Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir about Wiesel’s Holocaust experience in the Nazi German concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In the book, includes theme slike In Night, by Elie Wiesel, the theme of manipulation and control is shown by the Nazi’s manipulating the prisoners by dehumanizing them through routine and false hope. The Nazi’s used trickery and deception to manipulate the Jews. At this point in the novel, two ghettos are created in Sighet, Elie’s hometown. “The atmosphere was oddly peaceful and reassuring. Most people thought that we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward, everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled …show more content…
Elie has now been in the camps for eight to nine months and is already used to all the strict routines. From the beginning of the book like the ghettos to the camps now, rules and restrictions are enforced to manipulate the Jews while making them seem less. "The bell. It was already time to part, to go to bed. The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly. I hated that bell .Whenever I dreamed of a better world, I could only imagine a universe with no bells." (73) The bell in the camps is a form of manipulation; Elie mindlessly follows the bell’s order and his subconsciousness knows that if he does not cooperate, he will face consequences. The bell in the camps strips the Jew of their own freedom and choice which leads to the Nazi's complete control over the prisoners. This complete control instills fear in the prisoners, manipulating them into …show more content…
Wiesel’s family is moving to the smaller ghetto as they are waiting for the last transports for the camps to arrive. “The few days we spent here went by pleasant enough, in relative calm. People rather got along…we were all people condemned to the same fate — still unknown.” (21) The Nazi’s plan is similar to the strategy of “the carrot and the stick”; For example, the Germans placed restrictions on the valuables Jews could own and enforced a decree that Jews had to wear the yellow star. But, after a while, they would not add any rules or would ease the rules, guiding false hope to the Jews, a form of manipulation. Humans are naturally optimistic which is why when the Jews feel something threatening enough, then feel relief, it creates false hope. Even when the Jews are able to leave, they do not choose to as the situation is not harmful “enough” as expected to leave. The Nazi Germans continue this strategy until the very end. In this instance, Elie’s family is being sent to the transport for the camps, which leads them to be fearful of what is going to happen next. They then learn that they will move to the other Sighet ghetto but along the way, they face Hungarian police wielding clubs, harsh orders and physical challenges. When they arrive, the Jews feel relieved and rather calm as they begin to open up to hope and optimism. “People’s morale was not so
Sighet, where Wiesel first lived, was a source of comfort and inspiration for him as he could live life like a normal human being. All changed after the Nazi’s moved into Sighet. The Nazi’s made these ghettos. This is how Elie lived after the Nazi’s moved in:“TWO GHETTOS were created in Sighet. A large one in the center of town occupied four streets, and another smaller one extended over several alleyways on the outskirts of town.
Eventually the German army were in their streets but no one did anything because the soldiers were not causing any problems. Elie writes about how even some of the jews housed the soldiers and during that time the soldiers were very respectful, but one day the German soldiers received orders to move all the Jews into two ghettos that were just built in the city (Wiesel7). The Jews try to be optimistic though and see it as an opportunity to build a closer community because now they get their own spot of the city for themselves, they even set up a council and police force. Elie writes that the adults are trying to paint it as a brighter picture ignoring the fact that their outside windows facing the city are closed up and boarded from the outside and they are surrounded by barbed wire (Wiesel 9). Later Elie and his family were deported to
Eventually the SS initiated the ghettos, fenced off areas inhabited by the captive Jews. The ghettos were more-the-less governed by Jews, with supervision of the SS, this gave them slightly more freedom in these small communities. In the ghettos, life slowly returned to "normal", children would be playing games and people would be walking down the streets carefree. But of course something bad happens, and Elie's father is called into a meeting. Once his father emerges back into the crowd, he tells them all one word,
In Night, Elie wrote, “‘ There aren’t any cabbalists at Sighet,’ my father would repeat. He wanted to drive the notion out of my head… I found a master for myself, Moshe the Beadle” (Wiesel 2). The Elie at the end of the book contrasts greatly with the Elie at the start: a religious young boy, who devoted very much to his studies of the cabbala and praising the name of God. Overall, the horrors he’s seen in the concentration camps, from the babies in the crematory to the hangings of innocent people made
In this book you will see a lot of people being killed off or simply just being torn away from their everyday lives and beliefs. Elie and his family got taken into a concentration camp. When they arrived his family was taken away from him and they were not seen again. After that, his father and himself were left to fend for themselves. There were a lot of people in charge at the camps.
‘Deportation.’ The ghetto was to be completely wiped out. We were to leave street by street, starting the following day.”(pg 18). This growing pressure resumed from the Nazi enforcement until they eventually moved everyone to a new location group by group, Elie’s group being the last chosen.
Throughout the whole story, Elie gives a look into the abuse that he and others would suffer. They would be randomly woken up and beaten and forced to run around in the cold. Or the guards would be unhappy with something that one of the Jews did, and would attack them. It was a constant feeling of fear caused by the possibility of being assaulted. The Nazis forced a mindset of fear onto the Jews.
I’m still not sure that it was the wrong move, or the right move, that is, whether to choose language or silence” (1). In other words, Wiesel did not want write the wrong words because he was afraid that he would not be able to explain it well enough, so that the reader can feel how terrible it was to survive the holocaust and know the
The prisoners seem to become cold-hearted and turn their backs towards each other; their only concern is survival. These horrid events in the multiple concentration camps and the inevitable deaths of many lead Elie to wonder how the world can hold so much grudge and fury, only to make matters worse, instead of making
Through such acts of altruism, Wiesel affirms that humanity is the consideration of others' welfare, as he was resistant and opposed violence especially targeted towards his father to the detriment of his only luxury within the concentration camp. Thus, Wiesel affirms that the preservation of one’s sense of hope and the consideration of other individuals can be a form of defiance against
“Yesterday, I should have sunk my nails into the criminal’s flesh. Had I changed so much since then? So quickly?” (…) This is evident through how these concentration camps have indeed altered Elie's humanity.
One of the first things to happen to Elie and his family was psychological torture. He, his family, and the many other Jews with them knew that they would be forced to leave. However, in a sick game, the Nazi’s toyed with the Jews by making them stand and run; the Jews never truly knew when they would be forced to leave their entire lives behind. “We stood, We were counted. We sat down.
Through all his suffering and pain in the concentration camp, Elie learned that he has the strength to stay loyal to his father who has been holding him back from surviving. The concentration camp was brutal mentally and physically. Many people were having trouble keeping themselves alive much more their family. People without the strength to stay loyal would abandon their loved ones for their own benefit. In the camp, when Elie and his dad were just waiting to die, they were slowly losing hope of ever truly living again.
All the prisoners had strong beliefs throughout their life, and this was used to give them hope for a better future. Elie was working in the warehouse like the other Jews when he was abruptly beaten by the Idek for no discernible reason, the reality to many in the camps. As he crawled into a corner to bring himself together, a French girl came to help him recover. She spoke words of hope, saying to him, “Bite your lips little brother… Don’t cry.
According to the text in chapters 5 and 6, Elie tells his story about the begging of the end of the Jewish prisoners being sent off running to an unknown destination as stated at the end of chapter 5. In chapters 6 and 7, the story talks about how Elie and the other Jews were forced to keep running and if they stopped they would be shot down. And in chapter 8 when they finally reached their destination in Buchenwald they were told to take showers so they could be burned in the crematorium. Some people might have thought during WWII it was just all about the fighting and the effect on us as Americans. But most people won't look deeper into the effects of the Jewish people that were being eradicated just because the germans didn’t want there to be evidence of what they were doing to these innocent