About the Author

1
About the Author

• In 1940, Romania became part of Hungary, an area
  that was soon invaded by the Nazis.
• Elie had two older sisters and one younger
  sister.
• His family was Jewish, and Elie studied Hebrew
  and the Hassidic sect of Judaism.

• Elie Wiesel

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About the Author

• Elie survived and was liberated on April 11,
  1945.
• After the war, he learned that his two older
  sisters had survived.
• Elie spent the next ten years living and studying
  in France, refusing to write anything about his
  experiences in the concentration camp.

• Elie Wiesel

3

• Elie Wiesels strong connection with the Jewish
  Community
• Elie Wiesels Novel, Night

• His father was involved with the community
• Wiesel studied the Torah (1st five books in the
  Old Testament)
• Wiesel studied the Talmud (oral law) and the
  Cabbala
• Wiesels book was published in 3 different
  languages and as part of a trilogy with Dawn and
  Day containing more detail of his experience

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• While the book Night is about Wiesels life, it
  is not necessarily considered an autobiography
• He changes facts to make his characters
  different, making this a fictional story.
• Because of this, his story is considered more of
  a memoir than an actual novel.
• Wiesel now lives in New England as an American
  citizen.

• Genre of Night

Malnutrition and starvation were common in the
concentration camps
5

• With the encouragement of Francois Mauriac,
  Eliezer Wiesel broke his silence on the horror of
  the Holocaust to produce an 800 page memoir
  entitled, Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, in 1956.
• That cathartic story was reworked over two years
  and became the slim 1958 novella La Nuit which
  became Night in 1960.
• Wiesel's novel revealed the Holocaust in stark,
  evocative, detail.

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• This story is about Elie Wiesel, a young teenage,
  Jewish boy who is a survivor of the holocaust.
• The story takes place in Sighet, Transylvania,
  Hungary, and Auschwitz, Germany in 1944-1945
• The German troops invade his hometown, force all
  of the Jews to load up on a train and travel to
  Auschwitz.

• Background of Novel

Elie as a young boy passengers load onto the
trains
7

• Some days later, he makes it back to town and
  tells them what happened.
• All the people presumed deported were shot.

• Night begins in 1941 in a Hasidic Community in
  the town of Sighet, Transylvania.
• There we meet a devout young boy named Eliezer
  who is so fascinated by his own culture and
  religion that he wishes to study Jewish cabbala.
• His father, however, says he must master the
  Talmud before he can move on to the mystical side
  of the Jewish faith.
• Moshe the Beadle indulges the boy until the
  reality of World War II reaches them.
• The fascists come to power in Romania and foreign
  Jews are deported Moshe with them.

Sighet Synagogue
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• That was only the beginning, the dusk of the
  coming night.
• Within a matter of paragraphs, officers of the
  Nazi SS corps have arrived and the family is
  broken up and sent to Birkenau.
• The metaphorical night only gets darker as
  Eliezer struggles to survive in the brutality and
  degradation of the camps.

The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You
dont die of it Elie Wiesels father
9

• Background

• They first arrive in Birkenau where Eliezer and
  his father are separated from his mother and
  sisters, never to see them again.
• They have to endure selections (where the
  German troops select those who will go to the
  furnace and die, and those who will go to the
  barracks and work).

The many barbed wires and barracks of a
concentration camp
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• Wiesel encounters many obstacles, mentally,
  physically, and spiritually, that he must endure.
• He is forced to witness murders, is malnourished,
  and is constantly doubting his once confident
  faith.
• The entire story is based on his experience
  there.

• Background
• Problems and Conflict

11

• Eliezer -  The narrator of Night, protagonist, a
  teenage boy in the 1940s. Dedicated to his
  faith in the beginning.
• Chlomo - Eliezers father. His name is only
  mentioned one time throughout the whole novel,
  and is the only other character that is constant
  until the end. Highly regarded in the community.
• Moshe the Beadle -
• Eliezers teacher of Jewish mysticism, Moshe is
  a poor Jew who lives in Sighet.

• Characters

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• Madame Schächter  -
• A Jewish woman from Sighet who is deported with
  the rest of the community, and goes crazy.
• Juliek - 
• A young musician who Eliezer meets in Auschwitz.
• Tibi and Yosi  - 
• Two brothers who Eliezer becomes friends with.

• Characters

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• Characters

• Dr. Josef Mengele - 
• the historically infamous Dr. Mengele was the
  cruel doctor who presided over the selection of
  arrivals at Auschwitz/Birkenau.
• Idek - Eliezers Kapo (Nazi police officer at
  Buna, the work camp)

Dr. Josef Mengele was appropriately nicknamed
the Angle of Death by inmates at Auschwitz
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SymbolsThematic Ideas

• Fire
• Night
• Eliezers struggle to maintain faith in a
  benevolent God
• Silence
• Inhumanity toward other humans
• The importance of Father-Son bonds

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Rhetorical Devices

• Wiesels use of language helps emphasize the
  meaning, action, and tone of the sections.

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Rhetorical Devices

• Rhetorical Questions
• Rhetorical questions are asked to achieve a
  purpose other than finding the answer to the
  question.
• The speaker may want to encourage reflection in
  the reader.
• For example, when Eliezer sees the babies being
  thrown into the fire, he asks a series of
  questions.
• Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it
  possible that men, women, and children were being
  burned and that the world kept silent? (p. 32)
• Eliezer does not expect an answer to these
  questions.
• He wants the reader to think about what his or
  her reaction might have been in seeing the same
  thing.

17
Rhetorical Devices

• Sentence variety
• Pay attention to the sentence structures that
  Wiesel uses in the narration.
• At some points in the memoir the sentences are
  long, and in some passages the sentences are only
  one word.
• Wiesel varies the sentences length, structure,
  and order in order to parallel action in the
  passage or to help establish a tone.

18
Rhetorical Devices

• Understatement
• Wiesel uses understatement throughout Night to
  help the reader visualize the events in the
  memoir.
• Because many people are familiar with the details
  of the Holocaust, Wiesel understands that it
  would be difficult to adequately describe the
  true nature of what happened.
• Instead, he lets the silence between the words
  serve as the true meaning.

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Figurative language

• Wiesel uses figurative language throughout the
  memoir to amplify the images that the narration
  already creates.

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Figurative language

• Simile
• Be certain not to miss the like or as when
  reading the descriptions.
• For example, when Eliezer describes Mrs.
  Schachter on the train he states she looked
  like a withered tree in a field of wheat. (p.
  25)
• The image shows a woman who stands alone among
  the people who surround her.
• She is already dead, as indicated by the word
  withered.

21
Figurative language

• Metaphor
• Metaphors can be recognized by finding the two
  ideas that are being compared.
• For example, as the prisoners are first being
  transported from Sighet, they come face to face
  with the men who will be guarding them.
• Eliezer uses the following metaphor to describe
  the men.
• Strange-looking creatures, dressed in striped
  jackets and black pants, jumped into the wagon.
  (p. 28)
• The image of the strange-looking creatures is
  meant to describe the men who come into the train
  to brutalize the prisoners.
• They are not really creatures, but Wiesels image
  illustrates their animalistic brutality.

22
Figurative language

• Personification
• Personification is used to give human qualities
  to animals or objects.
• A glacial wind was enveloping us. (p. 36)
• The stomach alone was measuring time. (p. 52)
• Jealousy devoured us, consumed us. (p. 59)

23
Figurative language

• Irony
• Verbal irony is when someone says one thing and
  means another dramatic irony is when the reader
  knows something that the character does not know
  situational irony is the discrepancy between the
  expected results and the actual results.
• For example, when Eliezer goes to meet the
  dentist, the dentist has a mouth of yellow,
  rotten teeth. (p. 51)
• The irony is that a dentist should have mouth of
  perfect teeth.
• Another example of irony is the inscription that
  is on the iron gate at Auschwitz Work makes
  you free.

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Figurative Language

• Foreshadowing
• Foreshadowing is a literary device that is used
  when the speaker gives hints about what is going
  to happen later in the plot.
• There are various examples of foreshadowing in
  Night, but they are very subtle.
• The reader often recognizes them after reading
  further in the text.
• One of the clearest examples of foreshadowing is
  Mrs. Schächters vision of the fires before the
  prisoners reach the camps. (p. 24)

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Motifs

• Throughout Night, Wiesel repeats literary devices
  and images that help to develop the memoirs
  major themes.
• Notice
• how night and light are used throughout the text
  
• how the Jewish traditions and holidays help to
  pace the memoir and
• how animal imagery is used to explore the
  dehumanization of the Jews.

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Point of View or Narration

• a story in which the narrator speaks in the first
  person as he relates to the story. The narrator
  may or may not be the protagonist
• Wiesel uses the first-person point of view to
  narrate
• Think about the effect first-person narration has
  on the reader. How does it make the reader feel?
  

27
Mood

• the feeling created by the setting, characters,
  or action of a work

28
Allusion

• - a reference to a text, historical figure,
  event, or place that the writer expects the
  reader to understand
• Why does writers use allusion? What do allusions
  have to offer readers?

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30
U.S. President Barack Obama presents the 2009
National Humanities Medal to Holocaust survivor
Elie Wiesel
in the East Room of the White House in
Washington, February 25, 2010.
31
Recognition

• Wiesel has lived his life speaking out against
  all forms of racism and violence.
• In 1985 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of
  Freedom and, in 1986, the Nobel Prize for Peace.
• He is partially responsible for
  the United States Holocaust
  Memorial Museum in
  Washington D.C.

32
The house in Sighet where Wiesel was born
photographed in 2007.
33
The image depicts a deserted street in Sighet's
Jewish getto, after the Jews were deported from
it to be exterminated at Auschwitz, in May 1944
just three weeks before the Normandy invasion.