Night

Essay by ruffpaloHigh School, 12th gradeA+, July 2004

download word file, 3 pages 3.5

Elie Wiesel's novel, 'Night', gives the reader a clear indication of the perceptions of inhumanity that were painful and unbelievably real in the deaths camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It also signifies the shocking injustice that human kind is capable of and also has to deliver. Throughout this experience, Elie witnesses many examples of inhumanity and injustice such as the concentration camps, starvation, beatings, torture, illness, hard labour and the slaughter of young children.

The last bit of hope was torn away from Elie when he had to witness the hanging of a small boy. "For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes." A man behind Elie asked, "Where is God? Where is He?.... Where is God now?" All Elie could think of was "Where is He? Here He is-He is hanging here on this gallows..."

To have one's entire spiritual beliefs destroyed in an instant second by witnessing such a horrible act of inhumanity and injustice would be torture alone for any person, but for the innocent Elie, this must have been earth shattering. It was even more difficult for Elie to witness this because he had loved this little pipel and described him as having "The face of a sad angel..." These two powerful describing words such as 'sad' and 'angel' express the innocence of this young boy.

Elie is a witness to the genocide of his own people. Living through the horrifying experiences in the German concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Elie sees his family, friends and fellow Jews starved, degraded, and murdered. But the hardest thing for Elie to witness was the continuous beating of his father right before his eyes. Elie suffered the most when he witnessed his...