Night Elie Wiesel

Indifference to evil is evil.

In 1941, Eliezer was a twelve-year-old boy who lived with his father, mother, and three sisters in a small village near the border of Romania and Hungary.

The novel begins in Sighet, Transylvania.

During the early years of World War II, Sighet remained relatively

unaffected by the war. The Jews in Sighet believed that they would be safe from the persecution that Jews in Germany and Poland suffered.

Genocide

Geno – from the Greek word genos, which means birth, race, of a similar kind

-Cide – from the French word cida, which means to cut, kill

Why?

After the first World War, Germany was in chaos, and Hitler was a strong leader who promised a better life for Germany.

European fascism merged with anti-semitism.

During the Holocaust, 11 million people died in concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

Hitler’s ideology called for the imprisonment of Jews, gypsies, political dissenters, the mentally ill, and homosexuals.

Holocaust

Holo – from the Greek word olos, which means “whole”

-caust – from the Greek works kaustos or kautos which means “burnt”

Holocaust

Appearing as early as the fifth century B.C., the term can mean a sacrifice wholly consumed by fire or a great destruction of life, especially by fire.

Today, the term refers to the systematic planned extermination of about six million European Jews and millions of others by the Nazis between 1933-1945.

Elie Weisel

Wiesel’s story begins in Romania (now Hungary) in 1941 and ends in 1944. When Germans took over this area, local Jews were persecuted.

They were forced to wear yellow stars. Weisel’s family was first sent to live in a ghetto and then takento Auschwitz, one of the most infamous concentration camps.

A photo of prisoners arriving at Auschwitz, May 1944

This took place around the time when Elie Wiesel arrived at Auschwitz.

WWII ended in 1945Liberation of Buchenwald

Wiesel is the seventh man from the left on the

second row.

April 16,1945

Night

After surviving the Nazi concentration camps, Wiesel vowed never to write about his horrific

experiences.

He eventually changed his mind and wrote

Night in 1955. Wiesel won the Nobel Prize in

1986

Why Wiesel Wrote Night

To try and understand the madness in history

As those who are left to tell the survivor stories of the Holocaust pass away, he wants to leave behind a legacy.

He believes he has a moral obligation to prevent the Holocaust from being erased from people’s memories, to bear witness to what happened during WWII.

To keep history from repeating itself To help people understand how he dealt

with life and death and such a young age

Section One

Exposition- SighetMoisheExternal Conflict - Survival Introduction of several themes:

Silence Inhumanity towards other humanity Faith

Rhetorical Devices

Sentence Fragments (sentence variety) (8,9)

Rhetorical Question- “Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout so many nations? So many millions of people! By what means? In the middle of the twentieth century! (8)

Internal Monologue “(Poor Father! Of What then did you die?)” (11)

Understatement - “Eight words…” (29)

Repetition

Section Two

Cattle CarsMadame Schacter

Foreshadowing Dark side of human nature Tension

Motif – Fire

Section Three Birkenau – The men are separated from the women

Understatement (29) “Eight words spoken quietly” (32) questioning by the prisoner – effect? (33) Dramatic Irony – “Still, I told him that I could not believe

that human beings were being burned in our times; . . .” Repetition - (34) “Never shall I forget” (Anaphora – repetition of

the same words at the beginning of several consecutive sentences)

Internal Conflict – Elie’s Faith (33) “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify his name?”

”I thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created mud in His infinite and wonderful universe.”(38)

(45) “I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.” contrasts with the faith of Akiba Drumer

Motif – Night (34) “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night”

Section Three

Auschwitz Dehumanization▪ Examples – (37) “In a few seconds, we had

ceased to be men.”▪ “the child I was, had been consumed in the

flames”▪ (42) – A-7713

Irony▪ “Warning! Danger of death.” (40)▪ “Work makes you free.” (40)

Section Four

Series of anecdotes: Arrival at Buna Chosen for Work (49- Juliek, Louis,50-Yossi, Tibi,

51-Akiba Drumer, 52-French Girl) Father’s Beating (54) How has Elie changed

from the first anecdote of his father being beaten? What does this say about survival and brutality?

Gold tooth – two parts (52)(54-56) Idek and the Polish Girl(56) Bombing of Buna (57) Two separate hangings(61-65)

Section Four

Buna Internal monologue (48) – “(In fact , this affection

was not entirely altruistic. . .” Irony – (48) Elie’s shoes

(51) Dentist with bad teeth Dehumanization – “They pointed their fingers, the

way one might choose cattle, or merchandise.”(49) Narration (53) – Interruption for story in Paris, affect? Faith– “Where is He? This is where-hanging here from

this gallows . . .”(65) (aposiopesis – a speaker deliberately stops a sentence short to leave something unexpressed that is or should be obvious to the reader)

(56) Figurative Language in the section beginning with “One Sunday, as half of our group . . .”

Section Five Rosh Hashanah – “Night was falling

rapidly.”(66) Faith– But now I no longer pleaded for anything. I was

no longer able to lament...I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man.”(68)

Yom Kippur – “As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act

into a symbol, of protest against Him.”(69) The selection

“I gave him back his knife and spoon.”(76) Akiba Drumer (76) The Hospital

“Here too there is selection.”(78) Rumors of liberation – “I have more faith in Hitler

than in anyone else.”(81) Evacuation

“So we were men after all?” (84)

Section Six

Evacuation – Germans maintain control through violence and dehumanization “If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot

eliminated the filthy dog.”(85) – Elie repeats the metaphor created by the SS, prisoners begin to see each other as animals as well

Zalman – another example of complete faith who eventually succumbs “My father’s presence was the only thing that

stopped me.” (86) Surrealism – liberation of the mind to a dream-

like state where one can transcend reality How does the march take on a surrealist quality?(87)

Section Six

Story of Rabbi Eliahou “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed

inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed. “Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done”(91)

“Sons abandoned their father’s remains without a tear.”(92)

How does all this contrast with Elie’s relationship with his father?

Story of Juliek and his violin (Gleiwitz) “I shall never forget Juliek” (93-95)

Section Seven

Train to Central Germany Why does Elie briefly believe there is no

reason left to live or fight? (99) What is demonstrated in the scene

where the German laborer throws bread into Elie’s cattle car? (100-101)

What affect on the reader does the sentence “I was sixteen.”(102) have?

Why is the story of Meir Katz told? (102-103)

Section Eight

Buchenwald Describe the relationship between Elie

and his father. Why has it come to this?(104-106)

“Just like Rabbi Eliahou’s son, I had not passed the test.” (102) Why?

Elie’s father’s death (112) “I did not weep, and it pained me that I

could not weep.” (112)

Section Nine

Why does Elie have nothing to say of the time between January 29th and April 11th?(113)

How is the writing different in this section?

What is the behavior of the liberated men?(115)

“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.” (115)