Night essay

Ava Mascuch March 6, 2015 

711 

Night Essay

The Holocaust was a terrible time for many people and ended in about eleven million deaths, six million of which were Jews. The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a non-fiction book about himself. He was sent to a concentration camp with his family but is separated from his sister and mother. He tries to survive the camp with his Dad. While reading his book, I discovered that the Holocaust represents the “shadow” archetype in the hero’s journey. A “shadow” is a negative figure, representing evil or things we don’t like.  But the shadow does not think it is doing anything wrong.  The “shadow” is like the Holocaust because the Holocaust represents evil.

The Holocaust represents the shadow because it was an evil thing. For example, “...he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours,” pg. 39. This shows that the Holocaust was evil because the people running the camps did horrible things to the Jews because Hitler wanted to eradicate their race. This was not all the Germans did to the the Jews. They whipped them, starved them and forced them to work under harsh conditions. Another example is,  When they were being evacuated from the concentration camp, “Near me, men were collapsing into the dirty snow. Gunshots.” Pg. 86. The people involved in the Holocaust were so evil that they would kill the prisoners that didn’t run fast enough. Lastly, when Elie is in the concentration camp Buna it states, “We knew what it meant. An SS would examine us. Whenever he found something extremely frail--a “Muselman” was what we called those inmates--he would write down his number: good for the crematorium.” Pg. 70. This states that the Holocaust as evil because they would kill innocent people just because they weren’t strong enough and didn’t pass the test.

The Holocaust time period is like the “shadow” because the people running the concentration camps don’t think they are doing anything wrong. For instance, while they were being transported the guards ran into German girls, “The guards began to tease them...they were all laughing, joking and passing love notes to one another.” Pg. 46. This shows that the guards don’t understand what they are doing to the Jews is wrong because they are acting like it’s a normal day, laughing and talking to the girls. They were not affected by what they were doing. Lastly, on the website www.theholocaustexplained.org it talks about Hiltler’s point of view, “He thought Germans should have enough ‘living space’ and that only people of Ayran blood should live in Germany... he also wanted to rid Germany of the mentally and physically disabled, because they were seen as imperfect and also a drain on the resources of the ‘master race’.” This shows that Hitler wanted wanted this perfect ‘master race’ and he didn’t see Jewish or disabled people in that society. He thought he was helping Germany because he was giving the Germans more ‘living space’ by getting rid of the Jews. This did not help the Germans because many of the Germans died during World War II.

The Holocaust was a very dark part of history, it changed and ended many peoples lives. It 

represents evil because of the horrible things that were done to the Jewish people.  Night shows 

how hard the Holocaust was and that there is not always a happy ending. It is hard to believe that 

evil of this magnitude could take place in the world. We have to recognize and remember these 

parts of history so they are never repeated.