“From the depths of a mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left.” This piece of text is a quote from the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel. In this piece of literature the reader gets taken along the journey of what Eliezer Wiesel faced during World War II. The reader gets to see the joy beforehand and the living hell the Jews face inside the concentration camps. Eliezer Wiesel faces many atrocious battles throughout his time in Buchenwald. All these times lead up to an important birth. The quote beforehand holds great significance to the story. The context surrounding the quote displays Wiesel looking into a mirror for the first time since the ghettos and seeing a living corpse standing in his place. In the reader’s perspective this shows the joy before the deportations and the living hell they endured inside the walls of the camps. …show more content…
For example, his faith perished. In the beginning of the story it shows Wiesel striving to gain religious knowledge. “ By day I studied the Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.” This quote solidifies the claim of Wiesel striving for religious knowledge. However, once arriving at the camps Wiesel’s faith had began to dissolve. In his mind he thought that if God was real, he would not be putting the Jewish people through such despair. During Wiesel’s time at Buna, Yom Kippur arrived. Wiesel was presented with two choices. Either to follow his faith and fast or eat and not die of starvation. Wiesel swallowed his soup and nibbled his bread. Wiesel even mentions “ I no longer accept God’s
As a result of living in a concentration camp and the horrible experiences he lived through, it is evident that Wiesel begins to lose the faith that was once so important to him. Although Wiesel himself argues that he did not lose his faith, many would argue that the events that took place during the Holocaust caused Wiesel to resent God and lose his faith that was once so important to him. Growing up, Elie Wiesel’s faith
Being the last sentence of the book, and out of all the passages I highlighted this one stood out to me and described Wiesel’s experience in just a few simple sentence. He looked at himself for the first time in many years, and did not recognize himself he saw a different person. This showed me that the concentration camps changed him he was a different person inside and out. The events that occurred to him had scared him so much that the man he saw in the mirror wasn’t him, but one who had been drained of life that looked lifeless from the events occurred in the concentration camps. He was weak and this whole passage embodies his weakness and the whole point of the concentration camps.
In his autobiography novel, “Night”, author Elie Wiesel writes about the horrors of his past, and towards the end he saw himself as a corpse when he looked upon the mirror which reflects his current state; he no longer believed in God’s goodness nor His justice. Elie Wiesel was a Jewish boy who had strong faith in God, but over the course of his life when he went through catastrophic events such as losing his mother, father, younger sister, starving, and being in concentration camps he declined God’s justice and blamed him for everything that was happening to him. In 1944 Elie and his family were deported to Auschwitz, a concentration camp, and that was where the horrors began. In the first instance, when Elie and his family arrived at the
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night recounts the horrific experiences he encountered throughout the mass extermination and exploitation of Jews and other ‘undesirable’ minorities in an event known as the Holocaust. Throughout the duration of novel Wiesel confronts various traumatic sights and circumstances which are highly disturbing and force him to reevaluate his beliefs and abandon parts of himself in order to survive. In this passage he has recently arrived at Auschwitz and is experiencing his first night in the camp where he talks about the impact this ordeal has on him from this day on. A central idea in the novel and excerpt is dehumanization, which is further developed with the use of repetition. These experiences have an enormous impact
Night Essay Sacrificing everything in your life and even your family can be very startling. In that perspective in your life it can change anything for you in a glimpse of a second. In the novel, Night. Elie, eventually leaves for the death march.
This was one of the most famous lines from the book Night, by Elie Wiesel. The novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, was set in World War 2 over the time period of 1941 to 1945. Elie Wiesel wrote the novel about this specific time period of his life, writing about his time before and during his time in the concentration camps. Elie transformed throughout
Wiesel's loss of faith was brought on by the absence of God. This resulted in him questioning why it was God's will to allow Jews to suffer and die the way they had. Another portrayal of religious confliction within Wiesel was the statement of his faith being consumed by the flames along with the corpses of children (Wiesel 34). Therefore, he no longer believed God was the almighty savior everyone had set Him out to be or even present before them. To conclude, his experiences within Nazi confinement changed what he believed in and caused him to change how he thought and began questioning God because of the actions He allowed to take
To develop the theme of denial and its consequences, Wiesel uses juxtaposition and characterization. Wiesel uses juxtaposition to develop the theme of indifference and its consequences. Near the beginning of the memoir, Elie’s family is packing for their deportation to Aushwitz. There is absolute chaos, as Wiesel writes, “Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty ground” (15). Unlike the disorder, however, Elie, on the same page, writes, “All this under a magnificent blue sky.”
That nigh the soup tasted of corpses”. Elie Wiesel used to be a vivacious person- always seeking God’s presence- but from the commence of this genocide he has been negatively impacted. God used to be his everything; his strength and his mellifluous song that comforted his very soul. However, all that he is dependent on now is bread and water-
In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.
I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” (Wiesel 115). In the final lines of Elie Wiesel’s Night, the author reflects on the effects the holocaust has had on him.
Wiesel changes vastly throughout the book, whether it is his faith in God, his faith in living, or even the way his mind works. In the beginning of his memoir, Wiesel appeared to be faithful to God and the Jewish religion, but during his time in concentration camps, his faith in God wavered tremendously. Before his life was corrupted, he would praise God even when he was being transferred to Auschwitz, but after living in concentration camps, he began to feel rebellious against his own religion. In the book, Elie
Very few books illustrate the suffering endured in World War II concentration camps as vividly as Elie Wiesel's Night. It is a memoire that will leave disturbing mental images of famine, anti-Semitism, and death such as infants being shoveled as
Night Literary Analysis Many people have written about their horrific experiences during the Holocaust, as there are many different stories to be told. But when Elie Wiesel wrote Night, he did not hold back on many details. He was very vivid with his grave memories. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses metaphors, repetition, and symbolism to indicate the unmeasurable amount of unnecessary pain, suffering, fear, and horror that had taken place. He wanted to exhibit that during this time, he was witness to many unspeakable crimes and horrors.
Memory Blessing or Curse Religious wars fought over beliefs were always fought between two sides and one is thought to have a winner and a loser victor and victim. In Elie Wiesel’s Noble speech “Hope, Despair, and Memory” he describes his experiences during a religious war that were more of an overpowering of people than a war no clash of metal, no hard fought fight, just the rounding up and killing of people with different beliefs that barely put up a fight. Elie Wiesel the author of the Noble lecture “Hope, Despair, and Memory” implores us to respond to the human suffering and injustice that happened in the concentration camps by remembering the past, so that the past cannot taint the future through his point of view, cultural experiences, as well as his use of rhetorical appeals. Wiesel uses his cultural experiences and point of view sot that he could prove he spent time and survived the concentration camps in order to communicate that the past must be remembered that way it cannot destroy the future, he spent time in a concentration camps and he