Night Synthesis Essay

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Synthesis Essay In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the poem “Hangman” by Maurice Ogden, and the movie “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” directed by Mark Herman, a recurring theme is the idea that silence is evil. Night is about a young Jewish boy, Elie Wiesel, and his father’s life while they are in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. In “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”, Bruno, a German boy, and his family moves to Auschwitz due to his father’s promotion to commander in the Nazi army and befriends a Jewish boy in a concentration camp behind his house. In “The Hangman”, a hangman comes into town and hangs innocent people each day. In “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”, Herman shows a form of silence when Bruno’s parents try to hide the facts about the reality of the Holocaust from him. Bruno is an eight year old German boy who is naïve about the war against the Jews. When he ventures out into the woods behind the house, he meets a Jewish boy, Shmuel. However, Bruno doesn’t know that they shouldn’t be friends because his parents have hidden the fact that the Jewish were their “enemies”. Not knowing that their friendship was forbidden, he gives Shmuel a piece of bread while Shmuel is cleaning the glasses. When Lieutenant Koler finds out that Shmuel had eaten a piece of bread, he beats him. Because Bruno hadn’t known that the two boys were not supposed to be friends, he had gotten Shmuel beaten. Had his parents told him the truth from the beginning that he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Jewish people, he would not have had to see his friend hurt. The main message Ogden sends in “Hangman” is that silence is dangerous. When a person asked the hangman who the gallows was for, he replied “He who serves me best…/shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree” (Ogden 23-24). The hangman tells the people of the town that whoever is okay with what he does and tried to
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