Night

In the fourth chapter of his memoir of life in the German concentration camps, Night, by Elie Wiesel describes a heartbreaking scene in which a beautiful young boy, a “pipel,” is hanged along with...

The narrator, Elie, uses imagery to present clear visual images of the horrors of Auschwitz upon his arrival there. When he first arrives, Elie believes that he still has some control over his...

In chapter 5, Elie finds himself hospitalized because of extreme foot pain. He is worried that his foot will be amputated, rendering him "useless" in the eyes of Nazi officers and making him a...

Elie begins the memoir by describing the depth of his religious curiosity. As a young boy, he had such strong faith that he was interested in the more mystical side of Judaism that requires more...

At the beginning of Night, Elie Wiesel describes his father as a cultured, unsentimental man with a rather distant manner: He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was...

When they arrive at Buchenwald, Eli's father is growing ever weaker. Clinging to each other's hands, they try to keep moving and keep together. The rumor is making the rounds that they are to have...

In Night, what makes the soup taste better than ever after the first hanging is that Elie and the others are still alive. They are allowed to return to their bunks and eat their daily ration of...

Thanks for the question! The connotation of a word is the emotional weight a word carries for the reader. The connotation of a word is different than the denotation, or the dictionary definition...

It's difficult to create a thesis statement without first choosing a topic. Once you choose a topic, thing about something about that topic that you'd like to prove. For example, Night has several...

Foreshadowing is a literary device that hints or informs the reader about events that will occur in the future. In Night, foreshadowing has been deliberately used throughout the book to accentuate...

When the foreign Jews, including Moishe the Beadle, were being deported, someone quipped that the situation was necessitated by war. The statement is ironic because despite being aware that the...

When Elie is in the work camp, his foot swells from the cold, and a Jewish doctor tells him that he will operate on his foot. The doctor says that if Elie waits, he risks having an amputation. Elie...

In chapter 4, Elie recalls witnessing the horrific hanging of a young pipel, who was beloved by the prisoners in the camp. Elie describes the boy as being angelic and beautiful. After a stash of...

Eliezer’s father was physically assaulted twice in Chapter 8. First by his fellow prisoners, who were also sick, and second by an SS officer. Eliezer’s father suffered from dysentery, and his...

At the end of Night, the prisoners were not concerned about anything but food. They had not been fed often and were starving. Once the liberation took place, all the prisoners wanted was to eat....

When Elie works in the warehouse, a young French girl works next to him; they never speak because he understands no French and she understands no German. One day Elie is the victim of being in the...

In Night, the reader is exposed to Eliezer’s emotional transformation and feelings toward his father, his only close relative in the camps. The first time Eliezer’s father is physically attacked,...

In chapter 7, the prisoners are packed tightly together into a train car heading towards Buchenwald, and Elie witnesses a son kill his father over a piece of bread. A few days into their journey to...

While at the work camp of Buna, Elie witnesses several hangings. The hangings by the Nazi SS were meant to further terrorize the prisoners who already lived with death on a daily basis. Elie...

Akiba Drumer always remained optimistic and hoped for God’s intervention. He suggests that God is just testing the Jews and trying to determine if they are capable of remaining true to their...

A short time after arriving at Buchenwald, Elie mentions that his father had dysentery and was extremely weak. Elie has to care for his father and saves his life several times toward the end of the...

Night is an autobiographical account of a Hungarian Jew's experience in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Nazi concentration camps. Jews in these camps were used as forced labor and were also subjects for...

In Night, we see how many different people have become greedy in the war. Franek sees Elie's gold crown and demands Elie give it to him. Elie comes up with a couple of reasons as to why he can't...

Elie Weisel's Night leaves us with many questions. It makes us wonder how he was able to survive and how he was able to overcome. Their are more questions than answers, but I think that is a good...

One of the worst things for the Jews in Auschwitz was the loss of hope, and the incident with Stein of Antwerp is a perfect example of that. In chapter three of Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his...

Elie Wiesel's relationship with God in Night is a fraught and difficult one. Though he believes in God steadfastly in the beginning, that belief begins to deteriorate until he not only lacks belief...

A writer's purpose can usually be found in the themes that he develops in his work. In Elie Wiesel's Night, there are several themes that run throughout the work. When Wiesel writes about the...

With the Red Army fast approaching, the Germans decide to evacuate the camp. The inmates have twenty-four hours to prepare for their imminent journey. Though Eliezer is still convalescing in the...

There are many Biblical allusions in Night. For example, there are references to the Jewish exile in Babylon, a story told in the Bible. When Elie describes the way in which the Jewish community is...

Elie really begins questioning his faith in God after he witnesses the hanging of the pipel and is forced to stare the corpse of the young boy in the face before he is allowed to eat his dinner. It...

The Jewish prisoners were forced to move from the camp at Buna by the German soldiers. This was because the front came dangerously close to the camp. The prisoners were forced to run an estimated...

Idek beat Wiesel’s father for “loafing” while working, and he did nothing to stop it. In the instance I believe you are describing, Elie Wiesel watched the Kapo Idek beat his father for no reason,...

Throughout Chapter 7, Elie describes the terrible conditions of the packed cattle cars that carried the Jewish prisoners to Buchenwald. The prisoners were herded tightly into the cars and were not...

Dehumanization is a theme that is consistently present throughout Night. The Nazis enacted countless horrors upon the people they imprisoned and executed in the concentration camps and ghettos...

Section five of Night, by Elie Wiesel, begins on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, though there is certainly nothing to celebrate for Elie and his fellow prisoners. As the new year begins,...

The mention of Rabbi Eliahu's son operates as a foreshadowing technique to reflect the relationship Eliezer will have with his own father. Rabbi Eliahu is a minor but significant character in...

While I completely agree with the other answers to this question, I would also point out that Elie refers to himself as a corpse because that was how he literally appeared. He had spent a year in...

One of Elie's greatest internal conflicts arises from his feelings towards his father. Elie loves his father very much, but due to his nightmarish experiences of life in Auschwitz, he comes to see...

The thought of Juliek playing the violin in such horrible circumstances is one of the most powerful points in the book. What makes this point even stronger is that there are many instances when...

At the beginning of the novel, Wiesel goes into great detail of his religious passion, even at a young age. He believed fervently in his faith, so much so that he wept regularly during prayer and...

Moshe the Beadle lived as a foreign Jew in Sighet and worked as a handyman at a Hasidic synagogue. He led a poor and quiet life among the people of Sighet. Moshe was also a very religious man....

In the end of Night, Elie and his weakened father arrive at Buchenwald after enduring a forced march and a death-train transport. In the train, food was thrown into the cars by people in the...

In Night by Elie Wiesel, the story Moshe told upon his return is of the atrocities the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews during World War II. The book opens with a description of Moshe, whom the...

Night is full of moments that stick with readers, and the scenes that seem "important." For me, I think about themes in the book and moments that illustrate those themes. One theme is the surreal...

Eliezer describes a Sunday when the sirens in the camp go off around 10:00 a.m. and the Blockälteste gather the prisoners into the blocks. The S.S. guards take cover in the shelters from an...

Buna was a concentration camp. Eliezer and his father were taken to Buna after staying in Auschwitz. The Buna Camp looked desolate and only had a few prisoners. The new prisoners from Auschwitz...

Elie’s arrival at Auschwitz led him to the realization that the holocaust was unfolding before his eyes. He wondered how such heinous crimes were being committed as the world watched. He saw the...

Due to his horrific experiences of life in a Nazi concentration camp, Eliezer is forced to make a decision regarding his faith. Before his family was deported from their hometown of Sighetm Eliezer...

Madame Schachter's nightmare foreshadowed the annihilation of many of Elie's Jewish family and neighbors in the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps...

Elie Wiesel's Night (published in French as La Nuit) is titled as such because the night is the symbol of the physical and spiritual darkness Wiesel experienced and depicts in the book. Over the...