Night Questions

Questions
5 January 2008

1. Wiesel’s childhood home is in Sighet, Transylvania. On a map it is in the country of Romania in the continent of Europe.
2.The cabala is a bible for the Jews. It tells them the word of God.
3. The truths of this world that Wiesel was referring to in the beginning of the book are the truths about God. The truths that Wiesel was ignorant of were the truths that people can kill and keep killing people and not care, and that there is bad in the world.
4.Moshe the Beadle is a significant character because he is trying to tell the people in the city of Sighet what is going to happen and what he has seen and lived through. Moshe talks about answers, questions, and the truth with Elie and says that man asks God questions, God will answer the question, but you can’t understand them because they come from the depths of our soul, to find the truth you have to look inside yourself. 5.Moshe was prescient in his admonition to Elie because Elie later in his life needed that information to hold on, to stay alive in a concentration camp. The people of Sighet ignore Moshe after he returns from his escape because they think that he just wants attention, they don’t think what he is saying is true because they have no reason to, they want to believe that everything is perfect, and nothing will happen to them, and they don’t listen to him because they don’t want to, they want to postpone the horrible truth as long as possible.
6.Madame Schachter is a mother that was separated from her husband and two eldest sons when they were transported too early by mistake. She is like Moshe the Beadle because she is trying to warn the people about what is coming and what is going to happen to them, but like with Moshe, they don’t listen to her.
7.Wiesel lost everything and it all happened on his first day at the concentration camp. He never before had realized that humans could be so cruel to other living human beings. The horror that he saw was so bad he will remember it forever, and with the lost lives of the bodies he saw, they took his will to live, his God, and his dreams.This marked the end of his innocence, it was night.
8.The context of this passage is very dark times. Elie is in a concentration camp during World War 2, he has just seen the crematory pits where he saw babies, children, and adults. His theology has changed because now he doesn’t want to believe in God like he used to, he has now seen that the world is not as happy go lucky as he used to know it.
9.Elie’s understanding of God’s presence continues to change throughout Night when he’s in the concentration camps from when he was going to school. When he was at school he would pray to God everyday, but once he went to the concentration camps he didn’t think that God was there anymore. He is most angry at God when he saw the boy getting hung, at the end of the book and the beginning of the book he is not angry with God.
10.The literal and figurative meanings that night has in Night are that literally throughout the book it mentions that it is nighttime and everything is quiet and figuratively it means the end, the end of hopes, dreams, life, etc.
11.Night is such a slim book because it is reality and to the point, if he would have made it longer it would have been like he was romanticizing it, but it wasn’t pretty, it was brutal and painful. All Wiesel wanted to do was get the truth out, for people to know what it was like.
12.Night is both a tragedy and a triumph because. It is a tragedy because Wiesel has his home, family, and freedom. It is a triumph though because he lived through it all and wrote a story about it.