Name:
Night: Chapter 1 and 2
Claims and Textual Evidence
Directions: Read the following selections, which attempt to trace a theme or a topic from
Night by pulling textual evidence that develops the said theme or message. Read the first
two claims, then on the reverse come up with evidence to support the given claim.
Claim: Night opens with the Jews in Sighet, and Elie’s family in particular, being
warned by a series of prophets.
Quote 1: "You don't understand," he said in despair. "You cannot under- stand. I was saved miraculously. I succeeded in
coming back. Where did I get my strength? I wanted to return to Sighet to describe to you my death so that you might ready
yourselves while there is still time. Life? I no longer care to live. I am alone. But I wanted to come back to warn you. Only
no one is listening to me ..." - Moshe the Beadle
Quote 2: Suddenly Batia Reich, a rela- tive who lived with us, entered the room: "Someone is knocking at the sealed
window, the one that faces outside!"
It was only after the war that I found out who had knocked that night. It was an inspector of the Hungarian police, a friend
of my father's. Before we entered the ghetto, he had told us, "Don't worry. I'll warn you if there is danger." Had he been
able to speak to us that night, we might still have been able to flee...But by the time we succeeded in opening the window, it
was too late. There was nobody outside. (14).
Quote 3: One could enter and leave as one pleased. Maria, our former maid, came to see us. Sobbing, she begged us to
come with her to her village where she had prepared a safe shelter. My father wouldn't hear of it.
Quote 4: "Jews, listen to me," she cried. "I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames!" (25).
Claim: Individuals who deny the signs of tyranny threaten their own safety.
Quote 1: The deportees were quickly forgotten. A few days after they left, it was rumored that they were in Galicia,
working, and even that they were content with their fate (6).
Quote 2: Days went by. Then weeks and months. Life was normal again. A calm, reassuring wind blew through our homes.
The shopkeepers were doing good business, the students lived among their books, and the children played in the streets.
Quote 3: Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout so many nations? So many millions of
people! By what means? In the middle of the twentieth century!
Still, our first impressions of the Germans were rather reassuring. T h e officers were billeted in private homes, even in
Jewish homes. Their attitude toward their hosts was distant but polite. They never demanded the impossible,made no
offensive remarks, and sometimes even smiled at the lady of the house. A German officer lodged in the Kahns' house across
the street from us. We were told he was a charming man, calm, likable, and polite. Three days after he moved in, he brought
Mrs. Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists were jubi- lant: "Well? What did we tell you? You wouldn't believe us. There
they are, your Germans. What do you say now? Where is their fa- mous cruelty?” The Germans were already in our town,
the Fascists were already in power, the verdict was already out—and the Jews of Sighet were still smiling. (9-10).
Quote 4: "The yellow star? So what? It's not lethal.”
Night: Chapter 1 and 2
Claims and Textual Evidence
Claim: Elie Wiesel saw horrible, disgusting crimes against humanity; he shares them
in order for us, too, to bear witness to the Holocaust.
Night: Chapter 1 and 2
Claims and Textual Evidence
Hebrew Texts, especially “high
Source: https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/Genesis_texts.html
“Rhyme is not all that important in Hebrew poetry, but Hebrew poems commonly use
repetition, chiasmus, parallelism, and other rhetorical schemes and tropes. The Genesis 1
text uses "high style" and those artistic devices common to Hebrew poetry--especially
catachresis, anaphora, and parallelism. To indicate these artistic qualities here, most NIV
translations reproduce the text with hanging indentation to mark the poetic structure. Each
section begins with an anaphora: "And God said . . ." Each section ends with epistrophe: "And
there was evening, and there was morning--the . . . day." Likewise, after the first two days, we have the
artistic repetition of the phrase "And God saw that it was good," leading up to a final crescendo,
"and it was very good" in Genesis 1:31. This structure is high poetry in the best Hebrew style.”
Define:
Chiasmus
Parallelism
Schemes and topes
Catachresis
Anaphora
Parallelism
Night: Chapter 1 and 2
Claims and Textual Evidence
Genesis 1:1-13
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were
above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it
was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was
good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose
seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in
itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Night: Chapter 1 and 2
Claims and Textual Evidence
Psalm 150
1
Praise the Lord.[a]
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
2
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
3
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
4
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
5
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
6
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Night: Chapter 1 and 2
Claims and Textual Evidence
Close Reading Analysis:
NEVER SHALL I FORGET that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long
night 1
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke
under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams
to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.
1
Night: Chapter 1 and 2
Claims and Textual Evidence
Quote 1: He [Moishe] told me what had happened to him and his companions. The train with the deportees had crossed
the Hungarian border and, once in Polish territory, had been taken over by the Gestapo. The train had stopped. The Jews
were ordered to get off and onto waiting trucks. The trucks headed toward a forest. There everybody was ordered to get out.
They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs. Without
passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks.
Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns.
Quote 2: "Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere…" Once again, the young men bound and gagged her.
When they actually struck her, people shouted their approval: "Keep her quite! Make that madwoman shut up. She’s not
the only one here …" She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal. (2.35-38)
Quote 3: I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being
burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this would not be real. A nightmare perhaps … Soon I would wake up with a
start, my heart pounding, and find that I was back in the room of my childhood, with my books …
“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven
times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my
soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as
God Himself. Never.”