Literary Analysis Assignment: The Power of Resilience in Elie Wiesel’s Night

Department of English and Humanities
ENG-102: Composition and Literature II
University of the Americas

Assessment Description

In this assignment you will write a 750–1,000-word literary analysis essay that examines the theme of resilience in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. Focus on how Wiesel portrays resilience through specific quotes, personal relationships, memory, and reflections on humanity. Draw directly from the text to show how these elements illustrate the capacity to recover from extreme suffering while preserving dignity and purpose.

Task Instructions

1. Choose at least four key quotes from Night that demonstrate resilience in its various forms (hope, connection, memory, identity, or courage).
2. Compare and contrast the ways these moments reveal both individual and collective dimensions of resilience under dehumanizing conditions.
3. Conclude by explaining how Wiesel’s depiction of resilience offers lessons for contemporary challenges involving trauma, oppression, or loss of identity.
4. Use MLA 9th edition formatting throughout the essay. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a detailed grading rubric available in the course LMS. Review the rubric before you begin so you understand the criteria for analysis, textual evidence, organization, and citation. Submit your essay to Turnitin via the course portal. Only Word documents (.docx) are accepted.

Sample Student Response: The Power of Resilience in Elie Wiesel’s Night

Resilience emerges in Elie Wiesel’s Night as the quiet determination to endure when every external force works to break the spirit. Wiesel clings to fragments of hope and humanity even as the concentration camps strip away names, faith, and family bonds. He recalls his bond with his father as one anchor that keeps him alive. The quote about indifference as the true opposite of love shows how caring and remembering become acts of defiance against brutality. Memory itself turns into a form of resistance because refusing to forget preserves identity and warns future generations. Wiesel’s call to bear witness for both the dead and the living transforms personal pain into a shared moral duty. These threads reveal that resilience is not the absence of despair but the refusal to let it define existence completely. According to the analysis in Recurrent Proceedings of Distress: The Psychological Trauma of a Teenager in Elie Wiesel’s ‘The Night’, the recurring psychological wounds in the memoir highlight the internal mechanisms that allow survival and later reflection.

Scholarship on Holocaust narratives further illustrates how episodic memory functions as a tool for perseverance in Wiesel’s account. One 2025 study of postwar English literature notes that Wiesel’s selective recall of small acts of connection counters the systematic erasure attempted by the camps and keeps the survivor’s sense of self intact over decades. Such findings align with the sample response by showing that resilience operates on both immediate and long-term scales.

Students sometimes assume resilience in Night means unbroken optimism or heroic triumph. In reality the text presents survival as morally complex and often accidental rather than purely triumphant. When readers compare Wiesel’s approach with other survivor accounts they notice that his emphasis on silence and the limits of language may actually deepen the ethical weight of memory instead of weakening it. For those writing similar essays it helps to remember that regulatory or cultural contexts around Holocaust education vary by country yet the core demand to bear witness remains consistent across U.S., UK, and Australian curricula.

References

Al-Taee, S. F. A., & Al-Qaraghouli, M. S. O. (2024). The trauma of holocaust in Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night’. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Growth Evaluation, 5(4), 1063–1067. https://doi.org/10.54660/IJMRGE.2024.5.4.1063-1067

Metin, I. (2025). The influence of World War II on English literature: A critical analysis of Elie Wiesel’s Night. English Review: Journal of English Education, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v13i1.11445

Sangeetha Bala Sankari, M. (2024). Recurrent proceedings of distress: The psychological trauma of a teenager in Elie Wiesel’s ‘The Night’. Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities, 11(S5), 144–146. https://doi.org/10.34293/sijash.v11iS5-Mar.7680

• How Elie Wiesel Portrays Resilience Through Personal Narrative and Memory in Night

Write a 750–1,000-word MLA formatted essay that analyzes resilience in Elie Wiesel’s Night through key quotes and explains its lasting lessons on human strength and memory.

Develop an MLA essay that evaluates how Elie Wiesel depicts resilience through personal relationships, memory, and calls to bear witness in Night.

Complete a 750–1,000-word (approximately 3–4 page) literary analysis essay that examines inspiring quotes and the theme of resilience in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night using MLA style.

Assignment: ENG-102 Week 5 Discussion Post – Crisis of Faith in Night

Examine one specific moment in Night where Eliezer’s faith is tested or altered. Quote the passage and explain how it connects to the larger theme of identity under extreme pressure. Post an initial response of 300–400 words that includes at least one direct textual reference and one connection to a secondary reading from the module. Reply to at least two classmates by comparing their chosen moment to your own and suggesting how the crisis of faith might influence long-term resilience.