Night Questions

Questions for Night

1. Wiesel’s childhood home is in Sighet, Transylvania which is near Austria and Romania.
2. As a child Wiesel explains his desires to study the cabala, which is a doctrine of Jewish mysticism. Not many people study the cabala and Wiesel’s father does not particularly want him to study the doctrine but Wiesel finds Moshe the Beadle to help him study.
3. Wiesel says that when he was young he wanted to study the cabala in order to know the truths of this world. The truths he is referring to are the truths about God and about Heaven and the orchard of mystical truth. Elie was ignorant to the truths of human kind and that the world is unforgiving no matter how hard you try to be a superior person.
4. Moshe the Beadle is an important character because he assists Wiesel in his study of the cabala and helps strengthen Wiesel’s faith in God. He states that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. He also tells Elie that man questions God and God does answer him but that men cannot always understand His answers. Moshe says that there are numerous gates to the mystical truth and that everyone must try and find their own gate to enter. Moshe was prescient in his admonition to Elie because he experienced the wrath of the Nazis before they spread.
5. The people of Sighet ignore Moshe after he returns form his escape because the Jewish people choose to be optimistic and believe that nothing that horrible would ever happen to any of them. Their faith in God also supports their beliefs that they will not be harmed.
6. Madame Schachter is a Jewish woman from Sighet who was put on the same train cart as Elie and his family. During the train ride she goes mad and claims that there are fires burning outside the train, although, there are never any fires apparent and the people ignore her. Later, when the train arrives at Birkenau, the Jewish people are faced with real flames that burn people like themselves. Moshe the Beadle and Madame Schachter are alike in the way that the Jewish people tend to ignore the predictions that are presented to them and face the consequences of their ignorant choices.
7. This passage that expresses Elie’s true feelings about his life at that point is very powerful and truly gives an insight to the impact of the concentration camps on his beliefs. It explains his dying but still present feelings for his God and his broken dreams of his life that is threatened everyday.
8. The contexts of this passage explain Elie’s struggle with his faith in God which is slowly vanishing the longer he is put through the tortures of the concentration camps. Elie’s theology was changed from believing that God held all the answers and cared about his people but Elie realizes that he has nothing to thank the all powerful and great God. This passage speaks for the rest of Night because Elie’s life now revolves around his struggle for faith in God and his desire to live.
9. Elie’s understanding of God changes throughout the book because in the beginning of Night Elie believes in God fully and tries to learn more about God. In the middle of the book Elie’s belief in God slowly begins to decrease because of all the torture that is brought to the Jewish people. Toward the end of the book Elie has no faith in God at all because he has lost everything in his life except for his father, but he ultimately loses him too. Elie is most angry with God when the Jewish people first arrive at the concentration camp and Elie asks himself what he has to thank God for. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, when the Jewish people should be fasting, Elie does not even care that he should be fasting; he even eats to prove his lost faith in God.
10. The darkness of night has different significant meanings in the book but one important connotation is that night represents Elie’s world without the existence of God. Night is when the Jewish people first arrive at Birkenau and travel to Auschwitz for their permanent stay. Night also occurs when the surviving Jews began their run from Buna.
11. Night must be a slim book because Wiesel must have wanted to emphasize his symbols and theme that are shown throughout the book instead of writing about all of his experiences.
12. Night is a memoir of both tragedy and triumph because Elie lost his entire family, his faith in God, and his dreams to the war and he will never get any of them back. On the contrary the book can be seen as a triumph because Elie survived through all his losses and his injuries, both mental and physical.

Night Vocabulary

Night Vocab

1. Prostrate- To put or throw flat with the face down, as in submission or adoration.

2. Interlude- An intervening episode, feature, or period of time.

3. Reprieve- To postpone or cancel the punishment of.

4. Rations- A fixed portion, especially an amount of food allotted to persons in military service or to civilians in times of scarcity.

5. Dysentery- An inflammatory disorder of the lower intestinal tract, usually caused by a bacterial, parasitic, or protozoan infection and resulting pain, fever, and severe diarrhea often accompanied by the passage of blood and mucus.

6. Robust- Full of health and strength; vigorous.

7. Quarantine- A period of time during which a vehicle, person, or material suspected of carrying a contagious disease is detained at a port of entry under enforced isolation to prevent disease from entering a country.

8. Apathy- Lack of interest of concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal; indifference.

9. Humane- Characterized by kindness, mercy, or compassion.

10. Grimace- A sharp contortion of the face expressive of pain, contempt, of disgust.

11. Nocturnal- Of, relating to, or occurring in the night.

12. Livid- Discolored, as from a bruise; black and blue. Extremely angry.

13. Pious- Having or exhibiting religious reverence; earnestly complaint in the observance of religion; devout.

14. Interminable- Being or seeming to be without an end; endless.

15. Wizened- Withered.

16. Morale- The state of the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks.

17. Infernal- Of or relating to a lower world of the dead.

18. Refuge- Protection or shelter, as from danger or hardship.

19. Oppressive- Difficult to bear; burdensome.

20. Expelled- To force or drive out.

Night Essay

Cheyanne Barba

Mrs. Bosch

Honors English 10P

8 January 2008

Hours of Darkness

With the absence of the sun and the introduction of the moon, most creatures take advantage of this time to regain their energy to survive the approaching day. Unfortunately, not everything and everyone is at peace during the night. Many relentless occurrences can also happen, car accidents are frequent and so are deaths. Death happens all of the time, it’s apart of life but innocent death is unforgiving; some of the largest and cruelest vindictive killings are those of the Holocaust during the early nineteen-forties. Not all the suffering was held until nighttime, the Jewish people suffered all of the time but for one man, night seemed to bring on a whole other world which drastically changed his views on life. This survivor of WWII was Elie Wiesel; he was a teenager when he was admitted into Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp. After the war had ended Wiesel wrote a book on his experiences called Night. Wiesel includes his struggles that he has to go through everyday and night to survive the harsh work of the concentration camp that he lived in with his father. The nights that lead up to Wiesel’s confinement and the night’s that he experiences begin to wear on him, eventually night becomes a symbol for God’s absence from Wiesel’s world, his pain and suffering, and the silence of his voice to stand up in what he believes in. During and after the Holocaust Wiesel’s life was altered to the extreme and his life was forever changed by those nights that seemed to trail on for eternity.

In the beginning of the book Wiesel has a very strong faith in God; he practices his religion’s doctrines and prays to God whenever he can. As Wiesel goes through life in the concentration camp his faith slowly decreases with every minor and major event that affects his stay at the concentration camp. His faith is picked apart by the sights of children that have been hung before his eyes, of the burning of bodies’ everyday in the crematory, and of the torture he and his fellow Jews are put through. When Wiesel is supposed to be sleeping he begins to think about God and realizes that he “Never shall…forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself” (32). Wiesel is struggling with his faith in God but still keeps the thought of Him in his mind by comparing himself to God. Wiesel does not believe that if God was real he would let the Jews suffer so much, he does not know what his people had done wrong in order to receive that sort of punishment and his ultimate answer is that they have done nothing, it’s simply the fact that God does not exist. Night emphasizes all of these blasphemous thoughts and feelings because at night suffering is the worst; it’s when Wiesel and his family were first deported, when he first arrived at Birkenau, another concentration camp, and it is also when Wiesel and other men are forced to run forty-two miles non stop in order to not be shot. All of these incidents reflect on Wiesel’s struggling faith in God.

The genocide of the Jewish people during World War II was malicious and unbelievable; it’s quite amazing that there were any survivors. The Jewish people had to suffer everyday for years, going through the pains of losing family members, their lives that would never be the same, and having to never know when they would be given redemption. Wiesel was fortunate to be one of the few Jews to survive the Holocaust, it was not easy and he explains this through his book. Wiesel suffered a great deal during the war, he lost his faith in God which hr do strongly believed in at one point, he had to handle the was first hand when he was only fifteen, and ultimately he lost all of his family except for his father and they stuck together as long as possible through the unyielding war. Although life in a war can change a person and Wiesel thinks to himself, despite his better knowledge that “it’s too late to save your old father…you ought to be having two rations of bread, two rations of soup…only a fraction of a second, but I felt guilty” (105). This pain of knowing that Wiesel has lost everything and now has to lose his father is brought out in night because his father’s sickness began with the captive’s “pitch darkness” (81) from Buna.

The Jewish people were not allowed to be treated like humans and had no voice in anything. Wiesel understood this right away, before he was even entered into a concentration camp, in the ghetto that the Jews were forced to live in before their deportation. Their deportation was of course, not by choice and the friends and family of the Wiesel’s were quite frightened when Wiesel’s father came back to their backyard where everyone was gathered late at night to tell them of the “…terrible news…” (11). the news was that “the ghetto was to be completely wiped out” (11). Soon chaos filled the cool night air and the people of the ghetto began to prepare for their unexpected extensive and tough journey. All throughout Wiesel’s and the other six million Jews who were contained had no stand or opinion on anything, no matter how much they were beaten or saw other wrong doings being imposed. The silence of the night stressed the reality that Wiesel had no right to stand up for what he believed was immoral.

The night brings on a whole different world to many people; some sleep and others have to deal with the pains of living. For Elie Wiesel the night brought on a totally different outlook on life. His first experience with night was when he and the rest of his Jewish community were deported to a concentration camp. On other nights Wiesel struggled with his belief and trust in God and in humanity, both seemed not to care what occurred to the Jews. These nights turned into symbols for Wiesel’s lost faith in God, his pain and suffering throughout the war, and the forced silence of his individuality that was not able to shine through.

Works Cited

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York:

Bantam Books, 1982.