst set an example before the young son that he feels ashamed of himself. He succumbs to his final ordeal at Glietwitz when dysentery takes its toll on him.
• Moishe the Beadle: The character of Moishe the Beadle is very important. He appears as the mentor for Elie when he commits himself to teach Kabbalah mystic techniques. Next, he warns all the Jews about their likely extermination but a man of no import, people turn a deaf ear to his premonitions and pay with their lives later.
• Madame Schaechter: The importance of Madame Schachter’s character is prominent as well. She warns the Jews and continues to warn them about the fire that is going to engulf them. They do not pay heed to her and ignore her as they ignore Moishe. She continues crying fire in a hysterical fashion until she ends her life at Auschwitz.
• Dr. Mengele: The significance of Dr. Mengele’s lies represents the brutality of the SS, a model of barbarism and cruelty. When he peeps through his monocle, it seems that he has devoured coldness to cause human suffering. He demonstrates his skill in the selection of the Jews to send them to crematoria or the working blocks.
• Young Pipel: Belonging to the Jewish community , this young man was from Oberkapo. He sabotages the power plant at Buna and is arrested after the crime. His significance lies in that he becomes a symbol of rebellion and subsequent reticence in the face of torture. His sentence impacts the whole camp.
• Meir Katz: Elie’s friend, Katz meets him at Buna and works with him in pruning the local garden. He utilizes the vegetable garden and becomes quite healthy yet he becomes the fodder of barbarism by the end.
• Martha: Martha is a non-Jew character, and yet she offers her master to live in safety in her village but the family declines that offer and pays the price for that rejection.
• Stein of Antwerp: As a distant relative, he tests Elie in the camp by asking him to identify him and consoles them as Elie consoles him about his family. He is soon lost in the camp.
• Juliek: Juliek teaches other Jews how to live under such inhuman conditions. He plays music to keep their spirits high, in spite of knowing that they are at the death door.

Writing Style of Night

Despite being involved in that barbarism, inhumanity, and wholesale death, Elie keeps himself fit to write his story in such a seductive style and innocent language. However, he seems detached from the narration involved and yet keeps the stiff-upper-lip attitude toward the details he describes. The tone stays indifferent that helps him create sentences short and direct but keeps the language very easy and sharp. Lacking additions and flowery descriptions, this language, if written in a matter-of-fact tone, proves highly effective in the long run. The indifferently tragic and somber mood of the novel ends in making readers stand up and do soul searching.

Analysis of Literary Devices in Night  

• Action: The main action of the novel comprises Elie Wiesel’s arrest, arrival at Birkenau, Buna, and Auschwitz, and then release when the Russian forces liberate Auschwitz. The rising action occurs when he sees his father thrashed but does not react. The falling action occurs when the Russian forces attack and the SS men flee for their lives, leaving the Jews behind in the camps.
• Anaphora : Night shows the use of anaphora . For example, i. Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. The sentence shows the repetitious use of “I forget” which becomes an anaphoric phrase .
• Antagonist : Night shows the Nazis and the German soldiers as the main antagonists on account of their worst genocide of the Jews during the previous century.
• Allusion : There are various examples of allusions given in the novel. i. Saturday, the day of rest, was the day chosen for our expulsion. (p.32) ii. At dawn, we were in the street, ready to leave. This time, there were no Hungarian police. It had been agreed that the Jewish Council would handle everything by itself. (32) iii. The train stopped in Kaschau, a small town on the Czechoslovakian border. We realized then that we were not staying in Hungary. Our eyes opened. Too late. (34) iv. He complained that they would not let him play Beethoven; Jews were not allowed to play German music. Hans, the young man from Berlin, was full of wit . The foreman was a Pole: Franek, a former student in Warsaw. (p. 55) The first one is a Biblical allusion , while the rest are geographical and personal illusions such as the name of countries and personalities.
• Conflict : The are two types of conflicts in the novel . The first one is the external conflict that is going on between two races; the German and the Jews and the second is the mental conflict that is going on in the mind of Elie about assisting his father during this chaos.
• Characters: Night presents both static as well as dynamic characters. The young boy, Elie Wiesel, is a dynamic character as he faces a huge transformation during his growth from an innocent soul to a numb youth. However, the rest of the characters do not see any change in their behavior, as they are static characters such as Idek, his father, Juliek, and his mother.
• Climax : The climax takes place when the concentration camps finally get vacated after the Russian forces occupy it and the German forces escape.
• Foreshadowing : The novel shows the following examples of foreshadowing : i. Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue . Man asks and God replies. But we don’t understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself. (19) ii. Little by little life returned to “normal.” The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing; we were entirely among ourselves. A small Jewish republic … A Jewish Council was appointed, as well as a Jewish police force, a welfare agency, a labor committee, a health agency—a whole governmental apparatus. (24) iii. I watched other hangings. I never saw a single victim weep. These withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears. (27) These quotes from Night foreshadow the coming events.
• Imagery : Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. For example, i. Physically, he was as awkward as a clown. His waiflike shyness made people smile. As for me, I liked his wide, dreamy eyes, gazing off into the distance. (18) ii. Hundreds of eyes were watching his every move. Hundreds of men were crawling with him, scraping their bodies with his on the stones. All hearts trembled, but mostly with envy. He was the one who had dared. (62) iii. Winter had arrived. The days became short and the nights almost unbearable. From the first hours of dawn, a glacial wind lashed us like a whip. We were handed winter clothing: striped shirts that were a bit heavier. (75) These examples show the use of different images, showing people and weather in different ways.
• Metaphor : Night also shows good use of various metaphors . For example, i. 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. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger. (16) ii. The news spread through Sighet like wildfire. Soon that was all people talked about. But not for long. Optimism soon revived: The Germans will not come this far. (22) iii. Suddenly, the silence became more oppressive. An SS officer had come in and, with him, the smell of the Angel of Death. (46) These are examples of metaphors, showing different things compared directly such as the person with ashes, the news with fire, and silence with a cruel person.
• Mood : The novel shows a general mood in the beginning but becomes very serious and tragic when it reaches its end.
• Motif : Most important motifs of the novel are Elie’s struggle with his faith, silence, inhumanity, relations between father and son, and fire.
• Narrator : The novel is narrated by a first-person narrator, Elie, who is also the author.
• Personification : The novel shows the use of personifications. For example, i. The shadows around me roused themselves as if from a deep sleep and left silently in every direction. (26) ii. It was as though madness has infected us all. (36) iii. The wind of revolt died down. (40) iv. A barrel of foul-smelling liquid stood by the door. (44) These examples show as if shadows, madness, wind, and the barrel have a life of their own.
• Protagonist : Elie Wiesel is the protagonist of the novel. The novel starts with his narrative of their life at Sighet and then transportation to Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buna.
• Rhetorical Questions : The novel shows good use of rhetorical questions at several places. For example, i. I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? (46) ii. “You old loafer!” he started yelling. “Is this what you call working?”  (58) iii. “What? My ration of bread so that you can have my crown?” Franek smiled. “What would you like? That I break your teeth by smashing your face?” (60) These examples show the use of rhetorical questions posed by different characters not to elicit answers but to stress upon the underlined idea.
• Setting : The setting of the novel spreads from Sighet in former Serbia to Birkenau and Auschwitz and finally to Buchenwald in Poland.
• Symbols: The novel shows the symbols of night, fire, flames, and corpses.
• Simile : The novel shows brilliant use of various similes. For example, i. I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both. (10) ii. The news spread through Sighet like wildfire. Soon that was all people talked about. But not for long. (22) iii. The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. (24) iv. By eight o’clock in the morning, weariness had settled into our veins, our limbs, our brains, like molten lead. (27) v. They passed me by, like beaten dogs, with never a glance in my direction. They must have envied me. (29) vi. One day when Idek was venting his fury, I happened to cross his path. He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again. (57) vii. Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. (83) These are similes as the use of the word “like” shows the comparison between different things.
• Irony : The novel shows various examples of irony . For example, The man in charge of our wagon called out to a German officer strolling down the platform, asking him to have the sick woman moved to a hospital car. “Patience,” the German replied, “patience. She’ll be taken there soon.” (37) ii. “Where is merciful God, where is He?” someone behind me was asking. At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over. Total silence in the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. (66) Both of these examples show that the implied meanings of these lines are different from their actual meanings.

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Elie Wiesel

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At the start of the memoir, it's 1941 and Eliezer is a twelve-year-old Jewish boy in the Hungarian town of Sighet. He's deeply religious and spends much of his time studying the Torah (the Bible) and the Talmud and praying. His parents and sisters run a shop in the town, and his father is highly respected in the Jewish community. Eliezer begins to study the Cabbala, the book of Jewish mysticism, with an immigrant named Moché the Beadle . When the Hungarian police deport all of the foreign Jews, Moché is sent away, but he returns with a terrible and fantastic tale: the Gestapo stopped the train and slaughtered the deported Jews. Moché escaped with a leg wound and has come to warn the Jews of Sighet to leave. The Jews of the town can't believe what Moché is saying, and think he's gone mad.

The war continues through 1943. In 1944, the Jews of Sighet still don't really believe Hitler intends to exterminate them. Eliezer wants his father to relocate the family to Palestine, but his father says he's too old to start again. The Fascists come to power in Hungary and German soldiers enter the country. Before long, German officers are living in Sighet and then arresting the Jewish leaders of the town. Soon, the Hungarian police round the Jews up into two ghettoes. Next, they force the Jews like cattle onto trains headed to an unknown destination.

The Jews travel on the train for several days, during which time one Jewish woman goes mad and screams about fire. The train arrives at Birkenau, the gateway to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the passengers can see chimneys belching fire and can smell burned flesh. The women are immediately separated from the men, and Eliezer never sees his mother or his younger sister again (they are immediately sent to the gas chamber). A Nazi SS doctor separates those who are going to be killed immediately from those who will work. Eliezer sticks close to his father. That first night in the camp, he witnesses babies and children thrown into a great fire in a burning ditch. Eliezer's faith in a just God is shattered.

More separations occur, but Eliezer and his father stay together. All the prisoners are tattooed with a number, and this becomes their identity. They are told they must work or they will be burned in the crematoria. They spend three weeks at Auschwitz before marching to another concentration camp, Buna. Here, Eliezer and his father spend their days working in an electrical equipment warehouse. Their Kapo (the prisoner conscripted to wield power over other prisoners) occasionally goes berserk and beats people, including Eliezer and his father. The SS doctor appears again to weed out another batch of people for the furnaces. Eliezer has a scare when his father is chosen, but his father manages to convince someone that he can still work. While at Buna, Eliezer continues to rebel against the idea of a just God. After being forced to witness the slow hanging death of a child, he ceases to believe in God, altogether.

With the front lines of the war getting closer, the prisoners at Buna are evacuated on a long, nightmare death march to a camp called Gleiwitz. People die continuously along the way as the SS forces them to run for hours and hours in the snow, shooting people who fall behind. Upon arriving at Buna, a young Jewish violinist plays pieces of a Beethoven concerto. By morning the violinist has died. The survivors of the march are kept without food and water for several days, more are separated from the rest to be killed, and the remaining prisoners are crammed onto trains in open-roofed cattle cars. The train ride is endless. The Jews have nothing to eat but snow, and people die left and right. When they pass through a German town, some German workers toss scraps of bread in the car to watch the starving prisoners fight to the death. More people lie down in the snow and die when the train at last arrives at another concentration camp: Buchenwald. Eliezer's father grows feverish, contracts dysentery, and begins to waste away. Doctors won't help, the camp doesn't want to waste food on sick people, and Eliezer can only offer his own rations to his father, who is soon delirious. The night before Eliezer's father passes away, an SS officer beats the dying man on the head. Eliezer is unable to cry or mourn. He spends another two and a half months at Buchenwald in a daze before the Nazis begin another prisoner evacuation. This time there is an armed uprising among the prisoners and the remaining SS flee. American tanks arrive, followed by food, although Eliezer gets food poisoning and spends two weeks in the hospital, near death. When he looks at his face in the mirror for the first time since he left the village of Sighet, he sees a vision he will never forget: the face of a corpse.

By Elie Wiesel

'Night' by Elie is an important memoir of the Holocaust, depicting the horrors and truth of Germany's treatment of European Jews.

About the Book

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The novel is an important historical memoir published in 1960 . It was not until the trial and execution of Adolf Eichman in 1961, a year after the novel was finally published, that it came fully into the public spotlight.

Key Facts about Night

• Title:   Night
• When/where written : 1955-1958, South America and France
• Published: 1960
• Genre:  Memoir/Semi-fictional autobiography
• Point-of-View: First-person
• Setting: Europe during WWII
• Climax:  the death of Eliezer’s father, Shlomo
• Antagonist:  The SS soldiers and broader anti-Jewish laws and sentiment.

Elie Wiesel and  Night

Unlike some novels that are written at a distance,  Night  is tied up with the author’s life in an intimate, unignorable way. Wiesel has spoken about  Night  as his account of what happened in the concentration camps , one that is set back only slightly from reality through the creation of Eliezer and a few changes of events and circumstances. The novel is brutally honest, and clear. Wiesel spends its brief 100 pages depicting the lead up to the ghettos, trains, and camps, the loss of his family members, including his mother and sister, and then later his father as well, his suffering (and the suffering he observed) and finally his liberation.  Night  is incredibly personal , so much so that its language only gives the reader so much access to a time in Wiesel’s life that anyone would want to forget, but which he knew was too important to keep in his past. The novel was written several years after WWII, from the perspective of a thirty-year-old man, looking back on himself as a young adult. The climax of the novel connects intimately to one of the most important but often overlooked themes in  Night,  that of father/son relationships. Or, more specifically, sons and their treatment of their fathers. When Eliezer’s father, Shlomo, dies, and Eliezer experiences freedom from the burden of his father’s care, Wiesel represents the true breadth of the changes he’d undergone in the camps and the desperate state to which he and others were existing in.

Books Related to Night

The lasting impact of  night .

Today,  Night is commonly considered to be one of the best personal accounts of the Holocaust ever written . It is read in middle schools, high schools, and universities around the world, providing students with an insight into the horrors of the Second World War as they were experienced by someone close to their own age. It is one of the first ways that young people learn about the Holocaust.  Night  is also credited with helping to preserve the story of the Holocaust, something that Wiesel was incredibly passionate about. When speaking about the story of his life and the lives of millions of others who died, lost their families, homes, and identities during the war, he said that it would be “ not only dangerous but offensive ” to forget them.

Night Review ⭐

‘Night’ is a novel that transcends the average book review.

Night Themes and Analysis

‘Night’ is a short and incredibly impactful novel that uses direct language and avoids metaphors and other figures of speech to tell its story.

Night Quotes 💬

‘Night’ is filled with powerful and memorable quotes. There are a few of the most important. They depict Eliezer’s experience when newly imprisoned and after suffering for months at the hands of the SS.

Night Historical Context 📖

‘Night’ is Elie Wiesel’s best-known novel, one that encapsulates, in a semi-fictional way, his experiences in the Holocaust.

Night Character List 📖

The characters in ‘Night’ are described deeply and thoughtfully from the perspective of the novel’s narrator, Eliezer Wiesel.

Night Summary 📖

‘Night’ was published in 1960 and details the author’s experiences in the Holocaust along with his father, Shlomo. It follows the period from 1944 to 1945 when the camps were liberated.

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The Story of ‘Night’

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By Rachel Donadio

• Jan. 20, 2008

This fall, Elie Wiesel’s “Night” was removed from the New York Times best-seller list, where it had spent an impressive 80 weeks after Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club. The Times’s news survey department, which compiles the list, decided the Holocaust memoir wasn’t a new best seller but a classic like “Animal Farm” or “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year largely through course adoptions. Indeed, since it appeared in 1960, “Night” has sold an estimated 10 million copies — three million of them since Winfrey chose the book in January 2006 (and traveled with Wiesel to Auschwitz).

But “Night” had taken a long route to the best-seller list. In the late 1950s, long before the advent of Holocaust memoirs and Holocaust studies, Wiesel’s account of his time at Auschwitz and Buchenwald was turned down by more than 15 publishers before the small firm Hill & Wang finally accepted it. How “Night” became an evergreen is more than a publishing phenomenon. It is also a case study in how a book helped created a genre, how a writer became an icon and how the Holocaust was absorbed into the American experience.

Raised in an Orthodox family in Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel was liberated from Buchenwald at age 16. In unsentimental detail, “Night” recounts daily life in the camps — the never-ending hunger, the sadistic doctors who pulled gold teeth, the Kapos who beat fellow Jews. On his first day in the camps, Wiesel was separated forever from his mother and sister. At Auschwitz, he watched his father slowly succumb to dysentery before the SS beat him to within an inch of his life. Wiesel writes honestly about his guilty relief at his father’s death. In the camps, the formerly observant boy underwent a profound crisis of faith; “Night” was one of the first books to raise the question: where was God at Auschwitz?

Working as a journalist in his mid-20s, Wiesel wrote the first version of “Night” in Yiddish as “Und di Velt Hot Geshvign” (“And the World Remained Silent”) while on assignment in Brazil. But it wasn’t until he returned to Paris and met François Mauriac, a noted Catholic novelist and journalist, that “Night” took the shape we know today. Mauriac urged Wiesel to rewrite the book in French and promised to write a preface. Still, “it was rejected by the major publishers,” Wiesel recalled in a recent interview, “although it was brought to them by François Mauriac, the greatest, greatest writer and journalist in France, a Catholic, a Nobel Prize-winner with all the credentials.” Les Éditions de Minuit brought it out in 1958, but it sold poorly.

The American response was similarly tepid. Georges Borchardt, Wiesel’s longtime literary agent and himself a Holocaust survivor, sent the French manuscript to New York publishers in 1958 and 1959, to little effect. “Nobody really wanted to talk about the Holocaust in those days,” Borchardt said. “The Diary of Anne Frank,” published in the United States in 1952, had been a huge success, but it did not take readers into the horror of the camps. Although “Night” had sophisticated literary motifs and a quiet elegance, American publishers worried it was more a testimonial than a work of literature. “It is, as you say, a horrifying and extremely moving document, and I wish I could say this was something for Scribner’s,” an editor there wrote to Borchardt. “However, we have certain misgivings as to the size of the American market for what remains, despite Mauriac’s brilliant introduction, a document.” Kurt Wolff, the head of Pantheon, also turned “Night” down. Although it had qualities “not brought out in any other book,” Pantheon had “always refrained from doing books of this kind,” meaning books about the Holocaust, he wrote to Borchardt.

Finally, in 1959, Arthur Wang of Hill & Wang agreed to take on “Night.” The first reviews were positive. Gertrude Samuels, writing in the Book Review, called it a “slim volume of terrifying power.” Alfred Kazin, writing in The Reporter, said Wiesel’s account of his loss of faith had a “particular poignancy.” After the Kazin review, the book “got great reviews all over America, but it didn’t influence the sales,” Wiesel said.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 brought the Holocaust into the mainstream of American consciousness. Other survivors began writing their stories — but with higher visibility came the first glimmerings of criticism. In a roundup of Holocaust literature in Commentary in 1964, the critic A. Alvarez said “Night” was “beyond criticism” as a “human document,” but called it “a failure as a work of art.” Wiesel, he argued, had failed to “create a coherent artistic world out of one which was the deliberate negation of all values.”

By the early ’70s, the Holocaust had become a topic of study in universities, spurred in part by the rise of “ethnic studies” more generally and a surge of interest in Jewish history after Israel’s dramatic military victory in the Israeli-Arab wars of 1967 and 1973. Wiesel, who had moved to New York in the mid-’50s, began lecturing regularly at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan and teaching at the City University of New York. (Since 1976 he has taught at Boston University.)

Although his books were all reviewed respectfully, some critics questioned Wiesel’s role as a self-appointed witness. “His personal project has been to keep the wounds of Auschwitz open by repeatedly pouring the salt of new literary reconstructions upon them, and thus to prevent the collective Jewish memory — and his own — from quietly letting the wounds heal,” Leon Wieseltier, now the literary editor of The New Republic, wrote in Commentary in 1974. Reviewing Wiesel’s novel “The Oath,” about a pogrom, Wieseltier criticized Wiesel for “turning history into legend.” His characters were “archetypes of the varieties of Jewish pain,” Wieseltier wrote, so “what remains is ... a kind of elaborate superficiality which does justice neither to the author’s intentions nor to his terrible subject matter.”

In 1978, President Carter appointed Wiesel to a commission that eventually created the Holocaust Museum. In Wiesel’s mind, the “real breakthrough” that brought “Night” into wide view came in 1985, when he spoke out against President Reagan’s planned visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in Germany, where SS members were buried. While Reagan was awarding him a Congressional Gold Medal at the White House, Wiesel told him: “That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.” The next day, Wiesel’s words were on front pages worldwide. (Reagan still made the trip.)

Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. The Nobel committee called Wiesel “a messenger to mankind,” teaching “peace, atonement and human dignity.” Wiesel’s “commitment, which originated in the sufferings of the Jewish people, has been widened to embrace all repressed peoples and races.” By the late ’90s, “Night” was a standard high school and college text, selling around 400,000 copies a year.

Yet some critics have homed in on the very qualities that have helped “Night” find a broad readership. Some have criticized Wiesel for universalizing — and even Christianizing — Jewish suffering. In “The Holocaust in American Life” (1999), the historian Peter Novick cites crucifixion imagery in “Night” as evidence of the “un-Jewish” or Christian tenor to much Holocaust commemoration. Others have suggested Wiesel may have revised the book to appeal to non-Jewish readers. In a 1996 essay, Naomi Seidman, a Jewish studies professor at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, detected strong notes of vengeance in the Yiddish version. In the final scene, after the camp has been liberated, Wiesel writes of young men going into Weimar “to rape German girls.” But there’s no mention of rape in the subsequent French or English translations. Wiesel said his thinking had changed between versions. “It would have been a disgrace to reduce such an event to simple vengeance.”

To Lawrence L. Langer, an eminent scholar of Holocaust literature and a friend of Wiesel’s, what sets “Night” apart is a moral honesty that “helps undermine the sentimental responses to the Holocaust.” To Langer, “Night” remains an essential companion — or antidote — to “The Diary of Anne Frank.” That book, with its ringing declaration that “I still believe that people are really good at heart,” is “easy for teachers to teach,” Langer said, but “from the text you don’t know what happened when she died of typhus, half-starved at Bergen-Belsen.” Wiesel takes a similar view. “Where Anne Frank’s book ends,” he said, “mine begins.”

Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book

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The following review example can serve as a guide for students trying to find inspiration when writing an assignment. 

What makes the story real? Not the reliability of facts or the fact that it’s based on real events. The main element is honesty. Integrity to share the happiest and the saddest moments, success and despair. The real story is raw to the bone, and the real author never hides behind the pen and paper.

This is the case for Elie Wiesel. The writer chooses memoir to go uncensored with his thoughts and memories about the most challenging moment in his life and the scariest event in history – war. 

Elie Wiesel’s “Night” is a powerful narrative that delves into the darkest chapters of human history through the eyes of a young Jewish boy, Eliezer. This semi-autobiographical novel, though woven with fictional elements, deeply reflects Wiesel’s harrowing experiences in Nazi concentration camps. “Night” is not just a story of survival but also a testament to the human spirit facing unimaginable horrors. In this article, we’ll explore the central themes that emerge from this profound work, rendered in simple text for clarity and understanding.

In this article, we’ll discover the main themes in “Night” and their meaning. 

Loss of Identity

The themes of “Night” by Elie Wiesel explore profound aspects of human nature and spirituality. Eliezer’s journey begins in his hometown, where he is deeply immersed in Jewish teachings and traditions. His profound identity as a young, devout Jew is starkly contrasted with the dehumanization he endures under the Nazi regime. The camps strip him of his name, his hair, and eventually, his faith, reducing him to a mere number. The transformation is so drastic that Eliezer, along with other prisoners, begins to see themselves as nothing more than animals, fighting over scraps of bread. This theme highlights not just a loss of personal identity but the obliteration of humanity itself.

“In the afternoon, they made us line up. Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instruments. We were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.”

Loss of identity, faith, the oppressive silence, and the ubiquity of suffering are not just historical reflections but also universal questions that resonate across time. Wiesel’s narrative serves as a stark reminder of the depths of darkness humanity can reach, and the resilience required to search for light amid such darkness.

Loss of Faith

The core of Eliezer’s being is his faith, which is deeply challenged by the atrocities he witnesses. At the beginning of the narrative, Eliezer declares, “I believed profoundly.”  

“I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.”

In the concentration camps of Birkenau-Auschwitz, the horrors Eliezer witnesses begin to shake his faith in God. The crematoriums burn without end, devouring countless lives, including the most innocent of all—children. The cruelty he observes and endures is unimaginable, more brutal than one would ever treat animals. He struggles with the idea of a just God who would allow such atrocities.

“Night. No one prayed, so that the night would pass quickly. The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.”

Despite the terror surrounding them, Eliezer is struck by the sight of fellow Jews clinging to their faith, praying and seeking solace in their beliefs. This perseverance in the face of such evil puzzles him; it seems to demonstrate a strength and a capacity for forgiveness that surpasses the deity they worship.

As time goes on, death becomes a constant companion in the camps, and despair takes root. Eliezer, along with others, loses any remaining belief in a benevolent God. This sentiment is shared by others, like Akiba Drumer and a rabbi Eliezer speaks with, who conclude that a God cannot exist in a world that allows the Holocaust to happen.

“Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. . . . “”

Eliezer’s faith is irreparably damaged during an execution at Buna, where a young boy is hanged before the eyes of the prisoners. A voice from the crowd pierces the air with the question, “ Where is God now? ” In his heart, Eliezer believes that if God exists, He is present in the suffering of the boy on the gallows, who dies a slow, agonizing death while the prisoners are forced to witness.

Silence permeates “Night,” symbolizing both the incomprehensible absence of God and the muted response of the world to the Holocaust. Eliezer grapples with God’s silence, unable to reconcile it with the loving deity he was raised to worship. 

This theme is painfully illustrated when Eliezer fails to answer his dying father’s call, a silence born of utter despair and hopelessness. Wiesel uses this motif to challenge the reader, posing difficult questions about divine and human inaction in the face of atrocity.

Fathers and Sons

Eliezer’s story begins with him witnessing his father cry for the first time when they are forced to leave their home. This is significant because it shows a crack in the strong figure his father has always been. The memoir “Night” delves into the breakdown of father-son bonds under the extreme conditions of the Holocaust. Central to this theme is the changing relationship between Eliezer and his father, which also reflects on the relationships between other fathers and sons in the concentration camps.

Before the Holocaust, Eliezer’s father is a respected figure both in the community and at home. Their relationship is based on tradition, where honoring one’s parents is a key commandment, especially in Jewish families like theirs. But once Eliezer and his father are separated from the rest of their family at Birkenau, they only have each other. As his father becomes weaker, the roles they once played change. Eliezer finds himself in the position of being the protector, rather than the one protected.

Life in the camps tests their relationship in many ways. Eliezer often feels guilty for being mad at his father when he can’t defend himself or keep up with the march. Despite his weakening state, his father still tries to look after Eliezer by giving him tools for survival and even saving him from being strangled on the train. But there’s only so much they can do to shield one another from suffering. As the conditions worsen and the weaker prisoners start dying, fathers start to be seen as burdens. Sons struggle with guilt over their survival instincts and their inability to save their fathers. Eliezer witnesses the extreme of this when a young man abandons his exhausted father, a rabbi, during a death march, and again on a train when a son kills his father for food.

These harsh realities force Eliezer to confront his feelings for his father. However, by the end of “Night,” these feelings become irrelevant. His father falls ill, no one is willing to provide medical help, and Eliezer is powerless to protect him or to stop others from causing harm. The roles and relationships that once defined them are irreversibly altered.

“Oh, to strangle the doctor and the others! To burn the whole world! My father’s murderers! But the cry stayed in my throat.”

Final thoughts

Elie Wiesel’s “Night” shares a heart-wrenching story of how the Holocaust tore apart people’s lives and faith. It shows the painful change in a son’s duty to his father and the struggle to keep hope alive. The book makes us think deeply about the harsh truths of survival and loss during one of history’s darkest times.

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Echoes of Darkness: Navigating the Depths of “Night” Book by Elie Wiesel

Embark on a soul-stirring journey through this unique essay, delving into the chilling pages of Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” Unfolding as a literary marvel beyond a mere memoir, the narrative navigates the profound echoes of human suffering and resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors. Wiesel’s raw and evocative prose becomes a beacon of light, illuminating the indomitable human will amidst the abyss of despair. Beyond its historical significance, “Night” stands as a universal testament to the resilience of the human spirit, challenging readers to confront the fragility of morality and to kindle the flame of remembrance and compassion in a world often shrouded in indifference.

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Echoes of Darkness: Navigating the Depths of “Night” book by Elie Wiesel

Embark on a soul-stirring voyage through the chilling pages of “Night” by Elie Wiesel, a literary marvel that transcends its genre to unveil the profound echoes of human suffering and resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors. Beyond a mere memoir, this narrative unfolds as a poignant symphony of loss, survival, and the unwavering spirit that defies the darkest of nights.

In its literal essence, “Night” serves as a gripping firsthand testimony of Wiesel’s harrowing journey through the shadows of Nazi concentration camps.

The narrative, raw and unfiltered, delves deep into the abyss of despair, where hope flickers faintly amidst the engulfing darkness. Yet, amidst the bleakness, Wiesel’s prose becomes a beacon of light, illuminating the indomitable human will to endure even in the bleakest of circumstances.

Metaphorically, “Night” becomes a labyrinthine maze where Wiesel navigates the complexities of human existence amidst the moral and existential void of the Holocaust. The darkness permeates not just the physical surroundings but the very essence of humanity, challenging readers to confront the fragility of morality and the enduring quest for meaning in a world ravaged by brutality.

Historically resonant, “Night” stands as a poignant monument to the millions of lives lost during one of humanity’s darkest chapters. Wiesel’s evocative prose etches itself into the collective memory, serving as a haunting reminder of the atrocities of the Holocaust and a solemn call to never forget the lessons of history.

Beyond its literal and metaphorical dimensions, “Night” echoes as a universal testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the imperative to bear witness to the darkest corners of human experience. Wiesel’s narrative transcends the confines of time and place, inviting readers to confront uncomfortable truths and to kindle the flame of remembrance and compassion in a world often shrouded in indifference.

Understanding “Night” becomes not merely an intellectual exercise but a profound journey of empathy and reflection, urging readers to grapple with the moral complexities of existence and to stand as guardians of human dignity and justice in the face of adversity.

In conclusion, Elie Wiesel’s “Night” emerges not just as a memoir but as an indelible testament to the resilience of the human spirit amidst the darkest of nights. It is a narrative that challenges, inspires, and reverberates with the enduring power of hope amidst the shadows, reminding us that even in the depths of despair, the human spirit remains unvanquished.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Elie Wiesel — Analysis Of Rhetorical Strategies And Stylistic Devices In Night By Elie Wiesel

Analysis of Rhetorical Strategies and Stylistic Devices in Night by Elie Wiesel

• Categories: Book Review Elie Wiesel Literature Review

About this sample

Words: 1063 |

Published: Mar 18, 2021

Words: 1063 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Night essay outline, night essay example, introduction to elie wiesel's memoir "night".

• Brief overview of the memoir and its themes

Use of Figures of Speech (Similes and Metaphors)

• How similes and metaphors are used to vividly describe the horrors of the Holocaust
• Examples of similes and metaphors in Wiesel's narrative

Irony as a Rhetorical Device

• The role of irony in highlighting the contradiction between expectations and reality in the concentration camps
• Examples of ironic statements made by Wiesel

Symbolism in "Night"

• How symbolism, particularly the title "Night," contributes to the overall message
• Significance of nighttime in the narrative and its representation of violence and tragedy

Elie Wiesel's Message and Purpose

• The central theme of ending human violence and the Holocaust
• How rhetorical strategies are used to emphasize the need to prevent such horrors from happening again

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105 Night by Elie Wiesel : Night Essay Topics & Examples

Night by Elie Wiesel is one of the most powerful books on Holocaust and Nazi German concentration camps. If you’re looking for Night essay topics and tips on how to master your Night essay , you have come to the right place.

✍️ Night Essay: How to Write

⭐ thesis statement for night by elie wiesel, 🔝 top 7 night argumentative essay topics, 🏆 best night essay examples & topics, 📌 night essay topics: most interesting ideas, 👍 good research topics about night by elie wiesel, ❓ essay questions for night by elie wiesel.

Night’s major themes include faith and dehumanization, but there are many other aspects that you can explore. This article will provide you with topics, samples, and tips on how to write your essay, including Night thesis statement.

This article will show a few essential tips on how to write the paper and provide you with ideas for your Night by Elie Wiesel essay thesis.

Before you start your work on the paper, we’d suggest you to wipe out all the distractions: turn off the phone and TV. Use app- and website-blocking tools to concentrate on your research and writing.

Now, when you’re concentrated enough, check the next steps to write an A+ paper.

• Pick up a topic and narrow it. Read the book and choose a topic that you find interesting. Then narrow it as much as possible. The key idea of this step is the narrower your topic will be, the easier will be your writing process.
• Clarify your ideas and arguments. Think about what you’re going to discuss in your paper. Define key arguments you will use. You can use mindmapping tools that will help you to organize your ideas in a logical flow. Later, this will help you to write a Night essay outline.
• Search for examples and quotes to support your arguments. Research quotes to support your point of view. You can also use examples from other literary masterpieces, especially if you’re writing a compare and contrast essay. Make sure not to use too many citations: use 3 to 5 quotes and examples as evidence. You may also use a quote as an essay hook.
• Create an outline of your paper. Outlining helps you to structure your ideas and arguments. Moreover, a detailed outline makes the writing process much easier.

When writing your essay’s introduction, pay attention to the thesis statement. The function of paper thesis is to state your opinion and give your readers an understanding of what the essay is about. If you’re struggling with your Night thesis statement, check out these examples:

• In Night , Elie Wiesel demonstrates how extreme circumstances challenge a person’s religious beliefs.
• The author shows how dehumanization affected the main character and made him gradually lose his humanity.
• The atrocities suffered by the main character made him lose his childhood in a traumatic way.
• Father and son in “Night”: relationship dynamic.
• Destructive power of family ties in “Night.”
• Analysis of Death March in “Night.”
• “Night’s” ending: is it hopeful?
• Power and violence in Wiesel’s “Night.”
• “Night”: the significance of the title.
• What does Elie Wiesel write about the death of God?

If you’re struggling with a Night theme to choose for your paper, you may find some interesting ideas below:

• Theme of family. Analyze the relations between the father and son. Why it is important to stay with your family, especially during challenging times?
• Theme of faith and God. Analyze, why does the author writes about the death of God? Provide your own reflection on God and faith. What makes people believe in gods even when there is no hope?
• Power and violence. Think, why Germans who had a power made use violence to force Jews into concentration camps. Read the episode about the Death March and explore why German Soldiers never deprived themselves of killing prisoners who could not keep up.

If writing Night by Elie Wiesel Essay is still a challenging process, check our selection of free paper samples and other useful information at IvyPanda to get advice and find an inspiration!

• The Relationship Between Eliezer and His Father Essay Their experience at the concentration camp changes the relationship between son and father, and the despicable treatment by the Nazis helps Eliezer and his father develop a strong connection.
• Night by Elie Wiesel: Eliezer’s Changing Relationship With His Father He began to feel the loss and gripped with fear of losing his father, the forthcoming experiences and need for protection; he clings to his father.
• Understanding of God – “Night” by Elie Wiesel Although Elie questions the whole concept of faith in God, he never stops to ask questions that connect him with God.
• Elizer’s Struggle to Keep Faith in God This was an indication that although his faith had started to change, he still had faith in God. He was able to come out of the holocaust with a stronger faith.
• Conceptual Inconsistency in “Night” by Elie Wiesel For people who have not been completely deprived of their ability to utilize their sense of logic, as a result of being continuously brainwashed by hawks of political correctness, it does not make a whole […]
• Night by Elie Wiesel The book notes that when the Jews were forced into the concentration camps, Elie and his family remained calm and obeyed every directive from their oppressors. The author attributed the enmity among the Jews to […]
• Nazi Deception and “Night” by Elie Wiesel Eliezer, the main character of the novel and the prototype of the author, became one of the victims of the Nazi occupation in Europe.
• Critique of Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust Book “Night” Like many books on the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel’s Night is a dramatic picture of the horror times in the history of humankind and particularly in the history of the Jewish people.
• “Night” by Elie Wiesel and the Book of Job Comparison Job’s friends tell him that sins caused his sufferings; yet, he refuses to accept it and claims that God still cares for him.
• The Central Themes in “Night” by Elie Wiesel Literature Analysis At the beginning of the novel, we meet Eliezer and his father, the main characters, the destinies of whom we will follow up to the end of the novel.
• Wiesel’s Night and Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Concentration Camps Comparison Nowadays, it has become a commonplace practice to refer to the novels Night by Elie Wiesel and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn as such that is concerned with revealing […]
• The Relation Between Eliezer and His Father in Night by Elie Wiesel Soon after that, the Nazis sent them to Auschwitz, but, because of the hardships of the way, only Eliezer and his father arrived there alive. That is how the author’s attitude to and relations with […]
• Nazi Deception and the Demoralization and Dehumanization of Eliezer and His Fellow Prisoners The novel describes one of the most horrible periods in the history of humanity. The prisoners of the Nazis little knew about their future and they were likely to deceive themselves.
• The Narrative of “Night” by Elie Wiesel The recurring themes of Night, by Elie Wiesel reflect the poignant feelings of disgust of writer against mankind and gradually his loss of faith in God, helplessness and hopelessness of a child who entirely disgusts […]
• Understanding of God in Eliezer’s “Night” His unshakable and unconditional faith in God is demonstrated at the beginning of the text through his interest in Talmud, and expressing grief over the destruction of the Temple.
• The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel The book is a powerful testimony to the horrors of the holocaust and how people can lose their humanity and innocence.
• Eliezer’s Transformations Throughout Night by Wiesel One of the first stages in the main character’s Eliezer transformation is his childhood and the desire to study Talmud and Kabbalah at a young age.
• The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel Eliezer is the narrator in the tale and experiences multiple challenges throughout the story. Faith, guilt and inaction, and inhumanity are some of the narratives themes that readers can analyze when focusing on the various […]
• The Memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel The incident changed Eliezer’s attitude where the fulfillment of getting the bread at that particular period outweighed the life of his father.
• Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night” The theme of disregard is especially prevalent in the interaction of the Jews on their way to the camps and those that remain in Wiesel’s native Sighet.
• “Night” by Elie Wiesel: Holocaust and Genocide Given that the events are seen through the eyes of the young person, the major emphasis is placed upon the main character’s perception of the violence and death taking place around him and gradual loss […]
• Holocaust Experience in the Book ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel Eliezer’s depiction in the story as the main character in the story is that of a humble and religious young man.
• The Jewish Holocaust Novel ‘Night’ by Eliezer Wiesel Generally, Eliezer admired the fact that his father was prayerful and he kept his utmost faith in God even in the time of oppression.
• Eliezer’s Faith in God – “Night” by Elie Wiesel Literature Analysis Eliezer’s faith in God changes throughout the book, as Eliezer experiences the challenges of the Holocaust. The events in the book regarding Elizer’s faith are quite sarcastic and dramatic as Eliezer’s faith moves from an […]
• Night by Ellie Wiesel The paper summarizes the reasoning of the writer and goes a notch higher to analyze some of the themes in order to establish the relevance of the book to the modern political environment.
• Eliezer’s Struggle to Keep His Faith in God It was after he joined the camp that his faith decreased as he could not clearly understand why God could not rescue him and others that he deemed to have suffered more than he did, […]
• Eliezer’s Lost Childhood and the Image in the Mirror The author of the book presents his hero in two ways: on the one hand, he depicts the boy, who is full of hopes and expectations; on the other hand, he shows the boy whose […]
• Night by Elie Wiesel: Eliezer’s Relationship With His Father The relationship Eliezer has with his father at the beginning of the story can be compared to the one he has with God soon after the tough experiences and problems at the Nazi concentration camps […]
• Change in Wiesel’s Understanding of God But this did not change the faith he had in God and he continued believing that God was going to safe them. He believed that the Jews were faithful to God but his understanding was […]
• Wiesel’s Changing Understanding of God The faith that Wiesel had in God was enormous, in spite of the increasing abuse and hatred that the Nazis had for the Jews.
• Comparison of Night by Elie Weisel and Cry of the Beloved Country by Paton Wiesel was brought up in the mountains of the present day Romania and in 1944, at fifteen years old, his family was captured as part of a mission by the Germans to torture the Jews.
• The Importance of Maintaining Faith and Goal to Endure and Overcome Situation in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Terrifying Encounters of the “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Examples of Extreme Dehumanization and Genocide Portrayed in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Dehumanizing Sufferings During the Holocaust in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Meaning of the Poem in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• Violations of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”
• The Symbol of Fire During the Holocaust in the Novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Power of the Nazis, Death, Loss of Humanity and of Faith in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Portrayal of the Hard Life in a Concentration Camp in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”
• Reliability of Testimonies of the Holocaust Survivors: Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and Binjamin Wilkomirski’s “Fragments”
• The Theme of Peer Pressure in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Father-Son Relationship Theme in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Transformation of Eliezer’s Relationship With God in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Survival of the Jewish People in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Inhumanity of the Genocide During the Holocaust in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Psychological Transformation of Holocaust Victims Caused by the Fight to Survive in Two Novels: Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and Art Spiegelman’s “Maus”
• The Experiences at the Nazi Death Camp as Described in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”
• The Life Journey of Elie From Schoolboy to Corpse in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Importance of Studying the Holocaust in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Heartbreaking Stories and Memories of Holocaust Survivors in Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and John Chua’s “Marion’s Triumph”
• The Lose of Faith in God in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Transformation of Eliezer’s Personality Throughout the “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Significance of Family Ties in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Human History and the Desire for the Agony in the Novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• Theme of Self Respect in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Horrors of Genocide: “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Loss of Faith in Humanity in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Role of Spirituality and Religion in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Theme of Darkness in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The True Picture of the Holocaust in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”
• The Three Levels of Racism in the Holocaust in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Use of Literary Techniques in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”
• The Genocide and the Holocaust of “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Issues of the World War Two as Portrayed in the Novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Role of Religion in James McBride’s “Color of Water” and Elie Wiesel’s “Night”
• The Creation of Suspense in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Significance of “Night” by Elie Wiesel for the Audience of the 21st Century
• The Frightened and Lonely Attitude of the Speaker in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Struggle of the Holocaust Survivor in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Unique Perspective of Elie on Human Rights Due to His Holocaust Experiences in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• The Value of Time in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• A Life After the Concentration Camp in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
• What Was Hitler’s Reasoning for His War on Jews in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Are the Imagery and Literary Devices in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• How Life Through the Holocaust Is Imaged in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• Does the Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel Lead to Hope or Despair?
• What Psychological Changes in Victims Are Showed in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Is the Most Devastating Choice Made in the Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• How Trauma, Memory, and Timelessness Are Illustrated in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Is the Historical Context of “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• How Can Reading “Night” by Elie Wiesel Change Views on the Holocaust?
• How Does “Night” by Elie Wiesel Contribute to Modern Society?
• What Does the Title “Night” by Elie Wiesel Evoke?
• What Is the Thematic Message of “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• Why Is Contextual Knowledge Important When Reading “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Is the Overriding Tone of the Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Are a Few Examples of a Thesis Sentence About “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• Can Death Be a Motif in the Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• How Does Symbolism in “Night” by Elie Wiesel Further the Authorial Message?
• What Does Elie Mean by the Ordinary World in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• Why Is Juliek’s Violin So Important in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Are the Examples of Perseverance in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• Is Survival Selfish in the Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Is the Desire for the Agony in the Novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Is Elie’s Relationship With God in the “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Are the Experiences That Can Change a Person’s Life in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
• What Are Some Examples of Dehumanization in “Night” by Elie Wiesel?
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IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 105 Night by Elie Wiesel : Night Essay Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/night-by-elie-wiesel-essay-examples/

"105 Night by Elie Wiesel : Night Essay Topics & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/night-by-elie-wiesel-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '105 Night by Elie Wiesel : Night Essay Topics & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "105 Night by Elie Wiesel : Night Essay Topics & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/night-by-elie-wiesel-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "105 Night by Elie Wiesel : Night Essay Topics & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/night-by-elie-wiesel-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "105 Night by Elie Wiesel : Night Essay Topics & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/night-by-elie-wiesel-essay-examples/.

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