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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 saw them again. This was the first time they witnessed babies being burned in the furnaces of the camp. Once they were determined worthy of their own lives, they were stripped, shaved, and treated with the utmost cruelty. This was the time Elie began to doubt his faith in God,
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as
God Himself. Never. (2006:9)

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Then Elie and his father were sent to Buna, a sub-camp of Auschwitz. It was a labor camp where Elie worked in a factory. It is here where Elie is forced to have his gold crown removed with an old, rusty spoon; the last of what he had left. This is also where the Gestapo force the prisoners to watch fellow prisoners (even children) be hanged until they take their last breath. Witnessing these things made the prisoners start to become cruel, focus on their own survival, and lose their faith in humanity and God as well. Elie and his father spent months in Buna, working for food and to stay alive. During these months Elie needs to have an operation on his foot. While recovering in the infirmary, the Nazis want to evacuate the camp because the Russian’s want to liberate Buna. The prisoners begin their journey in the middle of a snow storm, while Elie is recovering from a surgery. If anyone stopped while on the fifty-mile hike to Gleiwitz, they were shot on the spot. Once what is left of this group reaches Gleiwitz, they are again forced into cattle cars to Buchenwald, another camp. Of the one hundred that made it, only twelve got off the train. This is where Elie’s father dies of dysentery and physical abuse. This is the camp that Elie stays in until 1945, when the American Army liberated the camp. In this essay, I will discuss how the events that occurred in Elie Wiesel’s Night may be examined using the three sociological theoretical perspectives. I will identify and discuss symbolic interactionism, functional analysis, and conflict theory. I will identify symbols and their meanings associated with race, I will identify elements of positive and negative functioning, and I will identify the resources and what groups are at conflict over these resources.
Symbolic Interaction Throughout Elie Wiesel’s Night, there are a number of symbols to be identified. The first one is the valuables all of the Jews in Sighet are asked to give to the Hungarian army. It
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is a symbol of not only their valuables being taken away, but what is left of them is being taken away. They do not know it yet, but their humanity is about to be taken from them, along with some of their lives. This is a symbol of a “superior” race taking from them. "The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it." (2006:34). This quote ties in with the next symbol, the fire that Mrs. Schӓchtter kept claiming to see that no one else saw. Once everyone else saw this fire, it becomes clear that it is an ominous sight and that Mrs. Schӓchtter was right. The fire is a symbol of the conflict between the Nazis and the Jews and what was to come from their visit to Auschwitz. It also symbolized their fear. They all knew if they did not work and meet the standards of the Nazis, the fire was their resting spot. "'Do you see that chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames? (Yes, we did see the flames.) Over there-that's where you're going to be taken. That's your grave, over there.'" (2006:28). Another major symbol is the title, “Night.” Night is dark, and darkness or blackness is “bad” or “not pure.” This relates to Elie’s entire experience from the moment he left Sighet. It symbolizes his feeling of being inferior, taken over, and treated like he did not belong on this earth with everyone else. This also can tie into the Bible and Elie’s faith. In the Bible it states that the earth was dark until God made light. This can symbolize Elie’s lack of faith and recognizing that God is not here, and he is not going to help because it is dark, it is “night”. Another symbol is when the Gestapo want to take Elie’s gold crown from his mouth. They have taken his home, his family, his valuables, his faith, and even whom he was within. Now they want the last valuable thing he has. This symbolizes the oppressor taking the very last thing of
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value, even if it is just a crown on his tooth, it is the last of what he has. It was more than that. It symbolized taking the last shred of Elie’s humanity. These symbols guide and shape social interaction because a group (Jews) are being made to feel inferior, or a sense of otherness. Not only were they treated like animals, but they were killed like animals if they didn’t comply with what the Hungarian police/Gestapo’s wanted from them, “Faster, you filthy dogs!” (2006:85). This society can be understood from the symbolic interactionist perspective by understanding that the way these people, these “others” were treated, made them believe that they were what the Nazis believed to be true. For example, “His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people” (2006:77). Not only does this show a loss of faith, but it shows the faith was given to the man who took their faith/humanity and made them feel inferior. Also, Wiesel states, "I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time." (2006:50). He says it, “I was a body.” He did not think of himself as a human anymore. He thought of himself as a thing, an animal who knew that “work makes you free.” (2006:40). The Jewish society was socially constructed through the Nazis/Hitler’s interpretation of them. Functional Analysis Throughout Night, there are a couple of ways that positive functioning is maintained. For example, while everyone is still in Sighet, the Jewish people as a group stick together and try to help as much as they can. Even when Moishe the Beadle was branded insane, he still tried to warn everyone of the dangers that were to come. Then during the eight days of Passover, everyone of the Jewish community joined in rabbi’s homes to celebrate. “Almost every rabbi’s
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home became a house of prayer. We drank, we ate, we sang. The bible commands us to rejoice during the eight days of celebration.” (2006:10). Even when they knew the worst was coming, they came together as a community. Then when Sighet was turned into a ghetto with barbed wire, no one in or out, they were not fearful. They felt safe. “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…” (2006:11-12). Weisel states that they felt as one, a republic, together. Other examples of this include the minimal amount of times someone in the camps helped Elie, such as the French woman who helped him after he was beaten Idek and told him “Bite your lips, little brother…don’t cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now…Wait. Clench your teeth and wait…” (2006:53). This shows evidence of this group of people being able to unite under excruciating circumstances and stay together, protect each other. On the other hand, there are many more examples of dysfunction and destruction of the Jewish people throughout this horrible experience. The Nazis made it extremely difficult for the Jewish community to stay united towards the end. First of all, as soon as they got to the first camp, they were separated right off the bat. Families and friends split up and were never heard from again. "Men to the left! Women to the right!" (2006:27). Then the conditions they were under made it even harder to maintain a sense of belonging. Once they believed they were unworthy of living, why try to stay together as a community? The one thing that played a major role in the destruction of the Jews was Hitler and the Nazis. They tore the Jewish community down to the lowest form of themselves as individuals and made reasons to kill them or just waited for them to die on their own. This society can be understood from the Functional Analysis perspective for the reasons stated above. They were forced into harsh
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conditions and torn apart over years of labor, malnutrition, physical abuse, and mental abuse. The Jewish people as a group, unfortunately, make for a perfect example of the Functional Analysis perspective. There are elements of construction of this particular group, and elements of destruction of this group in the same situation. Conflict Theory The resource at stake in Wiesel’s Night is the economies well-being of that time. An entire group of people were taken from their homes and sent to camps to work for the Nazis (the more powerful). This, left towns in many other countries abandoned or almost abandoned, with no one to go to work, go to school, consume, etc. At this point the Nazis had the most resources. They had the Jews working for free under harsh conditions. This is why, not only was there a conflict between the Nazis and the Jews, but there was conflict between the Nazis (Germany) and the other countries trying to liberate the camps. It was done from a moral standpoint, but also because the Nazis were getting too powerful. They had too many resources at their hands.
This society can be understood from the perspective of conflict theory because the Nazi’s were the ones with the power, and the Jews were the ones being worked to the bone. The Nazis used the Jews to work in the camps until they found they had no more use, and planned to eradicate the group when they were done with them. Hence why they did not waste time and made sure they Jews went through a series of examinations to make sure they were fit to work and not “useless.” Conclusion The theoretical perspective of sociology that best examines the events presented by Wiesel’s Night is Symbolic Interaction. Wiesel did a great job of symbolizing the darkness of
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this time that he went through and the other symbols in between. From the title of the book to the man he sees standing in the mirror at the end of the book, his symbols really show how the Nazi’s not only ripped apart lives, but literally tore down human beings on the inside and changed the person they started out as. Sometimes a person does not realize what experiences like that can do to a person if they are not in the situation. Wiesel, through symbols, portrays this in a way that someone who has not gone through this can understand. As previously stated, the title of the book is a major symbol. The fire that they see upon arriving has many symbols from representing the conflict between the Nazis and Jews to an image of their soon to be graves. In the very beginning when the Jewish people are asked to give up their belongings, it is almost a symbol representing foreshadowing, letting the reader (and himself) know that this will continue until the end. They will start with your valuables and take whatever they can down to their last shreds of humanity, even their lives. Wiesel does a great job at incorporating these symbols into an image that can be understood by any reader. Yes, there are elements of the two other theoretical perspectives, Conflict Theory and Functional Analysis, but almost every other page of this book has a symbol of some sort that ties into the Nazi’s. How they completely tore down a whole race of people because they were thought to be inferior, different, or “other.”

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References
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2006.
Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology. Washington DC: United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. 2013. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007457