Premium Essay

Fear In Elie Wiesel's Night

Submitted By
Words 934
Pages 4
To many people, night has the connotation of fear. In the night, one’s vision is obscured by the darkness, leaving behind only unease and uncertainty. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, night symbolizes the suffering of Eliezer in the nightmarish Holocaust which he lived through. During the hours of darkness, Eliezer experiences uncertainty in his ever-evolving situation, fear during his sleepless nights, and loss of those that he cares for. During the Holocaust, Jewish people are forced from their homes, forced from camp to camp, and forced to change against their will. Eliezer and his family anticipate their departure from the ghettos into the lethal uncertainty of this war against them. Eliezer’s mother instructs her children to “go to bed early [and] conserve [their] strength… [as] it was to be the last night spent in [their] house” (Wiesel 18). The night is expected to be a time of rest and rejuvenation; however, the nights proceeding a change are stressful and often represent the fleeting moments of security and consistency in their lives. Even when Eliezer spends his last night in Buna, he is fearful. He knows a change is approaching and despite his horrific circumstances, Eliezer knows it …show more content…
The lasting repercussions of the experiences of him and many other victims of the Holocaust demonstrates the inhumanity of humanity present through the actions odious Nazis. The horrifying dehumanization and murder that the Nazis forced the Jewish people to endure should never be repeated. Wiesel hopes to convey that what happens in the night should not be repressed in fear, it should be pronounced to protect the future generations. The nights that Eliezer experiences may have been full of fear, uncertainty, and loss; however, they should be remembered and retold rather than remaining in the darkness. Night is a symbol for the execrable treatment of Eliezer during the

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Fear In Elie Wiesel's Night

...“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was said by Franklin D Roosevelt in 1932 on the subject his inauguration into office. Fear is conveyed on the journey of Elie Wiesel’s Night, in which we experience many horrors against humanity in the Holocaust that seem too inhumane to be possible. For the duration of the story readers experience fear on a new level compared to common irrelevant phobias and are emerged into a world of living dead. Which are the product of the fear that Hitler’s Schutzstaffel instilled in them, to submit them to their power. During the control of the Third Reich, the use of fear aided Germany’s journey of conquest by taking the identity from the Jewish people, corrupting their language and speech, and creating the feeling of indifference to emphasize the fear. One of the first...

Words: 466 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Change In Elie Wiesel's Night

...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...

Words: 1498 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Elie Wiesel's Night Analysis

...Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the story of the Holocaust, the mass genocide of the Jewish people and important event in WWII. The memoir Night begins in the polish town of Sighet. The story is About Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy whose family gets deported to the concentration camp with other Jews from his town. Upon arrival his Mother and Sister, Tzipora are separated and executed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz death camp. Following that, after months of work, with the advancing allied front, the prisoners were forced to march all night to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. As Elie’s story continues, after being stuffed inside a camp barrack for 3 days without food or water, the Prisoners were let out for a selection, Elie’s Father was chosen to...

Words: 1665 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Sophie Scholl the Final Days - Night. Comparative Essay

...never want to look back. Out of shame? Fear? In today’s day, we respect the past but rarely delve into it except for certain days. Elie Wiesel’s book Night is the self-account of Wiesel’s life in the Holocaust. It reflects back to the time through the eyes of a Jewish boy living in the awful conditions. It tells the story from the first few steps that Hitler takes, to when the camps was liberated. Wiesel delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity. The Final Days is a film about resistance in Nazi Germany of one woman in particular. The movie starts off showing the main character having fun and there is light and laughter. This quickly changes as it shows her with members of the White Rose, an Anti-Nazi organization. She was caught and found guilty. This movie is a true story based on an actual Sophie Scholl who lived throughout this and was a member of the White Rose. Although one is about standing up for your rights not matter the consequence, and one is about knowing when hope is but a lost phrase, barely living in your mind. While that is all true, they also have a lot of differences, for instance, they have very different main characters who come from different parts and are effected by the war in different ways, each story is told in very different ways and each has its own meaning, and they have different messages that are portrayed throughout each. In the memoir Night, Elie starts off as a regular Jewish boy in Sighet...

Words: 956 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Night Elie Wiesel Night Analysis

...In reference to his experience during the Holocaust and why he wrote night, author Elie Wiesel says without the experience he would have not become "… A witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory" (Wiesel ). The Holocaust is a memorable event that occurred in Germany and Eastern Europe in 1933 threw 1945. This tragedy was runned by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, killing a massive amount of Jews, homosexuals, Catholics, poles, and gypsies. Hitler strongly believed that the Jews were responsible for economic struggles also known as the great depression. Many people also believed they were to blame for the loss of war. In the...

Words: 1030 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Elie Wiesel's Night Analysis

...Night by Elie Wiesel, recounts his experiences during the holocaust. Wiesel and his family were Jews living in Nazi Germany. He and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie was fifteen when he was imprisoned and his goal was to keep his family together. When the Germans separated Elie and his father from his mother and sister, he then focused on staying by his father’s side. As he and his father were being transported to Buna Werke, a concentration, the fear of being separated from his father was great, “all I [Elie] could think of was not to lose him [Elie’s father],” (Wiesel 30). Realizing that he would never see his mother and sister again, the idea of being alone without his father terrified him. Elie’s devotion to his father gave him a reason to...

Words: 670 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Comparing Eliezer Wiesel's Anthem With Night

...Compare and Contrast Anthem with Night Even though books come in many genres, they can still be compared and contrasted. This applies to almost all books. For example, Eliezer Wiesel’s Night and Ayn Rand’s Anthem are different genres. However, the similarities and differences between these author’s works are definite and deserve analysis. Such similarities include how the societies handle the executions of criminals. In Anthem, Equality has to stand “...in the great square with all the children and all the men of the city, sent to behold the burning” (Rand, 38). During Elie’s experience in the Holocaust, he and everyone else in his camp has to walk “...past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue gaping from his mouth. The Kapos forced everyone to look him squarely in the face” (Wiesel, 63). Also, both Elie and Equality receive messages from watching a public execution. When the pipel is hanged, Elie thinks that God is no longer with the Jews and takes it to...

Words: 617 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Symbolic Interaction, Functional Analysis, and Conflict Theory of Elie Wiesels’s Night

...1 Symbolic Interaction, Functional Analysis, and Conflict Theory of Elie Wiesels’s Night Introduction 2 Symbolic Interaction, Functional Analysis, and Conflict Theory of Elie Wiesels’s “Night” Elie Wiesel’s Night begins in Sighet, Transylvania, 1941 when he was a teenager. He begins talking about a life before his world, along with his family, was torn apart. His family was Jewish, and he wanted to study Cabbala. He was very much involved in his faith and wanted to further pursue it by studying Cabbala, but his father would not let him. “There are no Cabbalists in Sighet.” (pg 4). He was very close with his shtibl, Moishe the Beadle, who later was taken by Hungarian Police and expelled from Sighet because he was a foreign Jew. Once they were taken over by the Gestapo, the babies were used as target practice and the adults were shot. Moishe managed to escape because he was shot in his leg and was able to get back to Sighet to tell Elie what happened. He also tried to tell everyone in town what had happened to him and the rest of the foreign Jews, but no one believed him and he was branded insane. 1944 was when the town of Sighet was split into two ghettos, and no one could leave the town. Shortly after that, the Hungarian police told everyone in town to turn in their valuables (gold, jewelry, etc.) because they were going to the first concentration camp, Auschwitz. This is where Elie and his father were separated from his mother and sisters, and never heard from or...

Words: 2465 - Pages: 10

Premium Essay

Elie Wiesel's Horrible Experience In The Book Night

...In Wiesel's detailed and devastating book Night. Wiesel describes his horrible experience during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany when his family suffered in a concentration camp. The things he experienced are unbelievable as he describes the violence, starvation, torture, and humiliation that he endured. The part where Elie questions God’s existence and then the death march that follows was especially striking to me, because it shows the extent of his hopelessness but also his enduring love for his father. Prior to going into the infirmary , Elie is living in a state of constant fear of being selected to die or being separated from his father. He is tired of hearing that the camp was even worse two years ago because he freezing, sleeping...

Words: 697 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Night Essay

...Wiesel’s Changes of Faith The Holocaust brought about many hardships and created severe adversity for its victims that may have created experiences ultimately too traumatic that transformed their lives for years to come, either through starvation and labor in the concentration camps or execution and incineration in the extermination camps. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel tells the story of himself as a young Jewish boy born in Romania, who in 1944, was forced into ghettos with the rest of the Jewish citizens and later deported, along with his father, to the Nazi’s largest killing center, Auschwitz-Birkenau. While living through this day-to-day horrifying basis, Elie begins to live with overwhelming fear and total alienation, as well as his increasing loss of faith on God and whether God is even existent or not for His lack of participation in trying to help the Jews. Although Elie manages to survive his long and frightening journey through both labor and death camps, his faith was never at the high-most air-reaching level as it dramatically changed throughout the course of the novel because of his disturbing experiences in witnessing cremated human beings, executions, and the going through the loss of his entire family. Prior to being deported to the camps, Elie’s faith was extremely high as he was well-established with his studies in mysticism and the cabbala and his great involvement with religion through prayers. Elie is finding a great interest in wanting to...

Words: 1428 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Essay On Dehumanization In Night

...In Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night, Elie witnesses the dehumanization of the Jewish people by the Nazis as he experiences the loss of his humanity by the Nazi party.Elie first experiences dehumanization when he is forced into living in the local Ghetto in his hometown of Sighet Transylvania. As he is deported from the Sighet Ghetto, the Hungarian Police pack the Jews into the cattle cars where they experience brutal conditions and many die. After their long and grueling trip to the concentration camp they are subject to more dehumanization in the form of slave labor and mass killings of their friends and relatives. Thus being a few of the may reasons why dehumanization is a terrible act that cannot be allowed Dehumanazation was a terrible...

Words: 635 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Comparing Elie Wiesel's Night And Delbos Roll Call

...Forgetting the dead and forgetting the tragic events that occurred during the Holocaust would be like killing them a second time. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night and Delbos poem “Roll Call” both document and serve as a remembrance of the lives lost and the horrific events that occurred inside the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Wiesel and Delbo were both survivors of the Holocaust who documented their individual experiences and their time at Auschwitz. While both texts discuss their times as prisoners, they differ in their experiences and writing styles. Despite these differences, both texts serve as important evidence to the heinous and unforgiving crimes committed by the German Nazis. There are lots of different writing techniques authors...

Words: 567 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Night In Elie Wiesel's Life Is Beautiful

...“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.” (34) After reading Elie Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust in his book Night and watching the movie Life is Beautiful, directed by Roberto Benigni, I determined that, the book, Night has the greatest impact on the reader. Based on the mood and tone of the two stories, the amount of details, and the main characters of the stories, I believe that Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust leaves the reader more impacted than Benigni’s story of the same event. In Elie Wiesel’s literary memoir Night, which he wrote in the nineteen-fifties, after his ten years of vowed silence in respect for those who lost their lives in the Holocaust, Wiesel...

Words: 985 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Anaphora In Elie Wiesel's Night

...Elie Wiesel’s Night illustrates through the use of anaphora and simile to allow the reader to see how men who fail to attain even a respite are much more likely to relinquish their religion. Elie himself develops to find his god erroneous whilst endeavoring to keeping his body and soul through excessive work and little food in a Nazi concentration camp, and begins to loathe his omniscient being, whom punishes Elie at his leisure. When people are faced with an incredibly gruesome scene, they tend to be traumatized by it, which may lead to effects on their psyche. This change in conduct may alter the way they perceive the world around them, including their religion. In Night, Elie is faced with the scene of babies burning, and feels: “[colon Quote Related To”Never Shall I Forget Anaphora]”(Wiesel __). This is Elie traumatized by the melting children and the acrid scent, knowing that he would be a part of it all too soon. It is seen later on that when “[Sentence Flow Quote Related To His Father Being Beaten]”(Wiesel __), which shows how Elie has been desensitized to the anguish of other people, even the ones as close as family. Trauma on this caliber...

Words: 442 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Essay

...I believe that the story “Night” shows us a multitude of angles on which people lived during the holocaust. Though I do not belive that in these times that human kindness prevailed, often prisoners would kill for food or drink, and many people turned a blind eye to the actions in Germany. The history of the world is plagued by mankind’s inability to settle for what they have and who they are. Wars have been fought over religion, tradition, territory, and in this case, the idea that one race is superior to another. World War II was a horrible time in the world. The First World War was “the war to end all wars” and yet chaos spread over Europe. Elie Wiesel’s story, Night, is no exception. Elie was a Jewish prisoner who escaped the Nazi death camps. Night redefines what a common theme of man’s inhumanity to man. This theme is shown through the murder of a young boy, Elie’s belief in God, and Elie’s self-worth. The first display of Nazi inhumanity is the murder of a young child. An man and the boy (his assistant) were accused of blowing up a power plant on the camp. The man and boy were tortured and questioned and refused to give any information about the incident to the Nazi soldiers. The boy was described as “having the face of a sad angel” and was sentenced to be hanged. Everyone at the camp liked him and the SS officer in charge of the hanging refused his job and was replaced. The child was so light he hung for half and hour before actually...

Words: 880 - Pages: 4