Friday, January 7, 2011

Night: Pre-Discussion Blog

Before our literary discussion, please post a comment in which you highlight something about Night that strikes you, some topic that really interests you. Here are a few examplse:
1. The connection between language and meaning.
2. The imagery related to nighttime.
3. Fear.
4. Wiesel's crisis of faith.

Then, for the topic you chose, please write a paragraph or so. In this paragraph, explore your thoughts related to the topic and reference several times in the book where your topic surfaces. If you wish, you can briefly analyze a line or two, as well. Finally, pose at least one question.

We will use these posts to dive headfirst into our discussion!

Cheers,
Mrs. Harding

39 comments:

  1. Fear is the one of the only things in life that can escalate to something greater than someone's common sense. Fear can possess people, and make them act in ways they never imagined. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel demonstrates the escalation of fear through a real life situation. In the beginning of the book, everybody's, including Wiesel's, common sense told them that no man could ever hurt another being like how Moishe the Beadle describes. None of them believed him, because his story was so outrageous. Would you even believe that Germans used babies for target practice? So they filed Moishe's comments and warnings away as madness. Even when the men were marching through Auschwitz toward the crematorium, Wiesel couldn't believe that any human being could burn another alive. He says, "Still, I told him that I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would never tolerate such crimes...."
    Slowly as the plot progresses and Wiesel spends more time in the concentration camps fear of death and losing his father begins to gain control over him. For example, when his father was slapped in the barracks Wiesel didn't move or blink an eye out of fear(pg. 39).
    Finally at the end of the book, Wiesel is overcome with fear. For example, he fears that he will lose his father in the train car when his father wouldn't wake up, and he had to hit his father to make him open his eyes. Then, because of his fear of being beaten or killed, Wiesel does not save his father from the S.S. the last night his father lived. While his father was sick with dysentry, he called out Wiesel's name, but Wiesel didn't answer. Then his father wouldn't be quiet, so the S.S. beat him, and his father was murdered.
    The progression of fear through the story is unbelievable. Wiesel demonstrates in the book of Night how fear can control you, and make you act in unimaginative ways. All victims in the holocaust experienced fear, and Wiesel potrays their fears in ways we can't begin to dream of.

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  2. (continuation) Throughout the whole book night the men don;t think like humans. They lose everything about them; everything that makes them who they are. Their fear doesn't make them think, but it makes them numb inside. In conclusion, fear can take control of your common sense and being.

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  3. NIGHT
    Throughout the book Night, Wiesel’s struggle for faith seems to be influenced by the event s that transpires in his life. As things get worse and worse, he seems to become less and less faithful. At first it seems as though his lack of faith is more a questionable lacking. Meaning that, he questions God but doesn’t entirely denounce him. He still cries out to him when they are first being transported(pg 17) This questionable lack of faith is a reasonable part of his life, it is understandable as circumstances become more difficult for him that he starts to tussle with the idea, does God really exist, and if he did would he let this happen to me? Once he is in the concentration camp and everything seems to be at the most horrid and bleakest point in his life, he then denounces God. He even acts in “rebellious ways.” At Rosh Hashanah, he consumes food even though he is supposed to fast. He considered this too be getting back at God, but in the end he says that he feels an empty void in his life. (pg 66)
    Fear is a dominating feeling that looms over all the characters. This emotion slowly encroaches upon the characters as the book progresses. At first, life seems to be going well, and everyone can’t even imagine that the Germans are “out to get them.” Even when Moishe comes back and warns all the Jews, they all act as though what he is saying is rubbish and ignore him. (pg 7) As the book progresses, the people in the ghetto act as though they aren’t fearful, but are jocund and that the Germans are trying to “help them out.” Another one of their attempts at quantifiable reasons for why they were moved was so that the Germans could go and take all their valuables. People even acted as if they were “away on vacation.” Unfortunately, this soon was proven to not be the case. Later in the book, fear plays more than just one role. The Kapo’s and other concentration camp leaders use fear as a suppressant, it is used to prevent the Jews in the camp from rebelling or following through on any mutinous actions. Fear also becomes part of the blood of the Jews, it is something they can’t avoid, it is with them, pumping through their veins with every heartbeat. This fear is the same fear of which men and Elie had been consumed by. Elie said he “had been consumed by flames.” And “All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded - and devoured - by a black flame." This left over form of him was just an empty shell, surviving on minimal rations and driven by fear and slight hopes for the better.
    -Chad K

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  4. correction on my prior post, Yom Kippur, not Rosh Hashanah

    -Chad Kennedy

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  5. One of the major examples of when Elie has a crisis of faith is during the gathering of all of the jews in the camp for the Rosh Hashanah prayer. After the line "blessed be God's name" in the prayer, Elie wonders to himself why, why would he bless Him? I totally understand why Elie would be confused in his faith at this time. He doesn't understand why the God he has devoted his life to and trusted for so long could possibly allow something like what was happening to him go on. He didn't understand how his God could allow thousands to be taken from their homes, thrown into death camps, be tortured, and be killed in cruel ways. At this point Elie could not worship a God who had created the death camps and allowed fathers, sons, mothers, and daughters to be burnt in the crematoria. Elie feels betrayed by God and says that God betrayed the entire Jewish population because He allows them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned while the Jews praise His name. Elie starts to rebel after this. He does not pray and he does not fast, not only because his father told him not to. Also while he is being forced to run after leaving Auschwitz he is not thinking of God helping him like others are, he is just thinking about himself, encouraging himself to continue on his own. For my question i think i will go with the following. Why, when he has totally lost faith in this book, does he still capitalize God and He when he is referring to God? When do you think he regained his faith?

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  6. I too, am going to comment on Wiesel's crisis of faith. It was well known that concentration camps could do a lot to a human being. Auschwitz could turn even the most selfless men into cold-hearted killers who would do anything to get food. In Elie's case, he starts out a very faithful boy. At age thirteen he was said to have, "studied Talmud by day, and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple." (3) His father was highly involved in religious affairs. Elie first began to doubt God the day he got off the train car. He and many others were forced to march in the direction of a pit with flames coming up from its depths. Everyone was scared, and Elie's father began saying a prayer, "May His name be celebrated and sanctified." This was Elie's reaction, "For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name?... What was there to thank Him for?" (page 33). This doubt continues to worm its way into Elie's mind until the thoughts of torture, pain, grief, hunger, anger, fear, and much more blot out what is left of his faith. As Zach stated above, Elie has a major crisis of faith during the Rosh Hashanah prayer. He pretty much decides that God has deserted him and that there was no reason to believe anymore. I can understand where Elie was coming from. After living through so much torture and seeing so much despair, it must have been hard for him to believe that there was any sort of goodness left in the world. Did Elie's desertion of his faith in God help to give him strength through anger, or would the hope and faith have helped him through the time of crisis?

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  7. Ok a little bit of a clarification for my comment is: Did Elie's desertion of his faith in God help to give him strength through powerful anger, or would the hope through faith have helped him more through that time of crisis?

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  8. One of the major conflicts in this story is when Elie struggles to maintain faith in God. In the beginning of the story, Elie is asked by Moishe the Beadle why he prayed. In response Elie says, "Why did I pray?...Why did I live? Why did I breathe?" Mysticism taught Eli that the real world was merely a reflection of the divine world and that nothing exists without God. That everything that God does is mirrored onto Earth, therefore since God is good-the world is good. Elie believes in an all powerful and good God, but the Holocaust shakes his faith in Him. As the story continues and the Nazis start beating the Jews and cremating them as if they were animals, Wiesel starts to realize that the world is not perfect. That these people running concentration camps for Jews were barbaric and cruel, and if that's how the world is then God must be as well or there's no God at all. Elie doesn't lose his faith in God but he has a continuous battle inside of his head because he's questioning God and he's never done that before. Yet in response to Moishe's earlier question Elie also replies, "I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions." Even though the Holocaust causes Elie to ask sad questions of God's existence, he is showing that it is the nature of the world to ask questions. That is how God made it and therefore he is staying faithful to God. I think that Elie still sill continue to be faithful to God because it it such a big part of him that he cannot loath Him in any way. Yet it is still sad that at such a young age Elie was almost forced into thinking that we are like God's personal chess set. In which we are the pawns and he causes bad things to happen to us. For someone who based his entire existence on his faith in God, realizing that not everything in the world was perfect caused Eli's optimism to waver. My question is: What really was Eli Wiesel's outlook on faith and God after the Holocaust and as a grown-up?

    -Nicole

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  9. I as well will comment on Wiesel's crisis in faith. To comment on what Nicole said, when Wiesel says, "Why did I pray? Why did i live? Why did breathe? In the beginning of the book and in Elie's early life, praying is a natural process. It is not something that is really truly contemplated. You pray because you have a religion, that pretty much sums it up. Praying is something that Elie never considered not doing. It would be a sin to him to just simply not pray and to question why he prays.
    However, as both the book and Wiesel's life progress, he begins to question God and his faith. As Wiesel continues with his miserable life in a concentration camp while seeing hundreds of thousands of people die all around him, he begins to question God, his powers, and his existence. At several times Wiesel becomes angry at God and completely stops believing in His significance. At one time Elie Wiesel says, "Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?... (pg.67)" Elie decides that there is no longer a reason to pray and believe in God.
    I agree with Brittney when she says that Elie has no reason to still believe in God. You can not possibly still believe when He has done nothing to help the many thousands of people dying. Elie feels that God is not helping the Jews in any way. Elie Wiesel had every right to feel that way too especially when he sees both his own father and himself slowly withering away until their death.
    -Chandler

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  10. As I began to read the final pages of the memoir, the biggest concept that struck me about it was the surreal nature of that sequence of complete desperation. Throughout the early sequences the actions felt grounded, structured, and within reason. Although the experiences of the characters may have begun to feel surreal once they entered the concentration camps, it doesn’t for the reader. In fact, this is confirmed by Elie’s narration: “…[the Chief Rabbi’s] very presence in the procession was enough to make the scene seem surreal. It was like a page torn from a book, a historical novel, perhaps, dealing with the captivity in Babylon or the Spanish Inquisition.” (Pg. 17)

    The reader, however, can take a step back from the situation based on Elie’s memory and see it as something other than a Kafkaesque situation. However, later, that memory itself becomes phantasmagorical. As liberation approaches, the Germans become frantic and disheveled, starting a futile attempt at a retreat in a last-ditch effort to move the Jews and annihilate them. People are described as constantly dying, their eyes are all glazed, lips dried, and those with the will to go on are living corpses.

    Juliek’s actions also give the sequence a trancelike aura. While many of the men were unable to even survive the journey, Juliek attempted to, and attempted to do so while bringing his most cherished possession: his violin. In the context of the book, Elie himself believes the situation to be insane. His first reaction is even, “I thought he’d lost his mind. His violin? Here?” The dark tones of the violin shaped his thoughts to be ethereal as he states, “Who was this madman who played the violin here, at the edge of his own grave? Or was it a hallucination? […] The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. […] How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? […] I don’t know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead.”

    As the book climaxes, the SS becomes complacent, and Elie’s father begins hallucinations, and he is taken away in the middle of the night to the crematorium. Based on the events and true scope of what happened to him, I could not imagine these memories were distinct. Even those that stuck with him may have been hazy. That state of being itself shows the horrid condition they were in.

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  11. Something a little different then what everyone else was saying, is the horrifying imagery that your are given. Throughout the book you are presented with pictures that you cringe at or even say: "why on earth did that happen." There isn't just one example but many. In the begining you had the awfull imagery of babies being thrown into a fire. Then you are presented with people being beaten and on a regular bases. Many were thrown into the crematorium, and that sons would be throwing their own fathers or families members into it. On the train ride to Buchenwald. The fact that 100 + people were in the car at the begining and by time they arrived at the camp, there were only twelve. Overall this book has been extremely deppressing and overwhelming. As Amy said, there was a growing feeling of fear. Fear was such an important part of the picture that was painted in your head when you read this book. As you imagine the disturbing people in the snow marching, you can also see the fear in their eyes and you really in term have no idea about their fate. YOu know about as much as they do. (or did) Did people ever become use to the camps on the daily basis? Such as the beatings? Did they ever not notice all the death and just treat it as a everyday proccess?

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  12. When you begin to read the book, it starts with an opening that suggests a peaceful life that the people of the small town of Sighet. Then, the first signs of war come when the foreign Jews are taken away. The others pretend that there is no fear for them, as they are perfectly safe, and continue life as normally as possible. But soon, events begin to escalate, and fear becomes a constant hound to their lives, a demon that holds their hand that cannot be ignored or pushed away, for it takes the form of men with guns ready to kill them if they do not work hard enough for them. I myself know a few survivors of the Holocaust, and I also know those who managed to escape and know what they were like before the worst happened to them, and I have seen pictures, showing horrific scenes. No wonder they were filled with fear: they thought they were at their world's end. Literally. In the book, you also read of the thoughts that went through people's minds, trying to survive, even if it meant running straight into the face of the guns. It's the kind of the thing that no man should even begin to face. And then, you wonder. What possessed the Germans to follow orders almost blindly and torture these people? Were they really ENJOYING it? Or is there something else?

    -Mark Irchai

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  13. Luke Hall makes an excellent point. As time passes in the concentration camp, it grows more and more to become real life for the jews. They try to view the situation as a challenge that god has given them the burden of undergoing. Then they loose sight of reality, and the priorities of what life used to be. Juliek, the boy who worried about his violin, truly inspires me, as he survives, living off of his musical dreams. In this time of great panic, confusion, and plight, he fears that he may loose or damage his violin. I think that he is trying to survive for the greater good, not for himself, but so that he can play his music for the rest of the world. It's very interesting, how he places his violin before his life. He didn''t strike me as insane, however; I think that he is optimistic. He is sort of saying that he is going to survive, so he will need his violin. Nevertheless, he knows that he will most likely die. It's very strange, but I understand it, since I know that I would try to lug my guitar with me. Perhaps it is because music can distract people from any crisis, and he wanted to have that power in case a time of great despair came.

    -Matt A.

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  14. Fear is powerful. Usually when someone reads this blog’s first sentence, they would most likely agree with me. However, they would also most likely be only thinking of fear being powerful in a threatening manner. There are also times when overpowering fear is helpful. In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel shows a great example of how fear can be powerful in both ways. For example, as Amy mentioned in her first blog, pg. 39 shows how Elie didn’t dare move when his father was beat up, and this was due to his overpowering fear. This is also one of those times that fear turned out to help Elie stay alive. Fear over hunger...pot of soup left outside….this also helped him stay alive.
    On page 59, the “prisoners” are left inside their blocks to starve while a pot of soup was left outside on the main road. If anyone dared to exit their block to get that soup, they would be shot. Throughout this “test,” Elie stayed in his block out of fear. Can you believe it? For these people at the Concentration Camps, Fear was overpowering hunger? HUNGER? After Elie’s father’s death, he mentioned how all he cared about or dreamed of cried for was food, food, and food (113).
    Throughout the whole book, what he was fighting for was his life. His goal was to live and keep going. The ironic part of all this is that the same thing that helped him throughout to pursue his goal was also the thing that held him back from his goal: Fear. His fear helped him pursue his goal of living, as mentioned in the paragraph above. This same fear was what pulled him towards death. He feared he would not receive a sufficient amount of food or water. He feared he would not make it to the next camp and the next camp, and so on for every time they change camps. He feared he would lose his father. This is because he feared he would lose everything he had. When you say something over and over to yourself, you tend to truly believe it’s true. When you truly believe it’s true, that “fact” hits you like reality, and it affects you just the way it would’ve if it was true. This is what happened to Eliaer with his fear. The more he feared things would happen, the more it all seemed true to him. And the more he believed in it, the more he lost hope in pursuing his goal of simply living.

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  15. Human beings, old and young alike, become fearful when danger stares them in the eyes. They act out and do things they most likely would not do. As they arrive at the concentration camp and are separated from the females Elie and his father are "face-to-face with the Angel of Death." (pg. 34) Fear also changes the way you see situations. After being released from the barber Elie and the others go around trying to locate friends. With each encounter they were "filed with joy, thanking god that this person was alive.” (pg. 35) Most likely they would not have been as emotional in any other meeting with that person. Another example of this change in actions is when Elie witnesses his father being beaten by Idek and does not do a thing, in fact he "becomes angry.. at his father..for not having avoided Ideks wrath."(pg. 54) It is very clear that Elie's fear of being beaten himself takes over and causes him not to reach out to try and help his father. I agree with amy in that fear can cause people to loose there humanity. The fear of death along with as hannah stated the hunger causes people to do such awful things as kill their fathers over a small scrap of food.(pg. 101) Over all I believe that fear plays a huge part in our everyday lives and the actions and decisions we make. As we read this book we talk about how awful it was and how you couldn't imagine how a man could kill his father or do any of those horrific things. But I pose the question of if most Americans today were put in the situation that those poor Jews were in would they not probably act the same exact way? Most likely they would loose control and act out in ways they cant even imagine possible...All out of fear.

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  16. As I searched the Internet looking for a fitting definition of fear that relates to Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” I was impressed at how clearly it compares to the memories he shared. Fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, whether the threat is real or imagined. (Dictionary.com) The impression Elie gave us in the beginning of his book was that many Jews didn’t have fear inside them when they were taken from their homes, only hope. They had hope of everything turning out well in the end because they had not experienced anything quite like what was to be; therefore they had nothing to fear. Examples of ignoring Moishe the Beadle (pg 7) and the “crazy” woman in the train on the way to Auschwitz show how much hope and how little fear they had. (Pg 25)
    However, once they arrived at Auschwitz, the captured Jews finally realized that the unimaginable was about to become reality. Once they saw the smoke rising out the chimneys and could smell the burning flesh in the air, the impending danger was getting closer and closer. By now the threat of punishment and death had become very real and for the first time, the Jews were starting to lose hope. Elie knew that they were in trouble when they were taken from their homes and he saw for the first time his father crying. (Pg 20) Hitler drove so much fear into the Jews through the camps, gas chambers, and crematoriums many started to doubt their one and only God, including Elie. Overall, fear was one of the biggest killers in the concentration camps. People were scared for their lives, and keeping himself or herself alive was priority number one. Near the end of his memoir, Elie describes a ruthless and disturbing scene where people killed each other for a ration of bread. Fear was the only emotion the people in the concentrations camps had, if any.

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  17. Night in itself can be a fearful thing. It is dark, mysterious, and unknowing. For Elie and the fellow Jews, nighttime is sometimes the most fearful time of all. In the beginning when they are on the train to the camp, Mrs. Schachter on their 3rd night begins to scream. She is yelling that she sees fire in the night (24). However no one else sees anything. As Elie puts it “There was nothing. Only the darkness of night.”(25). This scares everyone greatly especially when added that it is night and no one is able to see. They don’t know where they are heading or where they are. It is terrifying to be kept in the dark. Then when they arrive in Birkenau even then it is midnight. They are led around in the dark and herded into a tiny block to spend the night. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed” (34). The night is terrible and when they wake, it feels as though so much longer has passed. As Elie said that night changed them all. I believe that the unknowing would be almost as worse as the situation. The worrying has made them all age quickly. The fear of night grows as they are forced to run in the dead of night, and not sleep. However, sleep is sometimes worse because of the nightmares. To get to Gleiwitz they are forced to run in the freezing nighttime. The SS would shoot anyone who slowed down and they could hear the shots but not see as it was very dark. “The night was pitch-black. From time to time, a shot exploded in the darkness.” (85) As dawn approaches they arrive at an abandoned village to stay. So with the day ends their run of death. I think that night can represent fear, uncertainty and the unknown. All of the time Elie has spent at the camps has felt like night. When they are finally liberated, the battle takes place during the day and they are free before night. Elie says” Die today or tomorrow, or later? The night was growing longer, never-ending.” (98).
    For my question I will ask: Why do you think that the SS made the prisoners always run at night? Could it be to place more fear in them?
    -Kaitlyn

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  18. It is fear that will truly bring out the inner man. Elie's crisis of faith is directly related to his fear. His greatest fear is that there is no god. His fear that he will die and not be able to reach the land he has been learning of pretty much his whole life. That there will be no pearly gates and eternity of paradise. Who could blame him for questioning? Why would the god that you have devoted your life to just abandon you and leave your people to be burned and tortured? It must have been a terrible feeling that you were alone in a terrible world with no rewards at the end of the finish line. These fears were brought on by seeing the worst of man, the very blackest of the human soul. On pg 101, Elie witnessed an old man beaten to death by his own son over a scrap of food. These fears would also lead him to think of abandoning his father. Fear can truly drive a man to his worst, it can even break the bond between father and son over a simple scrap of bread. Fear changed the men in the camp not just the jews but also the Germans. It transformed the Jews into gaunt monsters who would betray their kin for food and it changed the Germans into cruel masters filled with hate. Fear is truly a terrible weapon and a strong theme in the book

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  19. One of the things about Night that bothers me most is how these people seem to stop being human. They lose all sense of reason and guilt. And you can watch as they lose it throughout the book. They start out thinking that Moishe the Beadle is crazy. Humans could never be capable of killing other humans like that. By the end of the book, however, the men will kill each other for a piece of bread. The boy on the train killed his own father for half of a piece. They themselves don't care for any lives but their own. They no longer seem like humans, but like animals that are struggling to survive. When these people lose their humanity, they lose their faith, which is why they are there in the first place. It's also why many of them felt that they had reason to live before the camps. How are we capable of losing everything we've ever learned and lived for, but not dying? I don't know if it's the fear of death or the instinct to survive. If it were me, I would be afraid of having lost faith. I don't know if I would still believe in anything if I saw babies being burned... But if I had believed in God my whole life, to abandon that belief right before death would terrify me. What if they were wrong? What would happen to them then? Or, having lost what seemed to be everything but the thought of bread and soup, would they even care? What was more important to them, fear or instinct?

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  20. I find fear and the side of human beings that it brings out to be very interesting and is represented well in the novel "Night". The idea that when put in extreme conditions producing fear, humans result to their animalistic instincts necessary for their survival. Another prime example of this is the novel "Lord of the Flies" in which a group of young children are stranded on an island and become savages only concerned with their survival. The level of fear throughout the novel results in different reactions as one would think. First encountering the German troops, the fear causes some people to be pessimistic, and others to be optimistic although they have heard rumors of Hitler's promise to exterminate the Jews. The fear is elevated when the Germans when the jews have to wait to be sent in the train and at this point, the amount of pessimist is greatly reduced. When they first arrived at the Camps, the amount of fear is most likely incomprehensible to someone who hasn't experienced what they did. The exhaustion reduced their emotions including fear, happiness, and the will to live, until the selections came and it seemed that the fear came back in a jolt. The constant fear must have been numbing to the point that even if someone manage to be liberated, the rest of their life wouldn't have the same amount of emotion as it would have, considering they never went through the holocaust.

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  21. To me the idea of fear seems to change throughout the book. Like Hannah said, fear is a very powerful emotion. In the beginning of the book the Jewish people are afraid of simply what will happen next and where will they go. "There was no distinction between rich and poor, we were all condemned to the same fate- still unknown." (21) Then as the story goes on they become afraid of the crematorium and of death itself. Elie's fear eventually turned into anger because he no longer feared the future as much as he hated the S.S. for doing this. The anger also goes with his loss of faith because he's almost upset with God for letting this terrible Holocaust happen. He explains this when he says "Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God." (34) It seemed to me at the end of the book that Elie's fear was less about what would happen in the future, where they would be sent next, or even of dying. His natural instincts and the will to go on was what made him do all he needed to stay alive even though he still probably feared dying some.

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  22. Wiesel, before the war, is clearly a religious man. He studies religious texts with Moishe, who is practically an outcast of the town just since he is a vagrant. He is one of the only ones in his town to study a certain text. Very soon into his experience at the camps, though, he loses his faith in God. He specifically says on page 33, “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty…chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” Throughout his experience in the camps, he continues to show his enmity toward God. When Akiba Drumer begins to bring together a group of followers, he claims that he has ceased praying. Near the end of the book, he just about doesn’t mention God anywhere. In the last chapter, he never mentions or thanks God for his survival. His loss of faith seems perfectly appropriate. God did not come and save them in their time of need. There is disturbing truth in one of the hospital patient’s quotes: “I have more faith in Hitler than anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.” Had I been in Wiesel’s place at the time, I probably would have done the same thing.
    Additionally, he loses faith in his father. Though it is a side note, it becomes an interesting sight nearing the end of the book. He acts quite similarly to the rabbi’s son who abandons his father when he falls down and is trampled. It comes to the point where Wiesel does nothing for his father and merely lets him die, even though they suffered and survive so much together.
    Throughout the experience, Wiesel’s faith toward almost everything is lost. The only clear thing that he remains determined about is his survival, but that is natural. I simply ask, ignoring the events following his liberation from the camps, does it seem like he would ever regain faith in some figure, whether it be God, a political figure, etc.?

    -Bob Z

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  23. Fear is a very strong emotion that can make people act rather submissively. In the memoir, Night, the fear of the Nazi's made the imprisoned Jews act compliant to the brutality of the SS. I agree with Hannah though, the Jew's fear was actually beneficial in certain situations. For instance, if Elie had ceased to fear the Nazi's and rebelled, he would of been beaten and killed. The terror that the Jews felt kept them from acting out and being punished by the SS. For example, when the selection process occured, Elie was extremely afraid of having his number written down. He was told, "..most important, don't be afraid!" Yet he reflected "That was a piece of advice we would have loved to be able to follow." (pg. 71) Elie ended up running as hard as he could, despite his weakness, because of his fear of having his number written down. Also, when his sick father was being beaten towards the end of the book, he didn't do anything. This was because he knew that if he were to do anything to those that were striking his father, he would be punished severely as would his father."..I considered jumping him, strangling him. But I had neither the courage nor the strength...But even the cry stuck in my throat." (pg. 109) It turns out, although this was extremely hard for him to witness, he wasn't harmed. This is another instance in which fear had a good purpose. Why is it that there were basically no outbursts or acts of rebellion that occured? Obviously, after they entered the concentration camp the Jews were dominated by fear, but why didn't anyone act out when they were being forcibly taken from their homes?

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  24. Most people in a tramatic event do two things. Turn to god or turn away from god. In Elie Wesel's book, Night he tells his personal story about his time in the Nazi concentration camps. The first time he starts to question god was on page 33. He was wondering why should he thank him because he is stuck in terrible place. He wanted to kill him self so it would all be over. BEfore the war he been obsessed in the religous text of the Jewish people. HE was very dedicated to the religon because he was only fifteen and a half when he left to concentration camps. He must have studied them long before he went to the camps. He didn't understand when people didn't act in a religous way. When the rabbi's son ran up ahead to rid him self of his overbearing father Elie prays to god to let him never had the strength to do what he did. Still in the end he had to seperate himself from his father because his father due to his fever would not survive. When the jewish day of fasting came around he didn't want to eat. His father made him though because the father knew Elie needed his strength. Religon plays a major role for Elie. It's his religon that helps him survive the camps. I wonder if Elie thought that god was there and had a special plan for him to tell his story?
    -Ernie Theurer

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  25. I agree with Jake when he says that Elie and his father cling on to the will to live even in the darkest of times. All throughout the book Elie and his father support each other and reassure each other of their fate. For instance on page 46 they are reassuring each other that mother and Tzipora must have survived, when in fact they both knew that this is very unlikely. This is backed up by the quote "how we would have liked to believe that. We pretended, for what if one of us still did believe?” It is only towards the end of the book that Elie's father seems to give up hope by continuously telling Elie to go on without him or to let him sleep. In his fellow Jews, Elie sees that the will to live becomes stronger and stronger as the book progresses and as their situation becomes even direr. In fact, the will to live becomes so strong in a few of them that, like Lauren said they cease to be humans and become animals with one primal goal, to live. Sons beat their father's to death for a small piece of bread. Relatives are left to their death by other relatives during marches due to the fear of being slowed down. But no matter how brutal the surroundings were, the will to live was a crucial component for the survival of the entire Jewish race. Imagine that every Jew did not do his best to pass selection. Imagine if they had contently sat there, starving to death while others around them munched on bread. The death toll of 6 million would have been significantly raised if the instinct of survival had not broken through.

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  26. Elie Wiesel and his family endured one of the most horrible and cruel events in the history of humans: the Jewish Holocaust. Many people believe that if one were put in this situation, he would lose all hope and will to live. However, Elie and his comrades kept their optimistic views on life even in the worst of times. In the beginning of the book, in the midst of the war and as the fighing gets closer, everyone believes that the war won't affect them. As the Germans enter Hungary, the Jews think they will never get past Budapest. When the Germans enter the town of Sighet, the Jewish people believe that the Germans came to protect them, not hurt them. Even when they are put in the ghettos, they think it is nice that they created "A little Jewish Republic..." (p. 6). Even when Elie and the others were in the concentration camps, they still had faith that the war would end soon. It is this kind of optimism that motivated the prisoners to keep their will to live. Elie and his father practically lived off of each other's support and positive attitude. During the march in the snow, Elie's father is the one who keeps him from being trampled. During his last days, Elie repays the favor to his father and keeps him motivated. Overall, this book teaches that when hard times come our way, we must not lose hope and remain optimistic.

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  27. I just wanted to add onto my pervious blog: Fear is overpowering. It conquers love, hate, and mostly pain. For example, a boy fought his father to death for a piece of bread in the train car. All his love for his father was gone because it was crushed by his overpowering fear of death out of pain from hunger. Fear is so powerful that it made the boy value a piece of bread of his own father. Fear also conquers hate. For example, Elizer didn't dare do anything while his father was being beat up. He talked about how much hatred he felt towards the kapos and their god Hitler. He had said that when his father was dying, he felt like throwing himself at the concentration camp leaders because of the hatred he felt towards them. However, he didn't because his fear of getting beat up himself conquered his strong emotions towards the SS. Mostly, fear conquers all the pain in the world. Fear of pain that eventually leads to death. For example, when Elizer was running (or "forcefully moved") from once camp to another, he didn't stop or slow down. He kept talking about how much pain he was in, and how his legs were going numb in the freezing cold weather. His lungs were on fire, and he had felt like he was running towards death. However, he didn't stop or slow down out of fear of death since the SS officers shot whoever that did. Fear is overpowering. It conquers all emotions, actions, and feelings.

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  28. I agree with Hannah that fear does conquer both love and hate. When the young Pipel beats his father is one example of when fear conquers love. The young Pipel is so afraid of punishment for being to humane that he decides to become extremely harsh and beat his father over small matters. This is in one way actually showing his weakness. The boy is to weak to overcome his fear of punishment. Weakness is also a very important word in night. To be weak in night is death. The Nazis did not want the burden of weak prisoners that could not work, that is the reason for killing all of the old and all of the young. The only way to get through the camps was to preserver and to never give in to the fear that would drive you. The weakness of Elie's father almost killed both him and his father. When Elie and his father were running with the soldiers they wanted to stop however they could not because they would be shot. The fear of being shot drove them to not give in to weakness. All of the Jews were also afraid of losing their religion, or faith in God. When the Jews realized what was happening they did not understand how God could let this happen but they were afraid of what would happen after they died when they no longer had faith which is the only reason that they kept their faith in God. I believe that by maintaining their faith it gave the the Jews with no one left something to live for and for the other that were destined to die it gave them hope. Hope pushed all of the Jews through the days. Hope that tomorrow could be the day they were saved, or hope that they may live through the Holocaust.

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  29. To go with the concept of fear i think that in some cases it helped Elie and his father get through the problems they had. If they had not feared the crematorium they might not have made it through the first couple of weeks in the camp. It made them stronger because they knew what would happen if they didn't work hard enough. Fear also played a role in strengthening the religion of some of the men but Elie was an exception to this. The men would all pray on the holidays and seemed to always gain some hope when they did this. When Elie's father finally started to not fear death as much i think he started getting weaker and finally died. Elie on the other hand survived because he felt a deep hate but did fear the Germans. This gave him the will to go on because he wanted to be able to get back at them for taking his father's life. In conclusion fear in a way helped the jewish people in the concentration camps to survive.
    Next I also think that being in the concentration camps numbed many of the people's feelings towards what was right and wrong. An example of this is when the kid on the train kills his own father in order to get a piece of bread. People became animals in order to survive and so did many thing that should not have been done. It's a tragidy when people make other people go through such harsh events like the holocaust and the world just turns their eyes to the events.
    Cody

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  30. Throughout the story, religion plays an extremely minor role as a motivational tool. I was very surprised by how little influence Judaism played in the everyday lives of the concentration camp’s inmates especially due to the fact that their only common bond before the holocaust was their religion. In one occasion, Elie lost all faith in his religion. “I've got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.” This quote shows Elie’s lack of faith in G-d whom he had based his life off of before the Holocaust began. Also the only time Judaism is practiced is in the reciting of the Kaddish or on high holidays not in daily prayers which a more observant Jew ,such as Elie would engage. Knowing the history of Elie’s devotion to his religion, I expected him to be far more active in the practices of Judaism. This lack of faith in religion furthers the notion that fear overcomes all other senses including those developed to help oneself in the worst crises.

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  31. In the beginning of Night, when Elie was still a child, he strongly believed in his religion Judaism. As the book progressed, and as Elie witnessed the horrible things that happened to people, his belief in God started slipping away. The first time Elie really doubted God’s presence was when he and his father were approaching the fire pit. Elie thought to himself himself, “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for” (33)? He was also questioning God when the little child was being hanged, but did not die for over half an hour. Elie just could not believe why God would let cruel things happen to such a little child. During Rosh Hashanah prayer, Elie questioned himself, “Why, but why would I bless Him?...Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created…many other factories of death” (67)? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Though, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?” At this point in the story, Elie was seriously losing faith in God because he could not comprehend why He would let these terrible events happen. Finally, during Yom Kippur, Elie “no longer accepted God’s silence (69), so he continued eating normally whereas he would have previously fasted on this special day. Elie almost totally lost faith by the end of his time in the concentration camps. It is very understandable why Elie would lose that much faith because after going through so much terror, how could someone believe that there is in fact a God?
    Now my question is: How does Elie view God now? If he has regained his faith, how did it happen?

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  32. Just glancing through the first couple sentences of most of the comments so far, I've noticed that most of them are about fear or faith. Personally, the topic that inspires me the most is faith. Throughout the novel, Elie steadily looses faith in his God. At the very beginning, when his thoughts of concentration camps did not even exist yet, he went to Moishe the Beadle to learn about Kabbalah, which is basically (correct me if I'm wrong) the Jewish study of the relationship between God and His creations. Then, Moishe was taken away. When he came back, his faith in God was gone. "The joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. He no longer mentioned either God or Kabbalah. He spoke only of what he had seen." (p. 7)
    After they were taken to Auschwitz, and Elie and his father were already separated from the women and girls, they were walking in the direction of the crematorium, thinking they were going there, when some men around them started reciting Kaddish...for themselves. Elie found anger rising within him. "Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?" (p. 33). Elie faith is beginning to dwindle. He is wondering why he should praise God for life if He is letting this happen to thousands of Jews? His sacred people!?! He believes there is nothing to thank their almighty God for. On the next page, he says that he "never shall forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes." The moments murdered all thoughts of the God he had believed existed, and provided for the thoughts that no God existed at all. All of his hopes and dreams preceding those moments "turned to ashes."
    A while later, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Elie thinks "What are You, my God? How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?" (p. 66). He wants to know why the supposed God deserves to be worshipped and honored by this mass of people whose pain He is denying, ignoring. causing to continue, or rather, not letting end. "How could I say to him: Blessed be thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? Praised by Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?” (p. 67). Jews are supposed to be God’s chosen people, but Elie is forced to believe that they were chosen to be tortured, killed, and cremated. By the end of the story, Elie thinks nothing of his faith, or his God. His original faith is completely gone.
    My question is: Should Elie have not lost his faith? Would he have been better or worse off if he hadn’t?

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  34. Fear, according to dictionary.com is: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. In the book Night, it is honestly hard to find a scene that lacks fear. This is because the actions of the Germans were so harsh and inhumane that it seems fictional, just a story for an award winning novel. But the reason Night is an award winning novel is not simply because it’s an interesting read; This book evokes fear. It takes you back to when fear was not being afraid of the dark, or spiders, but being afraid for your life, or whether you will live long enough to see some crumbs of a last meal. At the beginning of the book, nobody believes or wants to believe the stories that Moshie the Beadle tells them. No one would even dare to think of Jews being forced to dig their own graves and babies being used as shooting targets. Fear is rational for the characters in this book, and it’s quite silly to pretend fear doesn’t control their lives. In the book, many prisoners lost their shoes, silverware, even their golden crowns out of fear. Near the end of the book, a boy murders his own father out of fear of starving. Adolf Hitler once said that the way to demoralize and destroy the enemy from within was by surprise, terror, sabotage, and assassination. This is clearly how he kept the Jews “in line”. Fear can coerce a person to do almost anything. What CAN’T fear make you do

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  35. I would like to comment on the same topic as Lauren brought up. She makes good points in stating how the prisoners in the concentration camps loose humanity along with their faith. In the beginning of the book, no one would even consider that people were being burned by other humans, however, as the book was ending Elie said how he trampled over many dead bodies laying in the snow without any thought in his mind and told us of many accounts of men killing each other over a simple ration of bread. On page 101 it talks about the son beating his father to get the piece of bread and both the father and son ended up dead. I think that faith, fear, and pure mental strength have a big impact on why this happens. When a man looses faith there seems to be no reason to live except for another half a ration of bread. It is hard to say how much fear is present when a man looses humanity. It is almost as though they fear what has happened to so many of their closest friends and family, but they would do anything for food, even if it means death. This shows how the prisoners’ mental stability and strength could not last with the about of fear gained and faith lost. Although it seemed so common in the camps, but extremely ridiculous to us that someone would do anything to get a small piece of bread, which would help them live, even though they knew what they were doing would get them killed. So how does one keep mental stability and faith in that situation that so many Jews were in? Elie Wiesel, I believe, showed in his novel how hard it is to remember what matters most in life and what a person lives for in rough times. However Wiesel also shows that one can preserve over obstacles and, although his faith was tested at times, he always believed in Something.

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  36. I would like to say that on the topic of faith, the whole idea of keeping faith in god is doing it through the toughest of times. You cant exactly be a fairweather christian, or a fairweather jew, or a muslim or whatever, the whole idea is fath through the hardest times in your life. The shock of seeing millions of people murdered heartlessly is jarring yes, but it should not make you question god, it should make you understand some of the trials your ancestors faced. This is not the first, nor the last time, a religous group has been persecuted, each ,major group has suffered just as yours has, although yours is on a large scale, the ones of the past might have been too, we just dont know about it. The christians were hunted and slaughtered as dogs in rome, they were forced into slavery. They were crucified along roads and left to die, this went on for an extremly long time, all the way until constantine. How long did the holocaust last? 3-4 years. The idea is to stick with god through all the horror, through all the pain, and if you do die during these trials, what do you think happens? Now its different for each religon, but in most, if you remain faithful, good stuff happens after you die, eternal paradise, and such. so id death really the worst thing?

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