Summative Journal

       Reading further into "Night", we are getting deeper into the darkness of Elizer's experiences. We are introduced to the setting where he spent his childhood. A small ghetto, in a small house. They weren't wealthy but they managed and they were happy. The lack of communication and help from the outer world let the Holocaust happen, just like the Rwandan genocide. When the Jews were evacuated, a lot of them did not expect it. Elie did because of Moshie the Beatle and his stories. “I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me....” said Moshie. (p. 5) I believe that he kept calm because Moshie had prepared him, but stupid because he could have avoided being sent to the camps. In our lit group we talked about pain, and if it was avoidable. I do not believe pain is avoidable. I also believe that severe emotional pain always leads to future 'life damage', same way that physical pain/injuries occur. For example, if a child is abused by their alcoholic mother, the child will grow up to be an alcoholic/abuser/murderer/suicide victim. I don't believe that is controllable due to their history of being abused. “Children exposed to violence have been significantly linked with increased depression, anxiety, anger, and alcohol and drug abuse, and with decreased academic achievement.” -http://www.nccev.org/violence/index.html. Elie Wiesel still holds himself liable for his father’s death, his family’s death, and even the Holocaust itself. He has troubles sleeping at night and his memory is still so vivid. The family got separated, Elie and his father, his mother and his sister. “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (p. 27) At this point I don't think that Elie will see his mother or sister again. They were separated into women & men, then to old, weak, young, or sick, and strong, middle aged (18-40). I inferred that they were killing the useless group, and keeping the strong men to work. Elie and his father were put in the same line headed for the crematorium. Why were they headed into the fire if they were going to keep working? Elie has been inside the camps, working everyday, eating, and sleeping. I am surprised that they feed the slaves so well. Our lit group noticed that Elie has started to change his views, values, and beliefs, especially his belief in God. When Elie was headed to the crematorium, he was praying to God, while he was watching people and young children being thrown into the flames. At that point I think Elie slowly started to doubt God’s power. His many months spent in Auschwitz had desensitized him. He was getting used to being beaten, hungry, tired, in pain, and watching people die. “The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.” (p. 34) In this quote he describes the boy he was before the hatred and abuse had entered his life and what he has turned into. “I did not deny God's existence, but I doubted His absolute justice." (p. 42). While Elie was walking to work he saw a sign in the camp, WARNING: Danger of Death on an electric wire fence. This is an oxymoron because being in the camp was a danger of death. “Was there a single place here where you were not in danger of death?" (p. 37)

My group worked well and brought some interesting insight to the questions we asked each other. Overall we had a good discussion with lots of T-T and T-W connections. I connected my relationship with my father to Elie’s relationship with his. We are both very close and he helps me to learn and be a better person. 

Glogster

In my Gloster there are many connotations of the words pain and destruction. I included the denotation of both words with many connections to the connotations. Some connotations of pain include violence, anger, stress, trauma etc. I added the image of cutting because it is a way that people cope with emotional pain. Even though it is causing their bodies harm, it makes them feel better. I added the image symbolizing child abuse and the video “Concrete Angel”, because children that are abused are more likely to go to jail, have drug addictions, and have psychological problems throughout their lives. This image connects to the mug shot, the drugs, and the domestic violence image because all three are proven to be a result of child abuse. Drugs are a way that people try to escape both emotional and physical pain. People who abuse drug use cause pain to family members, their health, and their future. I added the picture of the crosses because PTSD is a common problem in war veterans. PTSD is a disease that is caused by severe traumatic experiences that causes emotional stress/pain. Unfortunately, people ultimately escape pain by committing suicide. Both PTSD and suicide occur in Night. Elie Wiesel is a perfect example of a PTSD sufferer. In the Preface of the novel, Elie made it very clear that his experiences at the concentration camps made it hard for him to live. He had troubles sleeping, had hallucinations, and relived his past every single day of his life. Many of the people at the concentration camps committed suicide. It was a way to escape the camps without suffering anymore. The Dallas Green song I added connects to the way Elieser feels about God. He thinks God has abandoned everyone and left the Jews to die in Auschwitz.  I’ve added the World Trade Centre 9/11 photo because it not only symbolizes literal destruction, but also racism, that degrades people because they are a certain religion. Elizer and the Jews were forced in concentration camps so the Nazis could wipe out the Jewish race. Hitler was the lead racist behind the Holocaust. I put the anorexia image because it is a form of self-destruction. It is a mental illness that requires people to starve themselves to get skinny. In Night Elie is a self-destructor. In the Preface, he says, “It was not a miracle I lived, God would have picked somebody more worthy of living than myself. I was just lucky.” The photo of the Rwandan massacre connects to Night because during the Holocaust 11-17 million people were gassed, starved, diseased, shot, and burned. It is the largest massacre that has ever happened and caused mass destruction of humans and the human race.

 

Journal Entry #2 (this week)

Reading further into "Night", we are getting deeper into the darkness of Elizer's experiences. We are introduced to the setting where he spent his childhood. A small ghetto, in a small house. They weren't wealthy but they managed and they were happy. The lack of communication and help from the outer world let the Holocaust happen, just like the Rwandan genocide. When the Jews were evacuated, a lot of them did not expect it. Elie did because of Moshie the Beatle and his stories. I believe that he kept calm because Moshie had prepared him, but stupid because he could have avoided being sent to the camps. In our lit group we talked about pain, and if it was avoidable. I do not believe pain is avoidable. I also believe that severe emotional pain always leads to future 'life damage', same way that physical pain/injuries occur. For example, if a child is abused  by their alcoholic mother, the child will grow up to be an alcoholic abuser/murderer/suicide victim. I don't believe that is controllable due to their history of being abused. Elie Wiesel still holds himself liable for his fathers death, his families death, and even the Holocaust itself. He has troubles sleeping at night and his memory is still so vivid. The family got separated, Elie and his father, his mother and his sister. At this point I don't think that Elie will see his mother or sister again. They were separated into women & men, then to old, weak, young, or sick, and strong, middle aged (18-40). I inferred that they were killing the useless group, and keeping the strong men to work. Elie and his father were put in the same line headed for the crematorium. Why were they headed into the fire if they were going to keep working?
My group worked well and brought some interesting insight to the questions we asked each other. Overall we had a good discussion with lots of T-T and T-W connections.

Journal Entry #1 (last week)

             Elie Wiesel, the author, who wrote the book “Night” about his experiences as a Jew going through the horrors of the Holocaust. This week in our lit circle, we had a mild conversation. There wasn’t much to talk about considering we only read the preface, which was quite long. In the preface, he introduces himself to be a very damaged, and scarred man. That is understandable given his past. He was very young when his family was separated, he was torture and his father was killed right before him. These kinds of things can make you crazy. He didn’t think he was worthy of surviving. He thought that he wasn’t brave enough to deserve it. Elizer, the narrator of the book, relives his memories in great detail. He remembers Moshie the Beadle, a friend of his whom he would talk to about Kabblah – mysteries of the universe. Moshie told him about his experience when he was taken away by the Hungarian government to Poland where they forced the Jews to dig a mass grave and walk up to it while they shot them. Babies were thrown up in the air and shot with machine guns. Somehow he escaped and tried to warn the people of the town that Elizer lived in. The only one who would believe him was Elizer. Most people thought he was insane. “He's just trying to make us pity him. What an imagination he has!” they said. Elizer felt stupid for not listening to Moshie, who may have saved the entire town from being taken to the Nazi death camps. Even though it was not Elizer’s fault for not speaking up for his friend, he blamed himself for the deaths of millions. Our group talked about how Elie’s view of the Holocaust did not change when he was writing as his teenage perspective to his preface perspective. He still felt the same shame and fear that he did when he was young. I think that goes to prove that our past shapes who we are. I think anybody that were to go through that amount of pain, fear, and suffering will be scarred for the rest of their lives. The only good thing to come out of an experience like that is bravery. I don’t think Elie thought he was brave, but compared to somebody without that kind of experience, would be weak instead of strong/brave.