In every religion, the holy text or the preachers ask that their worshippers believe in some form of God. Most people can blindly pursue and believe in God without question, without inquisition. Then there are those who cannot aimlessly worship a possibly fictional God. The struggle comes when there is no validation, no confirmation, of God or anything that He ever did. During the Holocaust, an estimated six million Jews struggle with their faith in every concentration camp, including Elie Wiesel. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses tone, diction, and characterization to expose his internal battle with believing in his faith and seeing the others battle with their faith as well. When Elie Wiesel is fifteen years old, he and his family are taken from …show more content…
The style of good speaking or writing can be described as diction. There are two satisfying examples of diction in Night. One takes place on page 68, during Rosh Hashanah. Elie is in a low place without a God to believe in or follow. “But look at these men whom You betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, and what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!” The influence this sentence has on the reader is commanding. Elie channels all his doubt, anger and mistrust into thirty-one powerful words. That is regarded as phenomenal diction. As mentioned earlier, there is a part in Night where a young boy is hanged for conspiring against the Nazis. One man of thousands in the back of the crowd says “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64). This man is the only one of all the imprisoned to have the courage to comment on the dire situation. This man packs the feelings of despair of all men and women into a short sentence. Although many people like that man are also struggling with their faith, this man is the only one who can put what he feels into words. That man has a good comprehension of
In the story Night the author Elie Wiesel uses word choice to show the reader all the despair that he was witnessed since he entered the concentration camp. This is important to the narrative as a whole because it develops the the reader's understanding the character's internal conflict after what he's witnessed. This also connects back to the theme of dehumanization. When Elie and his father were walking towards the fire pit he thinks to himself “My heart was about to burst. There I was face-to-face with the angel of death” (34)This is an example of word choice by including his internal thoughts. The author communicates to the reader that he is close to death and is scared of dying through him explaining that his heart is pounding so hard
The most obvious reason the book is called night is because of the quote mentioned above. The quote from the book states that the first night he spent in the concentration camp "turned his life into one long night". It also says that it turned his life into one long night "seven times sealed", which refers to the Jewish Kabbalah, where a soul has to pass through seven gates guarded by fire. So, like in the Kabbalah, Elie had to pass through the "seven gates" of fire of the Holocaust.
“I have not lost faith in God [despite] moments of anger and protest; sometimes I have been closer to him for that reason.” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explains the struggle of his changing beliefs in God during the Holocaust in his memoir Night. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a religious boy, is taken to several concentration camps along with other Jews, and separated from everyone in his family except for his father. He and his father live dangerous lives in the concentration camps, from being beaten, watching other prisoners die, and being close to death, until eventually Elie’s father dies and the camp is liberated. As Elie Wiesel’s time in the Holocaust lengthens, his devoutness in God begins to diminish.
Throughout the novel, Wiesel's figurative language displays how hope got him through some of the atrocities of the Holocaust. An example where their hope is brought up in the novel is when the anti-Jewish laws are put in place in Wiesel's hometown, he states that, "To the very last moment, a germ of hope stayed alive in our hearts" (Wiesel 25). Wiesel uses the metaphor "germ of hope" to figuratively describe how the amount of hope was not abundant, but it never completely vanished. He states that this hope lasted till the last moment, which also implies that this is what got the Jews through the Holocaust. An instance where Wiesel's language displays what hope got him through is when he describes the hangings that he witnessed, upon which he reflects that the soup tasted like corpses that evening (Wiesel 72).
Faith is like a little seed; if you think about the positive aspects of a situation, then it will grow, like a seed grows when you water it. However, if the seed does not receive water anymore, it will die, which serves as a parallel to the horrors and antagonism of the concentration camps that killed Elie’s faith. After the analysis of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the reader can visualize the horrors and slaughter of millions of innocent people that occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains how his faith in God was tested, as he was forced to leave his home, separated from his family, and observed the death all around him; he even witnessed children being thrown into huge ditches of fire alive. Elie felt abandoned, betrayed, and deceived by the God that he knew who was a loving and giving God. It was then he started to doubt His existence. Elie tried to hold on to his faith, but the childhood innocence had disappeared from within him, and he lost his faith in God completely.
Night by Elie Wiesel is dark, and this book is the opposite of pleasant. The holocaust was an unimaginable time; he described it uniquely by asking rhetorical questions. The characters attitudes and personality change from the beginning to the end. The beginning of the story shows the happy “people” they are. As it moves on the characters change and become different in a bad way. The eye witness view creates a harsh reality for the reader. He uses detailed metaphors and euphemisms to create or dramatize each moment. Elie is a teenager struggling with religion as he feels the world is giving up. Elie and his father have a captivating relationship and it is depressing. The concentration camps they are brought to drag their family apart.
Elie Wiesel uses language that heavily portrays death, darkness, night, and decay in Night, to help people realize how terrible the Holocaust was, and to not let it happen again. Elie Wiesel uses language related to the death and decay to help portray the horror of the experiences he went through as a Jew during the Holocaust. Wiesel tells
In the novel, Night, written and experienced by Elie Wiesel, rhetorical devices such as logos, ethos and pathos are used to expatiate the events in the story. Elie was just a child when the invasions commenced. This autobiographical novel consists of the story of Elie Wiesel and his family, primarily his father, as they fight through the treacherous nights. The rhetorical devices compare to the poem by Judy (Weissenberg) Cohen. Judy is also a survivor of the holocaust that speaks at the Holocaust Memorial in Toronto, Canada. This poem and the novel compare through their rhetorical strategies.
Night, by Elie Wiesel, showed the devastation of Eliezer’s childhood and illustrated the loss of innocence through the evil of others. Elie Wiesel expressed to us that one’s own faith and beliefs can be challenged through torture and ongoing suffering. The novel, Night, allowed the reader to witness the change in Eliezer from one of an innocent child who strongly adhered to his faith in God into a person who questioned not only his faith and God but of himself as well. The cruelty is shown to him while in the concentration camp forced him to wonder if there was a God and if so why would he put him and the others through such torture. Through his suffering, Eliezer’s beliefs dramatically and negatively changed his faith in God and compelled him to experience a transformative relationship with his father.
The Holocaust of 1933 to 1945 was a tragic period of time in history, killing more than 6 million Jewish people. One of its few survivors: Elie Wiesel, has written a book titled Night explaining his experiences as a prisoner of war. His novel is about young Elie Wiesel arriving in Auschwitz and beginning to labor under the Nazis’ unforgiving rule. Over the course of the book, Elie continually struggles with his relationship with God and feels conflict trying to decide between supporting his ever crippling father and his best chance at survival. Conclusively, because of his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s views of and relationship with God are challenged and his morals are changed.
Many writers write books for different reasons. Some write to entertain others, entertain themselves, or to just inform people.The book Night is about how Elie and his family are taken from their home and to Auschwitz concentration then Buchenwald. Elie covers everything that was going on in camps during his time there and the cruelty commited by the nazi’s. From the preface of the book many different author’s purposes appear. The first purpose that he talks about is writing so that he does not go mad, another that appears is to leave behind a legacy of words, and lastly states the purpose could be to preserve history. He uses many rhetorical strategies to convey his purposes throughout the memoir. By using conflict, irony, and foreshadowing,
In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they
Religion often holds a huge amount of significance in one’s life. Since it requires lots of time and patience, some people lose their faith when confronted with a tough situation. When a population becomes persecuted or executed for their beliefs, this becomes especially noticeable. In the Holocaust, a number of Jews began to question their faith, and departed from the religion as a whole. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel obscures the distinctions between his father and God, displays an opening void, and shows the misunderstanding of his belief in religion to express the loss of faith and the role that the spiritual and physical body possess in retaining religion.
By definition, a sober style in writing is described as serious, solemn, or grave; writing which is not exaggerated or distorted. One stylistic device that Elie Wiesel uses to create this style throughout Night is his frequent use of anaphoras. As a style device, anaphoras are the repetition of sentence beginnings. Wiesel's purpose of including anaphoras within his writing is to create an impactful and grave mood on his audience. Evidence of this style device is present as Elie describes his thoughts and feelings as his first day at Auschwitz comes to an end (pg. 22).
Faith in God can help break down any fear, but an intense fear can cause anyone to abandon their God. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the terror of death is what motivates the Jews to discard their belief little by little. As they run, shower, work and eat in Auschwitz, a concentration camp, death never leaves their minds as swords hover over their heads. When the last survivors give up on God and themselves, the S.S. prepares to bomb them, but at that moment the resistance rescues them. Innocent Jewish prisoners struggle to maintain their faith when they are forced to scrutinize the appalling deaths of their fellow Jews.