Literature of War and Genocide — Period 5/6: April 2008

How did the relationship between Eliezer and his father change in the course of the year on which the book focuses? How do you account for that change? What has each come to represent to the other? How do the changes in his relationship with his father affect the way Eliezer sees himself as an individual?
How does Eliezer respond when his father is beaten for the first time? How does that response affect the way he sees himself? What does he fear is happening to him?
What advice does Eliezer’s cousin from Antwerp give his father? How is it like the advice the Polish prisoner offers? What do both pieces of advice suggest about the meaning of a word like family in a place like Auschwitz?
What does Eliezer mean when he refers to his father as “his weak point”? Why has he come to view love as a weakness?
Why did his father give him the spoon and the knife as his inheritance? What is the significance of such a gift in Auschwitz?

When the young boy is hanged, a prisoner asks, “For God's sake, where is God?” Eliezer hears a voice answer, “Where He is? This is where–-hanging here on this gallows.…” What does this statement mean? Is it a statement of despair? Anger? Or hope?
On Rosh Hashanah, Eliezer says, “My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes now.…” Eliezer is describing himself at a religious service attended by ten thousand men, including his own father. What do you think he means when he says that he is alone? In what sense is he alone?
Why does Eliezer direct his anger toward God rather than the Germans? What does his anger suggest about the depths of his faith?
At the beginning of Night, Eliezer describes himself as someone who believes “profoundly.” How have his experiences at Auschwitz affected that faith?

What did the word night mean to you before you read the book? How has the meaning of the word changed for you? How did it change for the author?
Each night is the end of one day and the start of another. What does that suggest about the need to bear witness? To not only tell the story but also have the story be heard and acknowledged?
Wiesel, in recounting the first night in the concentration camp says, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, that has turned my life into one long night.…” What does it mean for a life to be turned into “one long night”?
Other rhetorical choice you might consider include the style of narration, the decision to write in the first person as opposed to third, and the length of the memoir (in fact, the original manuscript was several hundred pages longer).

After the forced march, the prisoners are crammed into a barracks. That night Juliek plays a fragment of a Beethoven concerto on the violin he has managed to keep the entire time he was at Auschwitz. What do you think prompts Juliek to play that evening? What does the music mean to Eliezer? To the other prisoners who hear the sounds? To Juliek?
Eliezer later states, “Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore.” What does he mean by these words? What do they suggest about his struggle to maintain his identity?
In the next to the last sentence in the book, Eliezer says that when he looked in a mirror after liberation, he saw a corpse gazing back at him. He ends the book by stating, “The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” What does he mean by that statement?
Why is it important to Eliezer to remember? To tell you his story? How has he tried to keep you from responding to his story the way he and his father once responded to the one told by Moshe the Beadle? How successful has he been?

Why does Wiesel begin Night with the story of Moshe the Beadle? What lessons does the narrator seem to learn from Moshe’s experiences in telling his own story?
What are we to make of the story of Madame Schächter, the woman who screams on the train? Is she a madwoman? A prophet? Or a witness? What is the difference between the three labels? How is Madame Schächter like Moshe the Beadle? Does she, too, know or sense something that others refuse to believe?
How do the “veteran” prisoners respond when they discover the newcomers have never heard of Auschwitz? How do you account for their reaction?
What does it mean to know but not acknowledge what you know? When do people do it?

Wednesday, April 30, 2008