Night By Elie Wiesel Analysis

985 Words4 Pages
A motif in history everywhere, is that groups of people are often belittled because of things they can't control. This includes race, religion, and sexuality and other natural born traits people cannot change. Often times when humans see a threat they try to either ignore it or expel it. The holocaust is one of the biggest examples of humans attempting to expel a problem they placed on the Jewish population. Even though the Jewish population was not at fault at all, the Germans were having economic difficulties and chose to place the blame elsewhere instead of dealing with their own problems. As seen in this time period and also demonstrated by Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech as well as his book Night along with the article…show more content…
One example of this is when the soldier yelled at Pavel to get Bruno a tire for a swing. Instead of simply asking or even telling, he rudely demanded that Pavel follow orders and do as he said. It is clearly seen on Pavel's face that he fears this soldier and would do whatever he said. Even though Bruno and his sister both see this interaction neither of them speak up and question why the soldier was being so harsh; they simply went back to arguing like siblings do. Silence is also seen when everyone is at dinner and Pavel spills some wine accidentally on a soldier after being alarmed. While it is clear the soldier is agitated for reasons other than Pavels doing, he proceeds to stand up and beat (trounce?) Pavel in the next room. All while this is happening no one from the table says anything or tries to stop the soldier from potentially killing this man. A third example from The Boy In The Striped Pajamas is throughout the story when Bruno doesnt speak up or ask questions about why everyone hates Jewish people while he is going to meet with and talk to and play with Shmuel almost every day. Even though Bruno knows not all Jewish people are bad, because he likes Shmuel, he never says anything about this standard. Even when he knows Shmuel will get punished for eating the bread when he was supposed to be cleaning, he simply says he doesn't know Shmuel and runs away. This could be partly to blame on his naiativity and partly because he's scared of what his father may do if he finds out he's friends with one of these

More about Night By Elie Wiesel Analysis

Open Document