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Night by Elie Wiesel Analysis

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Introduction of Night

Summary of night, major themes in night, major characters in night, writing style of night, analysis of literary devices in night  , related posts:, post navigation.

Night by Elie Wiesel: Essay Topics & Samples

Do you need to write an essay on Elie Wiesel’s Night ? Are you feeling too overwhelmed and don’t know how to start? No worries!

In this article, we’ve gathered everything you need to create an outstanding Night essay: topics, the most insightful questions, valuable prompts, and useful examples.

Night by Elie Wiesel Essay Topics

• The transformation of Eliezer’s personality throughout the book. Describe the main character’s personality at the beginning of the book. What were the boy’s interests? How did he perceive the world living in Sighet? Examine how the concentration camp changed Eliezer’s attitude towards life.
• The significance of family ties in Night by Elie Wiesel. Analyze the relationship between Eliezer and his father . In your opinion, are family ties a powerful or a destructive force for the main character? State your position and support it with good examples.
• Night : just a title or a powerful symbol? Does night itself symbolize anything in the book? If yes, what? What role does the symbol of the night play for the comprehension of the entire story? To make your essay more dynamic, consider inserting relevant quotes from the book.
• The religious context in Night, a novel by Elie Wiesel. Investigate Eliezer’s attitude towards God . Compare and contrast his perception of divine powers in the beginning and at the end of the book. What factors influenced the transformation of the main character’s worldview?
• Did Eliezer become a stronger or a weaker person? Analyze Eliezer’s transformation . Did the obstacles he went through make him feel weaker or stronger? Present your point of view and support it with valid arguments and appropriate evidence from the text.
• Is there a life after the concentration camp?   “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me” (Eliezer, Night ). How do you think Eliezer’s life will look like after the camp? Is there any chance he will be able to get back to everyday life?  
• Eliezer’s relief after his father’s death: a betrayal or a normal reaction? Why do you think Eliezer felt like he got rid of the burden after his father passed away? Should the main character be ashamed about it? Analyze how the trials Eliezer went through transformed his attitude towards his dad.
• Hell on Earth. Describe the Nazi’s inhuman actions toward the deported Jews. What were the Nazi’s intentions? After Eliezer witnessed the tourers in the concentration camp, did he lose faith in God? Or did he only started questioning God’s justice and kindness?
• The unexpected interpretation of the symbol of fire. The fire is the central symbol Elie Wiesel includes in his book. Analyze its meaning and significance. Compare and contrast the role of the fire in Night and the Bible. Why do you think the author interprets fire in quite an unusual way?
• The significance of Night by Elie Wiesel for the audience of the 21 st century. Think about the lessons the modern readers could learn from this book. Will you suggest reading it to your children? In your opinion, can Night become outdated and irrelevant one day?

Night by Elie Wiesel: Essay Samples

In case you lack the inspiration to compose your Night essay, we collected the most insightful samples. Read their summaries, choose the one you most liked, and create your outstanding piece of writing!

• Father-Son Relationships in Eliezer Wiesel’s Book “Night” Are you about to write an essay on the evolution of the relationship between Eliezer and his father? Take a look at this example! You will find an analysis of the family ties and a bunch of crucial quotes.
• Jews’ Suffering in “Night” by Elie Wiesel Literature Analysis The given essay sample explores the trials the Jews were forced to go through during the Holocaust. Also, you will find some insights into Eliezer’s struggle to maintain his faith in God. Check it out!
• Events in the Concentration Camps: “Night” by Elie Wiesel This essay gives a general overview of the events that occurred to Eliezer and his fellow Jews in several concentration camps. Also, the author focuses on the effect of hardships on the relationship between Eliezer and his father.
• Eliezer and His Father in Elie Wiesel’s Night How did Eliezer change his attitude towards his father as the plot progresses? Curious about the reasons for the main character’s personality transformation? Read this essay and grasp the answers to all of your questions!
• Elie’s Life in “Night” by Elie Wiesel The following essay will take you into a long journey of Eliezer’s life, starting from Sighet and ending in the hospital in front of the mirror. Are you ready to feel compassion towards the main character? Check this essay out!
• Elie Wiesel’s “Night” – Eliezer’s Faith in God Eliezer’s relationship with God takes a separate storyline in the book. Do you want to investigate it? Take a look at this essay!
• Family Relationship in ”Night” by Elie Wiesel At the beginning of the book, Eliezer’s family is an exemplary one in Sighet. But how do the family ties shift throughout the story? Do they weaken or strengthen? Read this sample and figure it out!
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by Elie Wiesel

• Night Summary

Eliezer Wiesel is a fourteen-year-old boy living in Sighet, Transylvania, at the start of World War II. He is very devout and wants to study Jewish mysticism. His father, who is a prominent leader of the Jewish community, thinks that he is too young. Nevertheless, Eliezer starts studying the cabbala with Moché the Beadle , a poor and humble man who works in the Hasidic temple. Moché teaches him that he must seek to ask God the right questions even though we will never understand the answers he gives us.

Despite ominous signs, the Jews in Sighet refuse to believe that the Fascists could ever do anything to hurt them. Moché is deported along with other non-Hungarians and taken to a concentration camp. He manages to escape and comes back to warn the townspeople of the atrocities that he has seen. They refuse to believe him, however, and think that he is either insane or just wants attention. People continue on in their normal, everyday lives through 1943. In 1944 the townspeople remain foolishly optimistic even after the Fascists come to power, Germany invades Hungary, and the German army itself arrives in Sighet. Eliezer's father refuses to try to escape the country. On Passover the persecution of the Jews begins. Jews are first forbidden from leaving their homes for three days, required to wear the yellow star, and then crowded into two ghettos. Even among the ghettos, people carry on as normal until one day when Eliezer's father is unexpectedly summoned to a meeting of the Jewish Council. He returns bearing bad news: all Jews will be deported. Eliezer goes to wake up the neighbors, and everyone begins to pack in preparation for the upcoming journey.

The first convoy of deported prisoners is kept standing in the middle of the hot courtyard, and Eliezer and others run to bring the parched individuals water. Eliezer's family is scheduled to leave in the last group, and they are moved into the smaller ghetto, where an old family servant named Martha offers to hide them in the country. The family refuses to be separated from one another, and they join the rest of the community in the synagogue to be deported. The next day, the prisoners are crowded into cattle wagons on a train.

Inside the train it is so crowded that people have to take turns sitting down. Young people openly copulate with each other, and the prisoners are forced to give up all their valuables. A woman named Madame Schaechter is on the train and begins to lose her mind, having earlier been separated from her husband and two older sons. She starts to scream hysterically about a flaming furnace she claims to see in the distance, and she scares the other occupants of the train. They try to silence her by beating and gagging her, but she nevertheless screams repeatedly throughout the night. Finally, when the train arrives at Birkenau/Auschwitz, the prisoners see the flaming chimney that Madame Schaechter had prophesied.

Upon arriving at Birkenau, Eliezer is separated from his mother and sister, but manages to stay close to his father. The prisoners then march past SS officer Dr. Mengele , who "selects" who will live and who will go to the crematory. Eliezer and his father are told they are going to the crematory and are filled with terror as they march closer and closer to a fiery pit. At the last minute, the line of men turns away from the flames. The prisoners are then forced to strip, run, bathe, and redress, all the while being pummeled by veteran prisoners and SS guards. Eliezer and his father are taken to the gypsies' camp, where they are harangued by an SS officer. The prisoners then march to Auschwitz.

At Auschwitz conditions are better and the fellow prisoners not as brutal. Finally, the prisoners are allowed to sleep. Eliezer refuses to eat his first ration, a plate of thick soup, but the day is much better, with people sitting and talking with each other in the sun. For several weeks the prisoners follow a tight schedule of meals, roll call, and bed. At the camp Eliezer and his father meet a distant relative, Stein of Antwerp , who is seeking news about his family. Eliezer lies to him, telling him that his family is well, and the man retains his will to live until he finds out the truth. The prisoners are then transferred to Buna.

At Buna Eliezer is placed in a good work unit, the musician's block. All he has to do is work in a warehouse counting electrical fittings. He meets a Polish violin player named Juliek and also befriends two Czech brothers named Yossi and Tibi . The foreman Franek gets Eliezer's father placed in the same block also. Eliezer is summoned to the dentist to get his gold crown removed, but he feigns illness twice and manages to keep it for awhile. However, Franek beats his Eliezer's father until Eliezer gives the crown to him in exchange for some extra food. One day the Kapo (head of the block) Idek flies into a violent rage and beats Eliezer. A young French girl passing as Aryan comforts him in German. Many years later, Eliezer meets this woman in Paris, and she confesses that she is Jewish and never spoke German in the concentration camp except to him.

Another day Eliezer accidentally walks in on Idek having sex with a young Polish girl. He laughs out loud, and Idek punishes him by having him publicly lashed twenty-five times. On a Sunday, an air-raid siren goes off, and the prisoners are locked down. They regain hope that Germany will soon be defeated. Two cauldrons of soup are accidentally left out, and one starving man crawls over to them and dies with his face in the soup.

The SS begins having public hangings during roll call. Eliezer is disturbed by the first execution, although the man condemned to death is calm and unafraid. Afterwards, all the prisoners are required to march past his hanging body. The only time that the prisoners weep at a hanging was when a young child, "a sad-eyed angel," is hanged for conspiring to blow up the electric power station. The entire group of prisoners cries, and a man standing behind Eliezer wonders out loud where God is.

Eliezer refuses to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Though he does not doubt God's existence, he does question his justice, and he accuses him for the existence of concentration camps. Eliezer's father does not want to observe the religious holidays either, although most of the other prisoners do. The SS holds a selection for the crematories right after the new year. Dr. Mengele holds judgment once again, and Eliezer runs as fast as possible past him. He passes, but his father does not. Luckily, however, his father convinces the SS officers that he is still strong enough to live and escapes death. Akiba Drumer , formerly a devout religious mystic, loses his faith and his will to live, and he goes to the crematory.

During winter Eliezer's foot swells up from the cold, and he has to go to the hospital to get an operation. A bedmate warns him to escape the hospital before the next selection because all the invalids will be taken to the crematory. The doctor for Eliezer's operation is kindly, and although Eliezer panics that his leg has been amputated, tells him that he will be able to walk in a fortnight. Soon, however, the camp is to be evacuated because the Russian army is approaching. Eliezer and his father decide to be evacuated with the rest of the prisoners, instead of remaining behind in the hospital.

The prisoners are forced to run for more than forty-two miles without resting. Guards shoot those who fall behind, and others are trampled underfoot by the crowd behind them. When they are finally allowed to rest, Eliezer and his father have to keep each other from falling asleep and dying in the snow. A man named Rabbi Eliahou comes around looking for his son, who he was separated from during the run. Eliezer realizes that the man's son had purposely run away from his burdensome, weak father, and he prays to God for strength not to behave as callously towards his own father.

When they reach Gleiwitz, the prisoners are so crowded into barracks that people are piled on top of each other. Eliezer finds himself lying on top of Juliek, who has miraculously transported his violin all the way there. In the middle of the night, Juliek plays Beethoven soulfully on his violin for an audience of dead and dying men. After three days, there is another selection, and Eliezer creates a disturbance so that his father doesn't have to go to the crematory. The prisoners are then crammed into cattle wagons, a hundred per car.

Inside the car, men are dying, and Eliezer becomes indifferent to life and death. Eliezer's father looks almost dead, and Eliezer has to prevent him from being thrown out of the car when the train stops. The prisoners are not fed for ten days. Once, some German workmen throw pieces of bread into the car for entertainment, and the prisoners become murderous beasts trying to get at the food. One man even kills his own father for a piece of bread. Another time, someone randomly tries to strangle Eliezer, who is saved at the last minute by Meir Katz , who subsequently loses his will to live.

When they arrive at Buchenwald, Eliezer's father is too weak to go on and begs his son to let him sleep in the snow. After much argument, Eliezer goes to the barracks and falls asleep. The next morning he searches for his father but half hopes that he doesn't find him. He eventually finds him and spends much time taking care of him, giving him his own rations of coffee, soup, and bread. Knowing that he is about to die of dysentery, Eliezer's father tries to tell his son where the gold is buried. Eliezer's father is repeatedly attacked by his bunkmates and has his food stolen from him. The doctor refuses to examine him, and the head of the block advises Eliezer to eat his father's rations. When his father calls to Eliezer for water, an SS guard shatters his skull with a truncheon. His father does not die, but his body is removed the next day, January 29, 1945. Eliezer is ashamed that he is somewhat relieved to be free of him.

Eliezer remains at Buchenwald until April 11 and is transferred to the children's block. There is no more story to tell after his father dies. Right before liberation, there is much confusion in the camp. The Jews think that they will all be shot, but they are evacuated from the camp in thousands each day. On April 11, there is a battle between the camp resistance organization and the SS, with the resistance winning. That evening an American tank arrives at the camp.

After being freed, the prisoners think only of food. No one thinks of revenge. Eliezer becomes hospitalized for two weeks of food poisoning. When he recovers, he looks at himself in the mirror for the first time since he was in the ghetto. The eyes of a corpse look back at him.

Night Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Night is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What did Eliezer mean when he said, "The whole year was Yom Kippur"?

In Elie Wiesel's memoir "Night," the phrase "The whole year was Yom Kippur" refers to the profound spiritual and existential crisis experienced by the Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day...

Night, Chapter 2

From the text:

"There are eighty of you in the car," the German officer added. "If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs."

What becomes elies main goal

In chapter three Elizer's main goal was for himself and his father to be selected for work and thus stay alive. They achieve this goal by lying to authorities and looking healthy enough to work.

Study Guide for Night

Night study guide contains a biography of Elie Wiesel, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Night
• Character List

Essays for Night

Night essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Night by Elie Wiesel.

• Silent Night
• The Motivation in Night
• The Gospel According to Mark and Night: Would St. Mark Call Night a 'Religious Book'?
• NIght and the Problem of Evil
• The Changing Nature of the Relationship Between Elie and His Father in Night

Lesson Plan for Night

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Night
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Night Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Night

• Introduction

The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Main idea in the book, developing the analysis, personal evaluation.

The book Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on religious faith, a significant issue in society. It was published in 1960 and has been translated into various languages. Eliezer is the narrator in the tale and experiences multiple challenges throughout the story. The most significant issue involves his struggle with faith depicting how the loss of religious belief impacts individuals in the community. The world is diverse, and societies have different beliefs and values. Consequently, Wiesel used the narrative to show how one’s life can be affected by religion. Faith, guilt and inaction, and inhumanity are some of the narratives themes that readers can analyze when focusing on the various issues addressed in the story.

The main idea in the text involves faith, which Eliezer primarily depicts. At the beginning of the narrative, he prays at night in the synagogue until Eliezer is overwhelmed with religious feelings. Moreover, the narrator is attracted to Jewish mysticism and wants to study Kabbalah to learn more about the religion (Wiesel 5). However, his father prevents him from engaging in the studies since he is young. His experiences in the camps of Birkenau-Auschwitz affect Eliezer’s beliefs in God. Many people die and starve, causing him to conclude that God does not exist (Wiesel 62). Therefore, the audience can learn that the main idea entails how life experiences impact one’s religious faith and relationship with the Creator.

Inhumanity has been incorporated in Wiesel’s book to ensure that the audience can understand how communities impacts people’s life. For instance, the German government and society redefined Jews as creatures who do not have a right to live (Wiesel 54). Another issue that shows inhumanity is when other patients beat Eliezer’s father in his sickbed because he smells bad (Wiesel 63). Guilt and inaction is also a theme used by Wiesel in the book. For example, Eliezer watches defencelessly as his father is beaten several times at night. Thus, Eliezer has the feeling of guilt since he does not show an act of resistance. The imprisoned community also feels weak and malnourished when surrounded by soldiers with machine guns. The prisoners’ options are limited since any resistance can lead to their deaths and torture. Thus, these scenes show that inhumanity and guilt and inaction are some concepts in the book.

Authors exercise different techniques to ensure that the audience can understand their message. Wiesel is also persuasive since he has used convincing language to create scenes that readers can analyze and learn the story’s moral lesson. Moreover, the use of religion is essential in the book since many people experience the challenges encountered by characters in the story. The narraive is also fascinating, which is a necessary aspect of literature. It enables people to read a particular text to the end to learn what happened in the conclusion. Consequently, these aspects can be used to reveal that Wiesel is persuasive.

What strikes me most in this week’s readings involves the techniques used in narratives. The various texts I have come across have used different approaches to attract more readers and ensure that the message is conveyed effectively. I have also learned the importance of ensuring that the audience can comprehend the story’s moral lesson. Therefore, these factors have been significant to me since I can read various texts and analyze how authors have used considerable writing skills. The question that I would pursue in the class discussion is; What are the significant elements that one can consider when writing both fictional and non-fictional stories?

Wiesel, Elie. Night . Hill and Wang, 2006.

• Edgar Allan Poe’s Views on Madness in “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether”
• "The Gift of the Magi" Short Story by O. Henry
• The Memoir "Night" by Elie Wiesel
• Understanding of God - "Night" by Elie Wiesel
• Nazi Deception and "Night" by Elie Wiesel
• William Faulkner's Banquet Price and Intruder in the Dust
• Baseless Travis’s Worries in The Sound of Thunder by R. Bradbury
• Theme and Characters of Twain’s “Advice to Youth”
• Theme and Characters of Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”
• Analysis of Esther’s Character Throughout "The Bell Jar" by Plath
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, October 3). The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-night-by-elie-wiesel/

"The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel." IvyPanda , 3 Oct. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-night-by-elie-wiesel/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel'. 3 October.

IvyPanda . 2022. "The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel." October 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-night-by-elie-wiesel/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel." October 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-night-by-elie-wiesel/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Book “Night” by Elie Wiesel." October 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-night-by-elie-wiesel/.