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Night

E L I E WI E S E L
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Section Five
Vocabulary
agitated: worked up grandeur: splendor
benediction: a blessing inflection: nuance
chinks: cracks, weak places knell: the tolling of a bell
crucible: center of combat or other extreme activity lament: to cry, to mourn
deluded: fooled masquerade: a costume ball
dysentery: an infection of the intestines causing Muselman: slang the camp inmates’ word for an
fever and diarrhea extremely weak or frail inmate
emaciated: extremely thin and malnourished, gaunt officiating: leading the proceedings
glacial: incredibly cold, frigid prophecies: predictions spunk: spirit
stricken: tormented
1. a. Characterize Eliezer’s faith and his feelings
toward God as Rosh Hashanah comes to a
close.

b. Compare his feelings at that time with the

manner in which he celebrated Rosh
Hashanah in the past.
2. a. Surprisingly, who feels the same sense of
defeat and emptiness that Elie does on Rosh
Hashanah?
b. Why is this surprising?
3. What is Elie’s “symbol of rebellion, of protest
against [God]”?
4. a. What is the “beautiful present” (5.83) the SS
gives the Jews for the new year?
b. What literary device does Wiesel employ in
describing it?
c. What gift does the Blockälteste actually give
the inmates?
5. a. What object in the camp symbolizes
regulation, power, and tyranny to Elie?

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b. Why does he attach this meaning to it?

6. a. Why does Elie call the spoon and knife his

father gives him his “inheritance”?

b. What does Elie do with them?

7. a. On what does Elie blame the death of Akiba

Drumer?

b. What effect does Drumer’s death have on the

rest of the inmates?

8. a. Why does Elie have to go to the infirmary?

b. How does the doctor treat him while he is

there?

c. What is the outcome?

9. a. Prophets and prophecy are a motif in the book.
What does Elie say about false prophets and
their words?

b. Who does his neighbor in the infirmary say

has kept every promise he’s made to the
Jews?
10. a. What choice is Elie given regarding the
infirmary?

b. What decision does he make?

c. What does he learn became of the prisoners

who stayed in the infirmary when the camp
was evacuated?
11. What do the prisoners in Elie’s barrack do before
leaving the camp to show there “lived men and
not pigs”?
12. a. “At six o’clock the bell rang. The death knell.
The funeral” (5.454-5).
What procession is being referenced in this
passage?

b. Why does Wiesel compare it to a funeral?

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Section Six
Vocabulary
automatons: robots, machines faltering: stumbling
disheveled: rumpled, out of order poignant: touching, emotional
1. What do the soldiers do to prisoners that cannot
sustain the pace during the march?
2. Previously, Elie describes himself as a non-
thinking body, reduced to a stomach. (4.137-9)
Now he says he hates his body and that he
“couldn’t help thinking that there were two of”
them, he and his body. (6.14-15) Why does Elie
now identify with his mind instead of his body?
3. a. As he marches, how does Elie begin to feel
about death?
b. What keeps him from breaking rank and
allowing the soldiers to shoot him?
4. When they are finally allowed to stop marching,
why won’t Elie’s father allow him to go to
sleep?
5. a. What is Rabbi Eliahu’s situation with his son?
b. What question does it raise for Elie?
c. How does it mirror Elie’s relationship with
his own father?
d. How does Elie respond?
6. How does the author personify death and the
cold?
7. a. Why does Elie describe Juliek’s crushed
violin as “an eerily poignant little corpse”?
What does the violin symbolize?
b. What does the music of the violin represent?
(6.254-257)
8. How do Elie and his father evade yet another
selection before they are to be marched into the
center of Germany?
9. What do the prisoners do that amuses the SS?
10. What happens to the prisoners at the end of the
section?

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