Night Group

Question:

megpie
megpie
Student
High School - 9th Grade

The people of Sighet chose to ignore Moishe's warnings in Night.  Why do you believe that they chose not to listen?

Was it ignorance fear, or did they just want to believe that this was happening?  Use evidence from the text to support your answer.

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Posted by megpie on Wednesday November 4, 2009 at 2:17 PM and tagged with character, evidence, fear, ignorance, minor characters, moishe, night, sighet, warning.

Answers:


  1. akannan Teacher
    Middle School

    eNotes Editor

    There can be many reasons as to why the people of Sighet refused to heed Moshe the Beadle's warnings.  Certainly, there was a part of the psyche that simply refused to accept the possibilities of what Moshe had foretold.  It might have been due to a certain amount of fear in what he had been saying might have been right.  The horror of it before it was realized was too brutal to even contemplate.  Another part of the reason as to why Moshe's words were not heeded could have been from the idea that the villagers simply saw Moshe as "insane" and were willing to dismiss him because he was perceived as "different."  This might feed into Wiesel's larger argument that the true horror of the Holocaust was in its dehumanization of one another.  The dehumanizing techniques practiced by the Nazis on their victims cause the victims to delegitimize and dehumanize one another, causing a cycle of cruelty to continue and flourish.  This might feed into the idea that there is an inherent peril to indifference and not acknowledging the voice of "the other," or silencing others' voices.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/night-wiesel/summary
    http://www.enotes.com/night-wiesel/themes
    http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/wiesel.htm

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    Posted by akannan on Wednesday November 4, 2009 at 3:49 PM