...Eliezer’s Character Change The Holocaust was a devastating time in history where Jews were forced into concentration camps and worked, starved, or burned to death. One of the most influential writers who lived during this time period was Elie Wiesel. Wiesel’s Night is a memoir depicting the journey of a young boy, Eliezer, who experienced the Holocaust at a very young age. The Nazis occupied Hungary in the spring of 1944, and Eliezer and his family are deported to a concentration camp. While at several different concentration camps, Eliezer faces a variety of different situations, and he learns to adapt to his circumstances. As his father becomes weaker and weaker throughout the memoir, Elie starts to develop mixed emotions for him. During...
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...One moment could change your life forever. Whether in real life or literature, when you least expect it, something could happen that changes everything you’ve ever believed in. In Eliezer Wiesel’s Night, after much speculation, Eliezer and his family are captured and taken away to a concentration camp for a year where he and his father were forced to live in torment of the German officers. As Elie lives through 4 different concentration camps,his views about family and self preservation begin to change. At the beginning of the novel, before going to Auschwitz (Birkenau), Eliezer believed that family was the most important thing. During chapter 3, Eliezer asks his family to run away to avoid the Ss, but his father refused. For example, “Naturally...
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...In Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, the narrator describes how he struggled to survive in numerous concentration camps during the Holocaust. Eliezer changes throughout the text from a religious to an unemotional, lifeless being; the dehumanization he endured in the camps caused him to lose his childhood. Elie Wiesel uses simile, personification, and metaphor to demonstrate the effects of dehumanization. Wiesel uses simile to demonstrate that dehumanization causes people to act like animals. For example, Eliezer states how inhumanly his actions are: “ A man appeared, crawling like a worm in the direction of the cauldrons”(Wiesel 66). This quote demonstrates that people would do anything for the survival of themselves. Even if they were shot down, they would want to help themselves first before others. This quote is animal-like because, in the story, Eliezer is describing this prisoner to a worm. Elie dehumanizes others because he is jealous and wants what others have. The use of the word worm implies to an animal who slithers on the ground. In conclusion, Wiesel uses simile to demonstrate that dehumanization causes people to act like animals. Wiesel uses personification to demonstrate that dehumanization causes people to go crazy. For example, Eliezer states, “We...
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...In Eliezer Wiesel’s Night, he focuses on father and son relationships. In the beginning Elie and his father did not have a very strong relationship. “my father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than his own kin”, Elie says. His father was not a man of emotion and treated Elie as if he was a spoiled rotten kid. Wiesel details father-son relationships to show how natural, loving bonds deteriorate when individuals are faced with intolerable situations. For example, a prisoner murders his father for a taste of bread, demonstrating the breakdown of humanity. The prisoner then ends up getting jumped and is also killed. Another...
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...throughout Night. Eliezer Wiesel presents the Jewish faith in a moment of extreme darkness however, what gives him the courage and strength to continue to live is his connection with religion and his relationship with God. Initially Elie shows strong devotion, then becomes disillusioned with God’s power, and ultimately redefines the position God holds in his life. In the beginning, Elie Wiesel’s relationship with God in Night shows strong devotion. Wiesel made spirituality inherent to all activities, wished to spend his life focused around Judaism, and devoted all his free time and energy on religious studies. Wiesel believed that religion was a basic survival need, showing that he followed his religion instinctively. When asked why he prayed, Wiesel couldn’t think of a proper answer and thought, “…strange question, why did I live, why did I breathe?”. Wiesel maintained confidence in religion as the situation deteriorated. Wiesel and his people gave thanks to God for survival, keeping hope that God was putting them through a test of hardships what would keep them alive if they kept their faith. When they had arrived at Auschwitz, they thanked God and were able to regain their confidence because, “Here was a sudden release from the terrors of the previous nights”. Wiesel thanked God for the little things that helped him because he wanted a sense of protection and clung to the belief that God watched over them and helped them survive the challenges he faced. When Wiesel’s new shoes...
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...with God and deny questioning His Being. Wiesel was one of the Jews who survived the Holocaust during World War ll. Wiesel’s identity of God changed during his experience in Auschwitz due to the harsh conditions faced. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel the major theme throughout the whole story is that people struggle to maintain any sort of faith in god when faced with extreme struggles. The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before leaving with his family to the camps, Elie was very religious person he would cry after praying at night. When the German police came to take the Jews to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayer. Elie thanks God when he was told he is...
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