Elie Wiesel’s Night: Passages and Analysis All Quotes - Night by, Elie Wiesel Personal Reflection/Presentation: David Brandt
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Introduction This journal of passages from Elie Wiesel’s Night shows selections from the novels, contexts, and personal reflections. Such themes are faith, courage, humanity, and inhumanity.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Night cover (above).
Night Passages: Faith “Moishe was not the same. The joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. He no longer mentioned God or Kabbalah. He spoke only of what he had seen.” (7) Context: This is Elie’s description of Moishe after he had returned from seeing the horrors of the Holocaust. Personal Reflection: This is one of the first times where the reader can sense loss of faith in a Jewish character. Moishe was once a happy and religious man who would preach his beliefs dutifully. However, he has learned that with all the horror there must not be a God, because no God would let this happen. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Faith Passages: Continued “The night had passed completely. The morning star had shone in the sky. I had too become a different person. The student if Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded - and devoured - by a black flame.” (37) Context: This passage is Elie’s description of himself evaluating his existential transformation and comparing it to the transformation from night to day. Personal Reflection: I think that this is also one of the most important quotes discussing faith not only because of its relevance to the title of the book, but because it describes how Elie’s soul and faith were crushed. The last sentence is perhaps the most important. It is incredible how in a matter of weeks Elie went from being the intellectually curious kid who enjoys reading religious doctrines to an apparent “soulless” person. Also to know that this was all caused by one man’s determination to get rid of a religion.
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Jewish Talmud (Left) Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Faith Passages: Continued “Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but i doubted His absolute justice.� (44) Context: Elie analyzes his diminishing views towards god, he has not yet begun to completely disbelieve; however, the reader can sense the religious transformation. Personal Response: This quote is again important because I think that it is one of the first times where you can notice Elie deliberately speaking out against religion in any form. He has narrated things and spoken thins that have given implications, however this is the first time that he goes out and narrates it. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Faith Passages: Continued “What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do you compare the stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” (66) Context: Elie narrates this on the eve of Rosh Hashanah when at the concentration camp. He thinks it’s ridiculous to thank someone (God) for having such a horrible thing done to you. So he proceeds to question God. Personal Reflection: I think that Elie is right to question his faith in a time of such pain, doing this also illustrates the strength of his character. It also shows the strength of Hitler in this situation. One of Hitler’s many sadistic tasks was to eliminate the Jewish people. In sending them to concentration camps Hitler not only eliminated Jews physically, he also made people like Elie question their religion. Another very clever thing that I think was added in this passage was the capitalizations of “You” and “Your”, even though Elie is starting question the existence of God. He still capitalizes all his pronouns addressing God, as if nothing had changed. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Shofar (Left) A shofar is an instrument usually made from a ram’s horn and is blown 100 times during each of the two days of Rosh Hashanah.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Faith Passages: Continued And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where, hanging here from this gallows...’” (65) Context: This is Elie’s conscience’s answer to the question “Where is God?” Personal Response: I really liked this quote, I think it is both beautifully simple and powerful. The question “Where is God” was thrown out a lot after thousands of prisoners watched a man be hanged. And Elie, who is not exactly on great terms with God doesn’t know if he has the answer. However I like how he silently speaks his mind to so powerfully close a chapter. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Night Passages: Courage “My father’s view was that it was not all bleak, or perhaps he just did not want to discourage the others, to throw salt on their wounds.” (11) Context: Elie thinks this when his father shows a surprising amount of courage when the decree is made that all Jews must wear yellow stars. Personal Response: I think that this is one of the first passages in which the reader can get a good illustration of Elie’s dad. I think that he is a sweet man that did not understand the severity of what was going to happen. He was just trying to make a consolation of what was going one. You can tell that his character hardens as the story continues. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The “Jude” star (left) All Jews were forced to wear this star during the Holocaust. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Courage Passages: Continued “They put me in a bed with white sheets. I had forgotten that people slept in sheets. (78) Context: Elie is put in the infirmary when his right foot swells from the cold. He forgets simple human luxuries. Personal Reflection: This is the shortest passage that I chose however I think it is the strongest when it comes to the illustration of courage in Night. Elie has been in such an incredibly brave state that he has stopped worrying about the things that he had before, or the things that he might have later. He is just worried about how he is going to make it through the day. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Night Passages: Humanity “We did not know, as yet, which was the better side, right or left, which road led to prison, and which to the crematoria. Still, I was happy, I was near my father.� (32) Context: This passage came right after Elie had just lied about his profession and his age in order to apparently escape death and to be with his father. Though I am no expert in psychology, I think that it is pretty evident that Elie’s human nature let him feel happiness in the darkest times of peril. He was able to be happy just because he would be with his father. He even narrates that he did not know whether he would be going on to die. However, at that moment in time, being with a loved one was the only thing that mattered. I liked this passage because it was a nice refresher of humanity in a novel than seemed to exemplify so much inhumanity. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Humanity Passages: Continued “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!...” (112) Context: This is the very last passage of the book and is narrated when Elie describes his own reaction towards the death of his father. Personal Reflection: I actually considered putting this quote under the theme of inhumanity, because the raw context of it is that Elie is not crying over the death of his own father. However, once I took a couple more looks at the quote I realized that this is the passage when Elie both accepts his father’s death and can finally feel free. Because in earlier parts of the book Elie writes that he can only live on because his father is living on. And as morbid as this sense of freedom is, it is a sense of freedom. One must remember that freedom is rare on a concentration camp.
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Night Passages: Inhumanity “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes.... children thrown into the flames.” (32) Context: Elie cannot believe his eyes the first time he comes near the crematoria. Babies are being burned by the truckload. Personal Reflection: This is one of the more obvious pieces of how inhumane the Nazis were. Though I could’ve chose many passages from the book to represent the inhumanity of the Nazis, something about burning babies by the truckload really got to me. Reading this novel as a whole is pretty tough to do, especially in parts like this. I really enjoyed watching the Elie Wiesel interview so I could get an idea of just how inhumane all of this was. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Inhumanity Passages: Continued “I did not return to the infirmary. I went straight to my block. My wound had reopened and was bleeding: the snow under my feet turned red.” (82) Context: Elie does not get to live the “luxury” of being in a Nazi infirmary. He is taken out much before he should have been. Personal Reflection: Though it seems a bit cruel to put up any passages talking about the brutalities of the camps in journal, I think that it is very important to emphasize how brutal the time was. Elie Wiesel did, and he even talked about how it took him years to be able to process the information and out it down on paper. However, he felt that it was necessary to tell the public. And inform everyone of what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Picture Sources http://www.amandasamusements.com/ wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Night1.jpg http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ images/jude2.gif http://olivosp.wikispaces.com/file/view/ portrait_hr.jpg/31372561/portrait_hr.jpg http://www.veteranstoday.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/02/ Talmud-21.jpg http://www.yourisraelexperience.com/ uploads/shofar.002.003.jpg
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Elie Wiesel (above)
David Brandt 9 Genres, Period 7 Tuesday, June 14, 2011 Tuesday, June 14, 2011