This document provides an overview and analysis of themes, tensions, and theoretical approaches in Night by Elie Wiesel. It discusses major themes like death, God/religion, sanity/insanity, and family. It analyzes the internal and external tensions present in the work. It also explores how trauma theory and other theoretical lenses can provide insight into the text. Key events and passages are analyzed in depth, with questions provided about character perspectives and shifts in worldview over the course of the horrific events depicted in the Holocaust memoir.

1. GRAVITY

3.  Themes
 Literary Style
 Tensions
 QHQs
 Theoretical
Approaches

5.  Night is a short piece of fiction born of the author's
eight hundred-page memoir of his time in the Nazi
death camps.
 The story is told from the first person point of view.
Not only does the narration not enter other
characters’ minds, there is little effort to explain what
is going on in the narrator’s mind.
 The reader's conclusions are meant to be independent
and based on events and behavior; however, readers
are clearly led toward a loathing of the camps.

6.  Night is full of scriptural allusions, or
hints of reference to biblical passages.
One example of allusion is the execution
of the three prisoners, one of whom is
an innocent child, a pipel.This scene
recalls the moment in the Christian
Gospel when Christ is crucified in the
company of two thieves.

7.  The traditional German bildungsroman is the story of
a young, naive man entering the world to seek
adventure. He finds his adventure that provides him
with an important lesson.The resolution finds him
mature and ready for a productive life.
 Wiesel's novella turns this tradition upside down. He
presents an educated, young man forced into a man-
made hell.There he learns more than he asks for.The
result is not that he will think about being a productive
worker, but about healing humanity.

8. Themes
Tensions
Theoretical
Approaches

10.  Death
 God and Religion.
 Sanity and
Insanity
 Family
 Race/Ethnicity/
Difference
Tensions
External tensions:
• Between Jews and their Nazi oppressors
• Between Jews and the harsh winter climate
• Among Jews about how to respond to
brutality and terror
Internal tensions:
 In the narrator’s mind about his response to
the dehumanization at the hands of the
Nazis
 His loss of religious faith
 How he should behave toward his father.

11. 1. Q:Why didn’t the people of
Sighet and even Eliezer, believe
Moishe and his warnings?
1. Q:What allows the people in the
community to keep hope alive
even in the midst of death?

14. “Moishe was not the same[…] people not only
refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen.
Some even insinuated that he only wanted their
pity, that he was imagining things. Others flatly
said that he had gone mad” (Wiesel 7).
Using a New critical approach, one can see that this scene is a prime example of
dramatic irony.There is irony in the fact that Moishe the Beadle is telling the
people of Sighet the horrors of which he had seen with his own eyes, trying to
warn them of whats to come, but the people of the town do not believe him and
in fact, think he’s crazy.The dramatic irony is that us as the reader of story, do
know that everything that Moishe is saying is in fact true, and that the people of
Sighet should be very worried of the near future. Not only is this passage dramatic
irony, it is a transition into what becomes tension. It is tension in the form of a
“calm before the storm” for the readers.
They should
have listened
to poor
Moishe

15. In ElieWiesel’s memoir, Night, Elie the protagonist experiences a period of
extreme devastation and terror.While multiple events during the period, such as
witnessing the crematorium consuming live children the first night in camp,
starving throughout the camp and transports, and seeing on the train a father and
his son both die as a result of their selfishness to survive, all contribute to the
tension of denial, there has been one event in particular that tips him to
completely abandon his belief: the hanging of the thirteen-year-old pipel.All his
emotional doubts about God of love and mercy and psychologically unstable state
of mind are aroused in this single event. After that night of the event, when his
soup “tasted of corpses,”Wiesel states, “My eyes had opened and I was alone,
terribly alone in a world without God […] I felt like an observer, a stranger” (Wiesel
65, 68).
This act of denial is significant in the memoir because it not only displays
the degree of the hopelessness, but it also denies his own identity.
Q:What event marks the turning point thatWiesel starts to entirely
deny the existence of God?What does it signify inWiesel’s life?

16. 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 doesWiesel view of
God change in the story?

17. Wiesel writes, “The head of my new block was a German Jew, small with
piercing eyes” (70). [. . .] He was obviously chosen by the Nazis to lead the group,
but why?What makes him more capable than any of the other men? Is it just
because he can speak German, and the others cannot? But, I cannot imagine that
the Jewish German people were the only ones to become Blockältestes. I
understand why the man would feel the need to follow the Nazis’ orders, but does
he receive anything by being the leader? He is not the figure head, the one who
makes the rules, but he gives the members of the Kommando their orders, and he
tells them any bad news that may occur in the camp. Is this a deliberate attempt to
displace blame on the Nazis’ part?And for the Blockältestes, is this the victims
becoming the victimizers?
Q:What is the role of the “Blockälteste” and the other section leaders?
Why do they go along with the Nazis? How can we view them through
TraumaTheory?

18. “Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw
transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of
the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and
turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God
Himself.
Never.” (Wiesel 34)
Cathy Caruth explains that, “To be traumatized is precisely to be possessed
by an image or event” ( 3-5), which defines trauma to be an image or event
that has possessed, or literally scarred the person for life.The reader can see
that the narrator, speaking as Eliezer, has been horrifically possessed so
badly that he uses repetition to provide his traumas.

19.  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?
ShouldWiesel 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 throughTrauma 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?

20. “We were walking slowly.The guards were in no hurry. We were glad of it.
As we were passing through some of the villages, many Germans watched
us, showing no surprise. No doubt they had seen quite a few of these
processions…
On the way, we saw some young German girls.The guards began to tease
them.The girls giggled.They allowed themselves to be kissed and tickled,
bursting with laughter.They all were laughing, joking, and passing love
notes to one another. At least, during all that time, we endured neither
shouting nor blows.” (pg. 46)
The two Freudian drives described areThanatos, which is the destructive
drive, and the Libido which is the erotic drive that both reside in
humans.

21. Q: Is Madame Schachter crazy or is she
speaking prophetically? On Pg. 34 Madame
Schachter begins to scream “fire! I can see a
fire! I can see a fire!There are huge flames! It is
a furnace!”
[I]n the old testament for Jews and both the new and old testament for
Christians there are many prophets like St. Peter, St. Paul, John the Baptist,
Samuel, Moses and many more [;] most of them spoke messages that the
people didn’t want to hear or didn’t want to accept and as a result[were] told
to not speak, they were hurt, kicked out of towns, and at times even killed.

22. “A few days after my visit, the dentist’s office was shut down. He had been
thrown into prison and was about to be hanged. It appeared that he had been
dealing in the prisoners’ gold teeth for his own benefit. I felt no pity for him.
In fact, I was pleased with what was happening to him: my gold crown was
safe. It could be useful to me one day, to buy something, some bread or even
time to live. At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my family
bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup—those were my
entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach.
The stomach alone was measuring time.” (70)
I chose this passage because I feel like it emulates Elie’s loss of self and his mind.
Q:What could Elie have done to regain his hope and not lose his sense of self?

23.  The Writing Assignment
 In a thesis driven essay of 4-7 pages, analyze one or more
aspects of Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank
Redemption, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Elie Wiesel’s
Night, or Emma Donoghue’s Room. Consider using one
extrinsic theoretical lens (Feminist, Psychoanalytic, or Trauma
theories), that we have practiced this quarter to complicate
your argument. Aim to convince readers that your
interpretation adds to the conversation among those who read
stories and write about them. Back up your analysis with
reasons and support from the story. Use the critical strategies
that we have practiced this quarter.
See the complete assignment on our website

24.  Read Room: Chapter 1 “Presents”
 Post #23: QHQ Room
 Consider which text you might want to
write on for your final essay.
 Our next meeting will be in the library for
a brief overview of how to use the library
resources, particularly the Literature
Review Center database. Let’s meet in
the lobby at 10:30.