Night

Elie Wiesel was a Jewish boy living during the time of the Holocaust. He wrote a book on his experiences and his losses during that tragic time. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the setting and the characters create a mood of disbelief.

The setting of a story almost always determines the mood. This is definitely the case in Elie's story. The description of the cattle cars the families were transported in almost seems surreal. There were no bathrooms and there was no food or water distributed. People were forced to live in their own waste for those horrible days on the train. Another example would be the crematories. Just the thought of people being thrown into those alive, is ghastly.

The characters also have their own way of setting the mood. Throughout the story, Elie was in a constant state of disbelief. He found it extremely difficult to understand why the Germans were doing that to him, and the millions of other people around him. Mr. Wiesel, Elie's father, also took it very hard. He constantly encouraged Elie to think about the positives, even though he was never able to stop thinking of the atrociousness around him.

The amount of self confidence and strength these people had to be able to continue through these conditions is incredible. They all had an extreme level of tolerance, tolerance to the racism, tolerance to pain, and tolerance to death. Every day they witnessed murders, people died for no reason, and Elie lived through it all. They were given very little food, if any. Everyone had to tolerate the cold, because they were given very little clothing. Elie had something that most people don't have, he had a tolerance for life, he had the will power to keep going even though it looked like certain death for him.

Elie Wiesel was a Jewish boy living during the time of the Holocaust. He has gone through many things in his life and has explained his experience in the holocaust in this book. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the setting and the characters create a certain mood of disbelief.