Summary and Analysis of Night: Based on the Book by Elie Wiesel

By Worth Books

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of Night tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Elie Wiesel’s book.
 
Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.
 
This short summary and analysis of Night includes:

• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter overviews
• Analysis of the main characters
• Themes and symbols
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Glossary of terms
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work

About Night by Elie Wiesel:
 
The gripping memoir by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel is one of the fundamental texts of Holocaust reportage and a poetic examination of a young man’s loss of faith amid unspeakable acts of inhumanity.
 
Wiesel was 15 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz with his mother, father, and three sisters. Wiesel recalls his horrifying ordeal, including the sadistic Nazi overseers, the death of his mother and younger sister, watching fellow prisoners disappear into the crematorium, the bloody death march to Gleiwitz, and the heartbreaking fatal beating of his father only months before the camp’s liberation.
 
Night is a poignant representation of one young Jewish man’s pain amidst the violent details of the worst genocide in world history. It is an invaluable record of the past as well as an ever-relevant warning about the consequences of fascism and bigotry.
 
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504044691

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Summary and Analysis of

Night

Based on the Book by Elie Wiesel

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The summary and analysis in this ebook are meant to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction. This ebook is not intended as a substitute for the work that it summarizes and analyzes, and it is not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by the work’s author or publisher. Worth Books makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this ebook.

Contents

Context

Overview

Summary

Timeline

Cast of Characters

Themes and Symbols

Direct Quotes and Analysis

Trivia

What’s That Word?

Critical Response

About Elie Wiesel

For Your Information

Bibliography

Copyright

Context

When Elie Wiesel wrote Night in 1956, it was rejected by multiple publishers because of the graphic account of the atrocities it describes. It was also assumed that there was no audience for Holocaust literature. While Anne Frank’s diary had been published to wide acclaim first in 1947—and then translated to English in 1952—the events recounted by Frank, horrible though they were, take place prior to her transport to a concentration camp, whereas Wiesel’s story takes place within the brutal confines of Auschwitz, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald.

Wiesel was encouraged to write his story by the French novelist François Mauriac, author of the book’s foreword when it was ultimately published by Hill and Wang in 1960. The capture of SS lieutenant Adolf Eichmann that same year, and his subsequent trial, brought the magnitude of the historic events to a much broader segment of the American public and facilitated a greater understanding of—and interest in—the stories of survivors.

Early reviews for the book were mixed. One critic argued that it was an invaluable testimony, but a failure as a work of art. However, Night has since sold 10 million copies and spent more than 80 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It had a surge of popularity in the 1980s after Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize, and again in 2006 after it was selected for the Oprah Winfrey Book Club.

It continues to be the definitive eyewitness account of the sheer inhumanity of the Holocaust, and a popular inclusion in high school and college curricula.