Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (Final Reflections)

Overall I thought that “Night” by Elie Wiesel was a very well written and nicely put together book. The images are very terrifying, and the choice of words used by the author is so effective. There are so many themes in this book such as Wiesel’s struggle to maintain faith in God, inhumanity towards other humans, and the importance of father-son bonds. One of the themes that really stood out to me was inhumanity towards other humans. Wiesel's spiritual struggle owes to his shaken faith not only in God but in everything around him. After experiencing such cruelty, Wiesel can no longer make sense of his world. Wiesel also becomes aware of the cruelty of which he himself is capable. Everything he experiences in the war shows him how horribly people can treat one another—a revelation that troubles him deeply. One quote that stood out was- “Our first impressions of the Germans were most reassuring. . . . Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite.” So many aspects of the Holocaust are incomprehensible, but perhaps the most difficult to understand is how human beings could so slaughter millions of innocent victims. The books left a lot of opening endings. It makes me as the reader want to know what happened afterward. Such as how Wiesel reunited with his family, what he did after the war, and so on. Despite the incomplete ending, I really did enjoy this book. How much these Jews had gone through in these camps just amazes me that there were actually people that had survived.

Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (4th post)

In this last sections, there are told striking stories about sons and fathers. Wiesel never sinks to the level of beating his father, or even mistreat him, but his resentment toward his father grows, even as it is suggested—for instance, when Wiesel's father prevents Eliezer from killing himself by falling asleep in the snow. The father is sacrificing himself for his son, not the other way around.
The ending of night left of a lot of unanswered questions in the book. The ending feels incomplete. It makes me as the reader want to know what happened afterward. Such as how Wiesel reunited with his family, what he did after the war, and so on. One quote that really stood out to me from this section is Wiesel’s final statement about the effect the Holocaust has had on him. “
“One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.
The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” (Wiesel 203)
In this quote, Wiesel implies that even though he has survived the war physically, he is essentially dead. It’s like his soul is killed by the suffering he witnessed and endured. Yet, when Wiesel says, “the look in his eyes, as he stared into mine,” he implies a separation between himself and the corpse. His language in this, too, shows a fundamental separation between his sense of self and his identity as a Holocaust victim, as if he has become two distinct beings. The corpse-imagery reminds me about how much he has suffered and how much of himself, his faith in God, his innocence, his faith in mankind, his father, his mother, his sister, who have both been killed in the camps. The image of the corpse will always stay with him, but he has found a sense of identity that will endure beyond the Holocaust. As dark as this passage is, this message can be partially hopeful.

Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (3rd post)

In this section, there are even more terrifying images. All these make me believe how the author, Weisel, and others of the Holocaust could survive these camps. It just seems so unreal. In this section, it is a lot about survival and him loosing his faith. One moment in the book that stood out to me was when during an Allied air raid on Buna, during which every prisoner is supposed to be confined to his or her block, two cauldrons of soup are left unattended. Wiesel and many other prisoners watch as a man risks his life to crawl to the soup. The man reaches the soup, and after a moment of hesitation lifts himself up to eat. As he stands over the soup, he is shot and falls lifeless to the ground. Aslo another is when two prisoners are suspected of being involved with the resistance and of a young boy who was the servant of a resistance member. Although the prisoners are all so jaded by suffering that they never cry, they all break into tears as they watch the child strangle on the end of the noose. One man wonders how God could be present in a world with such cruelty. At this point it seems that Wiesel comes to believe that a just God must not exist in a world where an innocent child can be hanged on the gallows. One quote that really stood out to me is when Wiesel questions his faith:
“Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked. ..For more than half an hour [the child in the noose] stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.Behind me, I heard the same man asking:“Where is God now?”And I heard a voice within me answer him:“Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. . . .”
The death of the innocent child symbolizes the death of Weisel’s own innocence. In the camp, he has become someone different from the child he was at the beginning of the Holocaust. He basically lost almost all his faith, and it seems as though he is beginning to lose his sense of morals and values as well. In a world in which survival is nearly impossible, survival has become Eliezer's dominant goal. Survival is one of the major themes in this book. It’s basically every man for himself. In this section, he even admits that he lives only to feed himself. When his father is beaten, Eliezer deosn‘t feel sorry for him. Instead, he becomes angry at his father for failing to learn, as Eliezer is learning, how to survive to terrible camp by looking out for himself.

Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (2nd post)

As I read more of Night, it just keeps getting more and more interesting and very sad too, especially with the descriptive words Wiezer uses. Not only is his choice of words effective, but also his use of imagery. The imagery used really show you what it was like in those camps. The way they were treated was terrible. It seemed as though the Nazis caused the Jews to act as if they were less than human. One moment that really created a chilling, frightening image was reading the part where the prisoners are moving through Birkenau, and they are horrified to see a huge pit where babies are being burned, and there’s another for adults. That moment in that section of the book seemed so unimaginable and unreal. All these images and moments that occur in the story like the burning of babies, Wiezer's confrontation with Madame Schächter, who is a supposedly crazy middle-aged women, etc are what make the story all the more terrifying. Another moment in the book that really stood out to me was when Wiezer's looks back on his first night in Birkenau and describes not only what he felt at the time but also the lasting impact of that night:
“Never shall I forget that night . . . which has turned my life into one long night . . . .
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God. . . . Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” (Weisel 46)
The repetition of the phrase “Never shall I forget” illustrates how Wiezer's experiences are forever burned into his mind; like the actual experiences, the memories of them are inescapable.

In this section, we also see sort of a character change in Elie. It’s like he doesn’t see himself as a kid anymore: "The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it." (Weisel 32) Elie feels that the child in him has died; he is no longer the young, studious boy he once was. Since he’s been in the camp, he not only looses his childhood, but he also begins to loose his faith in God. When he first sees the furnace pits in which the Nazis are burning babies, he experiences the beginnings of doubt: “Why should I bless His name?” Eliezer asks, “What had I to thank Him for?” (Weisel 43)

When reading this book, you can’t help but feel sorry for how much these Jews that had to suffer during the Holocaust. The living conditions, the work they had to do, was just horrible. It’s just really good to hear that there were Jews that had actually survived the Holocaust.

Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (1st post)

In 1941, Eliezer Wiesel, the narrator, is a twelve-year-old boy living in the Transylvanian town of Sighet (then recently annexed to Hungary, now part of Romania). Night is the story of a young boy, Eliezer, who, like all Jews at the time were required to live in small ghettos, crowded together into narrow streets behind barbed-wire fences. From reading just the first section of the book, I thought it opened up very powerful, well written, and painfully told. And it knew it would be even more powerful and painfully told later on. Throughout the section, there are several possible themes such as Wiesel's loss of innocence, his confrontation with evil, inhumanity towards other humans, and his questioning of God's existence. The story of Moshe the Beadle, which is how Night opens, is one of the most painful examples of the Jews' refusal to believe the depth of Nazi evil. Eliezer relates that many Jews do not believe that Hitler really intends to hurt them, even though he can recall the times when the Nazis made life in Hungary extremely unbearable for the Jews. Wiesel is very descriptive when describes what the camps were like. He describes painfully in details the cruelty the Jews are treated during their deportation. I like how his descriptive writing really gives a lot images that really show you what the camps were like.
Wiesel's relationship with his father were one of the themes that stood out the most for me in the first section. He writes about their mutually supportive relationship, Wiesel’s growing feeling how his father is like a burden to him, and he talks about the guilt about having that feeling. In his memoir, Wiesel’s also questions God's existence, which is another theme. At the start of the story, he is a devoted Jew from a devoted community. He studies Jewish tradition faithfully and believes faithfully in God. When the Jews are deported, they continue to express their trust that God will save them from the Nazis. : “Oh God, Lord of the Universe, take pity upon us….” (Wiesel 28) I really like this quote because it really shows how much he believed and trusted in God and how much he wanted to leave that camp. However, his faith in god eventually begins to fade because of his horrific experiences in camp. The first part of the book really opened up with a lot of themes and characterization. And his use of imagery is what really kept more interested and wanting to read more.

Childhood In The Park

Bright, shiny, sunny morning. Children laughing, playing, running at the park right across the street from where I lived. Me in my room moping around with nothing to do. Even my brothers sitting around looking bored. It was around 10:30, and it had probably been the sixth time my brothers played chess. My parents in the living room talking, watching TV, sitting on the couch also with nothing to do. My parents didn’t have work that day which was rare because they’re used to working everyday even weekends and holidays. My mother suggested we go shopping, but my brothers had other ideas. They wanted to go the park, so we did. Everyone jumped op all excited, got ready and left. We arrived and man was it hot. The sun shining a lot more brighter than it seemed when looking out the windows from my house this morning. Also the heat waves coming it, no cool air to save us from the sticky, uncomfortable, warm weather. It was so uncomfortably hot, it had to be like 300 degrees out! As it we went to the park, we could smell hot dogs and hamburgers cooking, kids lining up to grab a bite, kids and their families coming up different activities and games to play. It looked like a very fun neighborhood barbeque. Our family joined the fun and definitely had a blast at that barbeque.

"How To Tell a True War Story" Response

“How To Tell a True War Story” examines the relationship between war experiences and storytelling. His narrative shows that a storyteller has the power to shape his or her listeners experiences and opinions, a lot like how the war distorts the soldiers perceptions of right and wrong. O’Brien insists that the story is true, but then after telling it, in a more general discussion of storytelling, he insists that it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. The contradictions that are in this story proves that there are no truths to storytelling especially in true war stories. What I like about O’Brien’s story is how it seems like it’s also love story. O’Brien is specifically addressing war stories, but this can also be applied to stories in general. It seems as though O’Brien tells Lemon’s death as a love story. When he recounts the situation, he describes the scene beautiful, focusing on the sunlight rather than the carnage. Blood and carnage aren’t really discussed much. What I don’t like is how little he talks about war. It’s more about a soldiers anger and feelings after dealing with a horrible experience and less about courage and heroism. The conclusion that we can arrive to is that truth is a war story is irrelevant.