Night Quote Analysis Section 3

“’Men to the left!  Women to the right!’ Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short simple words.  Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother.” (Weisel 38)

                               I feel this quote means a lot to the book.  It symbolizes the start of when Elie becomes a man.   This is a symbol of how you have a certain ‘rite of passage’ so to say of your entrance into manhood.  This is usually when you have to tough it on your own for the first time.  I think that this moment in Elie’s life is crucial to his later development.  This is development that takes place despite Elie’s imprisonment in the concentration camp.  Although the deportation to the concentration camp is an extremely negative, I feel that this moment can be compared to today’s world when a senior graduates high school and then they have their last summer at home.  Then, they leave most or all of their family for a college or university.   Although an eighteen year old leaving home for college is a positive experience, the feelings of separation are the same.

“In the shade of the block, we then had a little siesta.  He must have been lying, that SS officer in the muddy barracks.  Auschwitz was in fact a rest home…” (Weisel 50)

                I feel Elie is mistaken in his assumption that Auschwitz is a rest home.  When in reality, this quote is trying to demonstrate that the ‘veteran’ workers are trying to cut the newcomers some slack. In my opinion, this is probably since the workers that have been there longer knew that the newest deportees needed to recover as soon as they were brought to the cell block.  I feel that this ease that Elie feels could be due to the ‘veteran’ workers trying to help the newcomers survive.   Possibly, the older workers may have already seen some of their friends gassed from not regaining their strength when they were first brought to Auschwitz.