Night - Top Fives

Themes


1) The role that self-preservation plays when individuals respond to competing demands

a) When the prisoners are being transferred from Buna to Buchenwald, a small boy strangles his father in an attempt to steals some bread. Both father and son die in the ensuing chaos.

b) A few days before Wiesel Sr. dies, Elie truly feels that he would be better off without his father slowing him down.

c) Rabbi Eliahou’s son purposely tries to lose his father during the fifty mile death marathon between Buna and Gleiwitz, so that his only concern is his own self-preservation.

2) The interplay between fear and foresight when individuals make life altering choices

a) Elie debates whether he should run into the electrical fence, and save himself the pain of Auschwitz, by killing himself. Luckily, the group of men he is with is diverted away from the gas chambers and the furnace at the last second.

b) The man who tries to steal food during the air raid decides that he is willing to risk his well being for extra food. This decision turns out to be fatal, as he is shot before he can consume any of the soup.

c) Elie ignores his father’s dying request, fearing the SS officer’s wrath more that the fate of his father.

3) The effects of adversity on the human spirit

a) The horrors of the concentration camp erode Elie’s will to live, the love for his father and his faith in God.

b) The challenges the prisoners of Auschwitz are faced with force them to follow their basic survival instincts rather than the learned values of a cultured and sophisticated society.

c) Adversity brings out the better qualities of the individuals, such as cooperation, teamwork and brotherhood. For example, the French girl in the camp encourages Elie to persevere and fight when he is beaten and defeated, helping him to survive.

4) The influence of ideals on an individuals behavior

a) During the short stay at Birkenau, the younger men believe that rebelling would be the best option, as they believe in freedom and liberty. Conversely, the more elderly men believe that they should weather out the storm, as sooner or later, liberation and freedom will come. These beliefs are based upon the optimistic views of the Jewish sages to never give up hope and trust in God.

b) Before the ordeal of the concentration camp, Elie has an optimistic view of life, studying the Talmud by day and the Kabbalah by night. Combining both physical and metaphysical philosophy into a balanced worldly view.

c) During his stay in the concentration camp, Elie’s faith in God is eroded. He decides not to fast on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, defying his religion, but preserving his physical strength.

5) The effect that determination has on the approach to the pursuit of a goal

a) At first, Elie is determined to survive by faith and his trust in God. Once these ideals die, he relies on the love of his father. Once his father dies however, Elie relies on the raw power of his instincts to survive.

b) Inversely, when Mr. Stein discovers the real fate of his family, he has no will to live, and thus, he quickly perishes and succumbs to his hellish environment.

c) Juliek’s passion for his violin expresses itself one last time before he shuffles off his mortal coil. His last worldly act is his chilling concerto that serenades the death camp before he dies. His determination to express his emotion and feelings allows is soul to bid farewell.

Imagery

1) The Father’s Death
The scene in which Elie’s father dies is perhaps the most intense during the entire play. In the memoir, Wiesel Sr. embodies the grounded values of family, faith and security in Elie’s mind, so the death of his father is the death of his ideals. After his father’s death, Elie is motivated to survive by only raw physical determination. Wiesel writes with impeccable tact, using the cries of his father to express the pain and devastation of his own soul. With each utterance of the dying request, the reader is painted a painfully vivid image of Elie lying awake in his bed, wishing that his father would fall silent, so as not to arouse the rage of the SS. He remains motionless, the fear of physical punishment overpowering the learned principles and ideals of a lifetime. Elie’s heart and soul follows its fatal decrescendo in the frigid night.

2) The first night in the Concentration camp
Wiesel’s description of the first night at Auschwitz is very moving. He uses the repetition of the word ‘never’ to emphasize the extreme emotions he was confronted with. With each reiteration of the word, the reader feels how alone, helpless and heartbroken Elie is. I think that the main cause of his suffering was the shock he experienced when he witnessed the disparity between his loving family life and the new living hell. Within twenty four hours, his family is divided, his mother and sisters killed and his life destroyed. The first night in Auschwitz is the most accurate experience of death the living can endure.

3) The Final Scene
Once Elie is liberated from the concentration camp, he falls ill for weeks, slipping close to death. After he recovers, he walks to a mirror and observes the reflected picture. His soulless eyes stare back at him. The final sentence summarizes the effects the horrors of Auschwitz have on the human body, mind and soul. Like a crepe without its filling, Elie is an empty shell, surviving purely at the physical echelon. He has lost his entire family, his body has been beaten and ravaged bare and his faith is all but gone. Perhaps an even more chilling memoir is that of the weeks following the liberation and war end.

4) The Death of the Pipel
The death of the small boy is truly a horrific act. Even among the other vile and horrendous acts, it stands out as a hell within a hell; the epitome of all evil. The most heart wrenching aspect of the ordeal is the thought that the boy had to suffer for half an hour, staring at the divide between life and death. It is ironic that the innocent soul among the damned suffers the most.

5) Train Ride from Gliewitz to Buchenwald
Of all the scenes, the horrific train ride between the work camps is the most detailed account. After the fifty mile run the prisoners are forced to participate, they are crammed into frigid cattle cars, travelling through the dead Polish winter. There is no food, no shelter and no camaraderie; only an icy wind that chills through the bone, and the imminent threat of death. Accounts of patricide, homicide and genocide, often recur during the transport, as families, individuals and communities fight for survival. The fight is lost, as the survival rate of the train ride is a mere ten percent.

Motifs

1) Night
The most apparent motif in the memoir is the idea of night. The darkness represents evil, isolation and death. Under the cover of night, Elie participates and experiences the darkest and most horrendous acts, such as the arrival at Auschwitz, the death run, and the train ride. For Elie, each night is a battle, a fight to see a new dawn.

2) Fire
Fire and the furnaces represent death in the book. While Elie is travelling to the concentration camp, a woman on the train prophesizes of the flames of Birkenau. Upon their arrival, the Jews realized that the visions were true, as a omniscient chimney releases the charred reminisce of the deceased prisoners. Elie uses the fires as the embodiment of the Auschwitz hell that destroys his family, faith and soul.

3) Religion
The idea of religion is examined in detail throughout the memoir. At the start of the book, Elie is optimistic, citing his faith as the predominant driving force for his enthusiasm towards living. However, once he witnesses the horrors of the concentration camp, the death of his faith causes a number of negative consequences. In contradiction to other works, Wiesel’s real life experiences shape his faith, rather than the conventional reciprocal scenario in which faith influences real life.

4) Tradition
Overall, the goal of Nazi Germany was to exterminate the Jewish faith and community from the face of the earth. They go about doing this by disrupting the traditions and learned customs of the society. Each culture survives due to the unanimous beliefs and values of the people. The concentration camps and the genocide disrupt these ideals. During their time in Auschwitz, the Jews debate whether or not to observe important holidays and events, either for reasons of physical health or genuine impracticality given the situation. The death of tradition embodies the death of the individual, and inversely, the death of the individual represents the death of tradition.