Here are some potential connections between the prisoners in Night and Shawshank Redemption: - Both groups are stripped of their freedom and individuality. In the camps, prisoners are reduced to numbers and forced into uniformity/submission. In Shawshank, the prisoners lose control over their lives and must obey the prison system. - Survival requires adapting to a harsh, inhumane system not of one's own making. In the camps, prisoners must find ways to endure unthinkable cruelty and deprivation. In Shawshank, inmates navigate the prison's oppressive rules and power structures. - Hope and humanity can persist even in the darkest of places. In Night, some prisoners retain aspects of dignity and compassion

2. AGENDA
 Discussion:
 End: The Metamorphosis
 Begin: Night
 Author Introduction:
Elie Wiesel
 Historical Context
 Summary
 QHQ

3. Questions from Section 3
1. Discuss the three bearded lodgers. What is
their purpose in the story?
2. It is clear from the outset of Part 3 that Gregor
is dying. How much of his physical decline is
his own doing, and how much of it is caused by
outside factors?
3. Contrast Gregor’s state of mind at the
beginning of this section to right before his
death. What incidents or events cause a change
in Gregor’s attitude and thinking? Are Gregor’s
thoughts rational and clear, or are they blurred
and irrational?

4. Themes
 Alienation
 Father-Son
Antagonism
 Escapism
 Isolation
 Self-sacrifice
 Betrayal

5. Potential Theoretical Approaches
New Criticism
Psychoanalytic Theory
Trauma Theory
Feminist Theory

6. Elie Wiesel
 Known As: Wiesel, Eliezer; Wiezsel,
Eli; Wiesel, Elie
 American Writer ( 1928 - )
 Born in Sighet, Romania (Then
Transylvania)
 He survived Birkenau and later
Auschwitz and Buna and
Buchenwald. His father, mother,
and youngest sister did not. After
the war, he was reunited with his
two older sisters who also
survived.
“The only way to stop the next holocaust…
is to remember the last one.”

7.  After his release from the
war camps, he boarded a
train for Belgium, which
was ultimately diverted
to France. He stayed
there, completing his
education at Sorbonne,
University of Paris, from
1948-51.
 Wiesel immigrated to the
United States in 1956,
and received his U.S.
citizen in 1963
 He eventually married
Marion Erster Rose, and
together they had one
son, Shlomo Elisha.
 Other novels by Wiesel about the
Jewish experience during and after
the Holocaust include Dawn and The
Accident, which were later published
together with Night in The Night
Trilogy
 The other two books in the trilogy
have concentration camp survivors as
their central characters.
 Dawn concerns one survivor just after
World War II who joins the Jewish
underground efforts to form an
independent Israeli state.
 The Accident is about a man who
discovers that his collision with an
automobile was actually caused by his
subconscious, guilt-ridden desire to
commit suicide.
Some content courtesy of Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2013. From
Literature Resource Center.

9. Night takes place in Romania, Poland, and
Germany during WW II (1939-1945)
This war, sparked by German aggression, had its roots in the ending of an
earlier war. With Germany’s defeat in WWI, the nation was left with a broken
government. a severely limited military, shattered industry and
transportation, and an economy sinking under the strain of war debts. Many
Germans were humiliated and demoralized
The Nazi party (The
National Socialist
German Workers
Party) came to power
in late 1920s. The
party aimed to restore
German pride.

10. Adolf Hitler
 Adolf Hitler, the party leader,
spoke at rallies of Germany’s
long military tradition, its
national character, and its
entitlement to greatness. To
explain Germany’s fallen state,
Hitler blamed the Jews and
others he said were not “true”
Germans.
 Soon after he took control, he
took away German Jew’s
citizenship and right to work,
barred Jews from public schools
and gathering places, made it so
they could no longer marry non-
Jews, and he attacked their
homes and businesses
frequently.

11. He defined Jews as those with at
least one Jewish grandparent,
whether or not they observed their
religion
The people he “targeted” were
imprisoned in ghettos, where they
were often starved or murdered
.
It is believed that eleven
million people were
killed by the Nazis.
These included political
opponents (particularly
Communists), Slavs,
gypsies, mentally and/or
physically disabled,
homosexuals, and other
"undesirables.” An
estimated six million
men, women, and
children were killed
because they were
Jews.

12. The Nazis forced concentration
camp inmates to wear various
symbols on their uniforms. The
Jews wore a yellow "Jewish Star"
(made of two inverted yellow
triangles). The homosexual inmates
wore an inverted "Pink Triangle.”
(In some camps, such as Schirmeck,
homosexuals wore blue bars on
their uniforms.) This chart from the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's
archives depicts the various other
groups and their respective colors;
such as black for "A-socials"
(including lesbians and feminists),
purple for Jehovah's Witnesses, red
for political prisoners, green for
criminal prisoners, brown (maroon)
for gypsies.

14. Night
 In the spring of 1944, the Nazis entered the
Transylvanian village of Sighet, Romania,
until then a relatively safe and peaceful
enclave in the middle of a war-torn
continent. Arriving with orders to
exterminate an estimated 600,000 Jews in
six weeks or less, Adolf Eichmann, chief of
the Gestapo's Jewish section, began making
arrangements for a mass deportation
program. Among those forced to leave their
homes was fifteen-year-old Elie Wiesel, the
only son of a grocer and his wife. A serious
and devoted student of the Talmud and the
mystical teachings of Hasidism and the
Cabala, the young man had always assumed
he would spend his entire life in Sighet,
quietly contemplating the religious texts and
helping out in the family's store from time to
time. Instead, along with his father, mother,
and three sisters, Wiesel was herded onto a
train bound for Birkenau, the reception
center for the infamous death camp
Auschwitz.
Wiesel at age 15
http://www.pbs.org/eli
ewiesel/life/

15.  Genre: Non-fiction; Holocaust
autobiography
 Type of Work: Memoir
(narrative composed from
personal experience)
 Time Period: 1941-1945 (during
WWII)
 Setting: story begins in Sighet,
Transylvania (now part of
Romania) and follows Wiesel to
concentration camps in Europe
(Auschwitz/Birkenau – modern
day Poland) & Germany

16. Survivors at
Buchenwald
Concentration Camp
remain in their
barracks after
liberation by Allies on
April 16, 1945. Elie
Wiesel, the Nobel
Prize winning author
of Night, is on the
second bunk from
the bottom, seventh
from the left. (Photo
: Corbis)

17. Significant Characters and QHQ

18. Significant Characters
Moshe the Beadle: After his deportation, Moshe returns with a report on the
massacre of those deported. The community dismisses him as a madman.
Madame Schächter: On the journey to Auschwitz, she goes out of her mind.
At night she shrieks "I can see fire!” The last time she shrieks, everyone
looks, and they see the flames of the crematory.
Chlomo Wiesel: Eliezer's father, Chlomo, is a "cultured, rather unsentimental
man … more concerned with others than with his own family.” However,
while he is in the death camps, he lives to keep his son alive
Eliezer Wiesel: The narrating survivor of the camps is Eliezer, who becomes A-
7713.
Franek: The foreman in the electrical warehouse; he terrorizes Eliezer's father
when Eliezer refuses to give up his gold crown.
Idek: A Kapo, a prisoner put in charge of a barracks. One Sunday, he takes the
prisoners under his charge to the warehouse for the day so he can be with
a woman. Eliezer discovers them and is whipped.

19. QHQ’s: The Story
1. Q: Why didn’t the people of Sighet and
even Eliezer, believe Moishe and his
warnings?
2.Q: what allows the people in the
community to keep hope alive even in the
midst of death?

20. QHQs: Faith
1. Q: Why might suffering lead to the loss of faith, such
as what happened to Moishe? How might suffering
lead to an increase of faith?
2. Q: How could Eleizer maintain his faith in God after
what he’s been through?
3. Q: How does Wiesel view of God change in the
story?

21. QHQs: Trauma
 QHQ: How do Eliezer and his father experience their own traumas and
anxieties?
 Q: Does Eliezer suffer from more trauma, or does his father?
 Q: How does trauma play into the character shift of Moshe?
 Q: Are we responsible for actions taken in extreme duress? Should Wiesel
have done more to protect his loved ones? Is he surviving this way?
 Q: Even though the young man’s murder upsets him so, why does Elie say
that “the soup was better than ever” (63). If thought about through
Trauma theory, could this be a sign that Elie is almost taking on the role
of the victimizer, and through this role, does he feel like he can regain
some of the power that the Nazis stripped him of when he was sent to
Auschwitz?

22. Comparison
1. Why are the people in the camps called “inmates?”
How can we see the parallels between the prisoners
in “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”
and the inmates in Night?