One of the most defining moments of one’s life is when one discovers who they truly are inside. Growing up, the influences of friends and family are clearly marked on one’s beliefs, ideals, and moral standards, whether they want to believe it or not. The desire to fit in is what pushes many people to do things they may not be comfortable with or believe in themselves; this is alternately called peer pressure. However, even through moments of weakness and the struggle to belong, one shapes and forms their own identity simply by knowing what they do and do not believe in. No one lives the exact same life as another person, so no one has the exact same identity as someone else. In this way, everyone is an individual, no matter how similar
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The memoir is set during World War II, a time when Jews and any other non-Aryan person were rounded up by the Nazi party and thrown into concentration camps; Elie Wiesel is one of these Jews. Like most Jews, Elie is religiously faithful, but unlike many he is also interested in the cabbala, which is a “mystical branch of Judaism teaching that God is the origin of the world” (Wiesel 1). Moshe the Beadle, his teacher in the ways of mysticism, is one of the first Jews collected from Sighet, due to being foreign. When he returns with stories of the horrible atrocities committed by the Germans, the naive residents of Sighet “take [him] for a madman” (4) and refuse to believe his story. After all, the Nazis would never come all the way to Transylvania simply to torture Jews. As Elie and the rest of the Jewish population of Sighet, that is not the truth. Treated like livestock and shipped in cramped railroad cars, Elie begins to discover what humans truly are underneath their masks of civility and evolution: animals. Elie and the rest of the Jews are dehumanized by the brutal treatment visited upon them, all of the carefully won control disappearing and repressed animal instincts coming out in force. At one point, a son kills his own father for a scrap of bread, and he then dies at the hands of the rest of the starving Jews. Life only progressively gets worse when they reach the concentration camp: public hangings, a diet of bread and soup, backbreaking labor, and no respite in sight. Elie begins to question his faith, and eventually he refuses to worship God. One of the most poignant ideas that Elie expresses to describe his lapse of faith, and eventual self-discovery, is this: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my
The memoir is set during World War II, a time when Jews and any other non-Aryan person were rounded up by the Nazi party and thrown into concentration camps; Elie Wiesel is one of these Jews. Like most Jews, Elie is religiously faithful, but unlike many he is also interested in the cabbala, which is a “mystical branch of Judaism teaching that God is the origin of the world” (Wiesel 1). Moshe the Beadle, his teacher in the ways of mysticism, is one of the first Jews collected from Sighet, due to being foreign. When he returns with stories of the horrible atrocities committed by the Germans, the naive residents of Sighet “take [him] for a madman” (4) and refuse to believe his story. After all, the Nazis would never come all the way to Transylvania simply to torture Jews. As Elie and the rest of the Jewish population of Sighet, that is not the truth. Treated like livestock and shipped in cramped railroad cars, Elie begins to discover what humans truly are underneath their masks of civility and evolution: animals. Elie and the rest of the Jews are dehumanized by the brutal treatment visited upon them, all of the carefully won control disappearing and repressed animal instincts coming out in force. At one point, a son kills his own father for a scrap of bread, and he then dies at the hands of the rest of the starving Jews. Life only progressively gets worse when they reach the concentration camp: public hangings, a diet of bread and soup, backbreaking labor, and no respite in sight. Elie begins to question his faith, and eventually he refuses to worship God. One of the most poignant ideas that Elie expresses to describe his lapse of faith, and eventual self-discovery, is this: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my