1. Metaphorically, what does it mean to be a bug? Has there ever been a time when you felt this way? If you care to, please explain.
2. Do you have any sympathy for Gregor? If so, why? And if not, why not?
3. Obviously, Gregor's world “ends” when he turns into an insect. But what does it really change in his relationships with his family? Explain.
4. Is there any way to view this story in a positive light? Explain why or why not?
1. How does Elie describe himself?
2. How important is religion to the way Elie defines his identity?
3. Why do you think they refuse to believe Moshe when he returns to Sighet?
4. Do you think people really believe that Moshe is lying to them? What is the difference between saying that someone is lying and saying hat you cannot believe what he or she is saying?
5. How do the Jews of Sighet react to the arrival of the Germans? The creation of the ghettos? Their own deportation? How do you account for these responses?
6. Why do you think Elie Wiesel begins Night with the story of Moshe the Beadle?
7. What lessons does the narrator seem to learn from Moshe's experiences in telling his own story?
8. Why does Madame Schächter scream? Why does she later become silent and withdrawn? How do people react the first time she screams? How do they respond when her screams continue? How would you respond?
9. Is she a madwoman? A prophet? Or a witness? What is the difference
between the three labels?
10. How is Madame Schächter like Moshe the Beadle? Does she, too,
know or sense something that others refuse to believe?
Night #2
1. Primo Levi, who was also at Auschwitz-Birkenau, wrote in his novella, Survival in Auschwitz:
It is not possible to sink lower than this: no human condition is
more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing
belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our
shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if
they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away
our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves
the strength to do so, to manage so that behind the name something
of us, of us, as we were, remains.
How are Levi's responses to his initiation into Auschwitz similar to
those of Elie? What differences seem most striking?
2. Elie describes two hangings. He tells the reader that he witnessed many others. Yet he chose to write only about these two. Why are these two hangings so important to him? How do they differ from the others?
3. Why do you think the Germans chose to hang a few prisoners in public at a time when they are murdering thousands each day in the crematoriums?
4. When the young boy is hanged, a prisoner asks, "Where is God now?" Elie thinks to himself, "He is hanging here on this gallows.." What does this statement mean? Is it a statement of despair? Anger? Or hope? Explain.
5. Wiesel said the following of inmates who tried "to show the killers they could be just like them":
No one has the right to judge them, especially not those who did not
experience Auschwitz or Buchenwald . The sages of our Tradition
state point-blank: "Do not judge your fellow-man until you stand in
his place." In other words, in the same situation, would I have acted
as he did? Sometimes doubt grips me. Suppose I had spent not
eleven months but eleven years in a concentration camp. Am I sure I
would have kept my hands clean? No, I am not, and no one can be.
How does Wiesel try to help us understand why it is so difficult to judge those who "tried to play the executioner's game"?
Wiesel writes that he prefers to remember "the kindness and compassion" of his fellow prisoners rather than those who were cruel or violent. Why does he view both as victims?
6. What is the meaning of the title, Night ?
I enjoy hanging out with my dog and cats. Small pets can sometimes just provide something that people cannot. However, even more than my cats and dog, my favorite pet in my elephant, Rupert. Rupert is my favorite pet for several reasons. He provides carbon-free, all terrain transportation. He protects me from those who wish to do me harm and he really knows how to tell a great joke.
Your job is to write the rest of this essay. Remember that after the thesis statement, the next sentences provide the topics for the three body paragraphs.
1. What, in your opinion, is “the Void” ? (Philosophically speaking that is…)
2. What do Joe and Simon believe? Under what paradigm do they function?
3. Time after time Joe sees his world ending. Not only does Joe face and often accept certain physical death, he eventually experiences the loss of his ego/personality. (“I lost me.”) Ultimately, are these really do different things or not? Explain.
Another way to think of this is that if the “you” that cares about dying ceases to exist, then is it replaced by something else or is physical death no longer a concern?
4. The last thought that Joe experiences before being discovered is that he simply does not want to die alone. (Being sure that he will indeed die alone is when he loses his “me.”) Do you see this as a universal need or specific to Joe?
5. Joe seems to have accepted the experience and moved on with his life, yet Simon is stuck with the label of “the one who cut the rope.” Why do you think this is?
“I head a Fly buzz…” Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air --
Between the Heaves of Storm --
The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset -- when the King
Be witnessed -- in the Room --
I willed my Keepsakes -- Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable -- and then it was
There interposed a Fly --
With Blue -- uncertain stumbling Buzz --
Between the light -- and me --
And then the Windows failed -- and then
I could not see to see –
Song on the End of the World Czeslaw Milosz
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.
Ozymandias P. B. Shelly
I MET a traveller from an antique land | |
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone | |
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, | |
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown | |
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command | 5 |
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read | |
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, | |
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. | |
And on the pedestal these words appear: | |
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: | 10 |
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" | |
Nothing beside remains: round the decay | |
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, | |
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 1. Explain how each of these poems relates to the “End of the World.” 2. In what other specific ways are they similar? 3. Which one appeals most to you and why? | |