The Importance Of Identity In Elie Wiesel's Novel 'Night'

Superior Essays
Losing the Most Valuable Possession

Identity is important because it truly defines who the person is, but it is very easy to lose your identity. The Holocaust was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler’s Nazis killed many Jewish people. The Nazis sent the Jews to concentration camps, tortured them and striped them out of their identities. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel describes the awful actions the Nazis did to him and his family; for example, they forced the Jews to wear a yellow star armband, which makes them feel less of a human, and slowly made the Jews forget who they were. By using details that describe pain and suffrage, Wiesel shows that when mankind is tormented and isolated from the rest of the world, people can lose their identity which leads to a desire to give up on life.

In the beginning of Night, Wiesel describes himself as “..deeply observant” and “run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple” (Wiesel 3). God and family take up a lot of his identity. Elie’s statement about himself reveals who he is, his identity, before the Germans try to take away Elie’s and the Jews’ identity by acting cruel towards them.

When the Germans arrive, the
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Before entering and experiencing the horrific events that took place in the concentration camp, Elie is a student of the Talmud. He has so much faith in God in the beginning, but throughout the book he gets furious with God for not doing anything to stop the cruelty. The SS officers did awful actions to the Jews for the littlest things and killed Jews in front of the other Jews causing Elie to lose faith in God, which has a huge impact on his identity. In the beginning of the book, his faith in God and family takes up a lot of his identity, but because of the loss of faith in God and his family, he sees nobody in himself. His identity is nothing at all, he does not care anymore, does not have feelings, and only lives for

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