Elie Wiesel

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Elie Wiesel
Night
Study Guide Notes
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Night Genre

• Genre (type or style of writing)
• World War II and Holocaust Autobiography

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Night Study Guide Notes

• The original title Elie Wiesel gave the novel was
  And the World Has Remained Silent.
• He wrote this book after 10 years of silence.
• By the end of the Holocaust, over 6 million Jews
  had been killed.

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Night Background

• Wiesel first wrote a 900-page text in Yiddish
  titled Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World
  Remained Silent). The work later evolved into the
  much-shorter French publication La Nuit, which
  was then translated into English as Night.

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Night Tone

• Tone
• Eliezers perspective is limited to his own
  experience, and the tone of Night is therefore
  intensely personal, subjective, and intimate.
  Night is not meant to be an all-encompassing
  discourse on the experience of the Holocaust
  instead, it depicts the extraordinarily personal
  and painful experiences of a single victim.

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Night Setting

• setting (time) 19411945, during World War II
• settings (place)
• Eliezers story begins in
• Sighet, Transylvania (now part of Romania during
  Wiesels childhood, part of Hungary)
• The book then follows his journey through several
  concentration camps in Europe
• Auschwitz/Birkenau (in a part of modern-day
  Poland that had been annexed by Germany in 1939)
• Buna (a camp that was part of the Auschwitz
  complex)
• Gleiwitz (also in Poland but annexed by Germany)
• Buchenwald (Germany)

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Night Themes

• Themes
• Eliezer's Struggle to Maintain Faith in a
  Benevolent God
• Silence
• Inhumanity Toward Other Humans
• The Importance of Father-Son Bonds

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Night Study Guide Notes

• There are five motifs to look for while reading
  Night
• motifs (a recurring subject, theme, or idea)
• Night pay attention to what happens at night
  and what that might symbolize. Remember what we
  learned when we talked about archetypes and what
  night might symbolize.
• Bearing Witness Pay attention to which
  characters are witnesses and to what they bear
  witness.

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Night Study Guide Notes

• Motifs (continued)
• Father-son Relationships Pay attention to how
  Elie and his fathers relationship develops in
  addition, notice other father-son relationships
  in the book.
• Loss of Faith Notice how Elies faith in God
  changes as the book progresses. Write on your
  study guides where these changes occur.

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Night Study Guide Notes

• Motifs (continued)
• Voice vs. Silence Who has a voice and who
  chooses to remain silent? Why might Elie Wiesel
  title his novel what he did originally (And the
  World Has Remained Silent), and why did he no
  longer remain silent?
• Click here to listen to Elie Wiesel's "A God who
  Remembers"

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Night Symbols

• Symbols
• Night
• Fire appears throughout Night as a symbol of the
  Nazis' cruel power.
• Fire
• Night always occurs when suffering is worst, and
  its presence reflects Eliezer's belief that he
  lives in a world without God.

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Night Study Guide Notes

• In Poland, 90 of the approximately 3,000,000
  Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
• As you read, look for times that Wiesel mentions
  the people in surrounding towns.
• There are several groups who contributed to the
  Holocaust, persecutors and by-standers included.
  
• Be prepared to discuss Why are by-standers just
  as important as the persecutors?