...over and over may have a second meaning that will only take notice when evaluated. In addition to the common definition of a word, the word might have been intended to be taken as a representation of bigger ideas, such as a symbol. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the word “night” uncovers these bigger ideas through both the literal meaning and symbolic purpose. Like the general storyline of a book someone is interested in, the literal meaning of night is well-known to most readers. Many contrasting events can take place at night, differing on the character and the surrounding. For the character, Elie, “so much has happened” in “one single night” that he subconsciously stops differentiating night and day, while other prisoners see night as a time to reminisce with old friends. Elie may be overwhelmed with all the sudden changes in his life and that causes him to think about nighttime many times throughout the story, because of the chain of events that happen at night. The other prisoners may want to spend their nights socializing because they have a feeling that night could be the last time they may see a fellow prisoner, another feeling Elie could relate to. The symbolic purpose of night is not like the literal meaning because it has to be searched for to understand. Night is not just a time, but a symbol. Nighttime is a dim and dreary phase that had turned Elie’s “life into one long night”, where there was hours before the sun would come out and Elie, a dying horse, would have to...
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...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...
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...lose your faith in the God that you believe in because you don’t see him doing anything In the worst situation possible. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel was taken out of his home and given the life that nobody could possibly imagine. Family throughout the story was about staying together and not losing each other, Faith, they were questioning their faith and wondering why god wasn’t there and why god wasn’t doing anything in there time of need, and strength was why were they fighting?...
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...In his book Night, Elie Wiesel uses tone to express the many hardships that the Jews were forced to face during the Holocaust. He also cleverly used it throughout the story to express the strength of a father/son bond even in the face of hardship. The narrator's love for his father was, at times, the only reason he had to keep up the constant struggle to live. "The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot" (Wiesel, 86). In this quote, Wiesel is setting up a tone of surrender, of hopelessness. And the Jewish people don’t want to believe what’s in front of them. “She’s mad, poor soul…” this quote shows how they knew Madame Schächter wasn’t talking about a real fire bout about something else. Something they didn’t want to believe. Elie uses many tone, foreshadowing and diction to help enforce what he knew about the holocaust. The tone of the novel is greatly influenced through the fact that the story is autobiographical. There seems to be only one agenda utilized by Elie in regards to the tone of the story as he presents the information for the readers’ evaluation. The point of the story is to provide the reader an emotional link to the horror of the holocaust through the eyes of one whom experienced those horrors. He presents the facts as to what he saw, thought, and felt during those long years in the camps. “The shock of this terrible awakening stayed with us for a long time. We still trembled...
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...told him: “do not go gentle into that good night,” but to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas, 1 and 3). Thomas hoped that his father would find the strength to not give up in his fight for life. Their familial love gave his father the hope to do the seemingly impossible and defy death, for a little longer. Hope is key to surviving in any situation, but it takes a lot of emotional strength to maintain. During the Holocaust, this was truer than ever for millions of people, who faced death every day, and were tortured, starved, and violated. Their hope in religion, the goodness of humanity, and themselves were continually tested and most victims’ hope were eventually lost because of their suffering. One survivor, Elie Wiesel, wrote a memoir, Night, sharing his experiences during the Holocaust and in a concentration camp, and solemnly displaying his progression of hope. Elie's gradual loss of hope caused him to lose the emotional strength that he needs to survive, which made him desperate to cling on to the familial identity that was...
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...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...
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...The book Night by Elie Wiesel has been by far the best book I have every read. This book is so detailed and informative that it literally gave me cold chills while reading it. I never knew how hard and emotional it was to live through the Holocaust until I read this book. Elie Wiesel was a young fifteen year old boy who was apart of a jewish family. Born in a small town called Sighet in Transylvania. Wiesel and his family was invaded by Hitlers troops, Wiesel then learns he has to grow up quick and smart to survive living through the Holocaust. Everything all started when Wiesel started studying the cabbala an ancient jewish tradition with a teacher name Moche the Beadle (Kabbala). Moche was a smart man who became known as a lier because...
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...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, Transylvania. He was a teenager when his family...
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...Relationships in Night A relationship can be defined as the mutual dealings, connections, or feelings that exist between people. Across Europe during the Holocaust, families were torn apart. At the arrival of a concentration camp, families were separated, never to be reunited again. The few families that remained had to watch one another suffer and eventually die from the harsh conditions. Those that had lost their families lost their strength and will to live. Eventually, they let the crematories claim their lives. As for Elie Wiesel, he vows to never lose his father and will do anything to remain with him. Wiesel’s memoir Night depicts the true hardships of having a family during the Holocaust. The events portrayed in Night show that the atrocities bring Wiesel and his father closer giving Wiesel a reason to live but also places Wiesel at a disadvantage. In the beginning, Wiesel and his father have a brittle relationship. Their relationship appears weak and lacks a certain connection. Wiesel states, “My father was a cultured, rather unsentimental man” (2). The absence of emotions and personal interactions between them weakens their relationship. Wiesel also claims, “He was more concerned with others than...
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... May 1, 2011 Major Works Data Sheet- Night Title: Night Author: Elie Wiesel Date of Publication: 1958 Genre: autobiography, memoir Historical information about period of publication: World War II, and the Holocaust, ended in April 1945 when the liberating Allied armies came through the conquered territories in Nazi Europe. Night describes 16 year old Elie’s loss of faith in God, humanity, family and morality in general. Elie, therefore, vowed to not speak of his experience in Auschwitz, Buna or Buchenwald (or any event between 1943 and 1945, from the beginning of the occupation of Hungary to Germany’s liberation in 1945) for ten years, until he had time to internalize this dramatic loss, and regain his faith and possession of his memory and life. In 1954, after realizing that even less than ten years after the end of the Holocaust, the world was already forgetting and Jews were abandoning their roots, the time had come to testify and justify to the world that Hitler had not succeeded. Biographical Information about the author: Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet Romania, where his memoir Night begins. In his childhood (up to the Nazi occupation of Romania) his father encouraged his study of the Torah, other Judaic texts and other literary works. As described in the beginning of Night, Elie was also curious about the realm of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. From 1944 to 1945, Elie and his family were subjected to the Nazi terror...
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...English II PreAP/Block 7 14 May 2018 Rhetorical Analysis;“Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize” Author and human rights activist Elie Wiesel, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, discusses the nature of human injustice and its impact on his life and humanity as a whole. He adopts a forthright and heartfelt tone throughout his speech in order to gain support from his audience. Wiesel's purpose is to convince the audience to unite against injustice and human rights violations. In the beginning of the speech, Wiesel’s intention is to remind the audience of the scale and inhumanity of the Jewish genocide and to establish his own personal experiences with it. When presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, Wiesel asks a hypophora “do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not”. He includes this in order to establish a sense of humility with his audience so the case he presents is much more convincing to them. This...
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...Night by Elie Wiesel is a poem that display the violence and discrimination of people based on differing views and beliefs by certain people that want to confirm their own views by using a sort of superior-inferior bullying tactic, put someone responsible for something and take their anger out on them, and to fulfill their lives with meaning and purpose. Bullies like Dr. Mengele from Night discriminates and causes violence to other people in order to confirm their superiority over them, both intellectually and physically. He does this by handling a baton in a bossy and demanding way to establish order in a commanding attitude that suggests doing exactly what he says ‘or else’ (Wiesel 5). By blaming or putting someone responsible...
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...The war waged by Hitler and his accomplices was a war against the Jewish people, Jewish culture and thus, Jewish memory. If the twisted philosophy of the Nazi regime was to eradicate Jewish memory, then it is our duty to remember the Jewish lives that perished and to keep Jewish memory alive. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, explains in his preface his reasons for writing the latest edition of his memoir Night: “[I] believe that [I] have a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.” The number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling. It is imperative that we remember their stories in order to give meaning to their survival. As Wiesel writes, “[The survivor] has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.” Wiesel has painstakingly endowed us, the next generation, with the knowledge of the moral depravity during the Holocaust as well as the importance of remembrance. Now it is up to us to apply this knowledge and to fight against future genocides. As a Jewish teenager growing up in the United States, I believe that it is essential for our generation to remember not only the Holocaust, but also the debacle of our country’s lack of support for the Jewish community in its most crucial time of need. In his book, Abandonment of the Jews, David Wyman asserts that: “The United States was willing to attempt almost nothing to save the Jews” (5). Indeed, the...
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...Desire, Hamlet, Night and The Metamorphosis. In these stories are characters who are put up against despicable enemies who seek to take away or destroy all that they have been building towards. These characters try to protect the things that they hold dear to them by any means necessary. In the Streetcar named Desire, Stanley enjoys his life with his wife and friends but all of that is threatened when his wife's sister,...
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...obligation is to give meaning to life, and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life” a quote by quote by Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate for peace, Holocaust survivor and author. I do not know, I find times I believe life does not have meaning, and agree with the Nihilists, Taylor and Schopenhauer. There are times I believe I tread my own destiny and find meaning in what I do, like R. M. Hare Self-Chosen Commitment. I still have many questions left unanswered. I think we all, at one time or another ponders the meaning of life. I have concluded, and it is not 42, Elie is right, my world or my meaning of life is a succession of obligations. I do not know if it is good or not so good. Growing up, I had obligations to my mom and dad, later in life to God, as a solider I sought obligations to my country, then my wife and daughters and now to myself. Could I have lived my life differently and shied away from any obligation? I do not think so; something is side giving you the drive to seek what others will not. I do not know what that is, God? Maybe. So this one I would have to agree with Elie, and Hare, we give our own life meaning, or not 2. Of course human history is progressing, in science, technology, standards of living, socially and governing. Yet there were nearly 10,000 rapes last year and 16,254 murders. Have we progressed from the man sitting by the fire in a cave, where the strong survive and the weak die, where the strong take what they wants...
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