Night Blog #4-Jameson

The theme of hopelessness in the Holocaust really impacted me throughout the entire unit. In about 90 percent of the unit I really felt the pain of what the Jews had to go through because of the Nazis. It matters greatly because hope is like your will to live, and when you have no hope, it's like giving in to death. In Night, the man in the hospital lost hope and just gave up, instead of fighting to believe that he would survive. Luckily, the Russian Army came the day after Elie left, but if it had not he would have been perfectly content to die. Wiesel had hope throughout the entire time he was in the camps. He may not have had faith or hope in God throughout that time, but he had hope in getting out and living. In the end, he got out and lived a long life and ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize and writing over 50 books. “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.” A quote from Wiesel’s Nobel Speech really shows how he survived the Holocaust. Throughout Life is Beautiful, Guido tried to give his son Giosue... he tried to give his son Giosue hope by telling him the camp was a “game” just so he wouldn’t get scared. That was his main focus, just to help his son be happy, even if it meant his death in the end. It never showed him personally having hope, but he gave everyone else around him hope because of his cheerful attitude. To have survived the Holocaust it seems you need hope over all other things so that you can survive. I really think this unit impacted me in a very saddening way because of what it was about, and this was the 2nd unit I have gone over in my life that really had that emotional feeling that people had to go through all that, and I cannot even comprehend what that would be like.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 4, 2019 at 3:56 AM

    Jameson, I really liked your blog post. Do you think, in these situations, that it's better to be hopeful or think of the worse outcome? When you are hopeful you can sometimes disregard important information if it's not good news. But being pessimistic won't get you very far either. What do you think?

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