Kendall+&+Kelsey

**Ni****ght-** **Elie W****iesel**  **Summary:** This is a novel about the Holocaust, through the eyes of a Jewish child named Eliezer Wiesel. He was born in Sighet, near Transylvania. He gets forced to go to several concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Buna. One of his main struggles in the story is with his father. He tries to stay with his father throughout each concentration camp and he also tries to keep his father alive and going. His other struggle is with his faith in God. Throughout the story, he tries to maintain his faith in God. This is hard for Elie because he questions why God would put all of these people through so much pain.

**Characters & Traits:** __Eliezer__- The main character who shares his view of the Holocaust. __Eliezer's Father__- Follows with Elie throughout the whole novel until his death. Eventually dies due to the rough conditions. __Moshe the Beadle__- A poor Jewish man who lives in Sighet and used to talk to Elie about God. He is one of the first Jewish people to get deported, but comes back. __Madame Schachter__- A woman who is on the same cattle train as Elie and his father who has crazy visions and fears of fires. __Juliek__- Elie's old friend who was a young violinist; encounters Elie in Auschwitz. Eventually killed due to suffocation from being stuffed under too many people. __Dr. Josef Megele__- Doctor in Auschwitz who experiments on humans. __Rabbi Eliahou__- A rabbi whose son abandons him which causes him to lose his faith in God. __Franek__- A Jewish Kapo who notices and takes out Elie's gold tooth. __Idek__- A Jewish prisoner that watches other prisoners and whips Eliezer several times.

**Setting & Tone:** __Time Period__- during the Holocaust (1970s) __Where?__ - Different concentration camps (Auschwitz/Birkenau>Buna>Gleiwitz>Buchenwald) __Tone__- Depressing, upsetting, fearful, scary, suspenseful, rude

**Symbols & Meanings:** __Night (darkness)__- The nighttime is a symbol of faith because when the sunlight fades, so does Eliezer's faith in God.

__Fire__- The fire is a symbol of fear and death because of the creamatories. But, it is also a symbol of the power of the German Nazi's against the Jewish prisoners.

**Themes:** __Faith__- One of the main themes is about Eliezer's struggle to maintain faith. The Jewish people went through the whole journey and tried to maintain their faith. At the beginning of the book, the Jewish people had full belief and faith in God. In the middle of the book, and during the journey, their faith in God began to wither away. Although some Jewish people maintained their faith throughout the whole story, most of them lost it due to the cruel punishment from the Nazis.

__Cruel and Inhumane Treatment__- The cruel and inhumane treatment in the story is described through the behavior of the Nazis and SS. They treat the Jewish people extremely rude and wrong. This is a theme because nobody should be treated as inhumanely as the Jewish people were in this novel. Nobody's free wills should ever be taken away from them.

**Critique:** We think this is a good descriptive novel about a Jewish child's journey through concentration camps. The only thing that we did not like was how depressing the novel was. We understand that the Holocaust was a depressing time, but we enjoy reading books that are more positive. The happy ending, in which Eliezer gets saved, was something we liked because it has a more positive tone.

**Links**: Timeline of Elie Wiesel's Life