NightBy

Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel•Born September 30, 1928•Mother & youngest sister died in Auschwitz.

•Father died in Buchenwald.•Elie lived in French orphanage for several years.

Elie Wiesel•Two surviving sisters saw his picture, reunited.

•10 year vow of silence regarding Holocaust.

•Nobel laureate writer Francois Mauriac encouraged him to write.

Elie Wiesel•Night appeared in 1956 in Yiddish.

•Translated into English in 1960.

•Sales have exceeded 1 million copies.

Elie Wiesel“[I have a] conviction that man must impose a meaning upon events that perhaps have none…I am absolutely convinced even when faith is impossible; you must make it possible.”

Plot and Setting•Begins 1941, Hungarian town of Sighet.

•German arrival in 1944•Birkenau-Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald.

Point of View•First person: narrator a teen age boy.

•Told chronologically.

Major Characters•Eliezer: teen age boy.•Chlomo Wiesel: his father.

•Moche the Beadle

Minor Characters

•Madame Schachter•Akibe Drummer•Rabbi Eliahou•Juliek

Themes•Self-preservation versus family commitment.

•Dignity in the face of inhuman cruelty.

•Struggle to maintain faith.

•Emotional death.

Motifs•Night.•Eyes.

Tone•Personal but objective.•Profoundly sad.•Quietly dignified.