"To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind so moving a record.”
—Alfred Kazin, on Night
Night, is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply saddening autobiographical account of surviving the Holocaust while a young teenager. It is considered a classic of Holocaust literature, and was one of the first texts to be recognized as such. Set in a series of German concentration camps, Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors—the unspeakable yet commonplace occurrences, the everyday perversion and rampant inhumanity—of life inside a death camp. However painful this memoir is to read at times, it also keenly and eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.
Elie (or Eliezer) Wiesel’s recorded experiences—detailing the death of his family and friends, the death of his innocence as a young man, and the death of his God—reveal the formation of a sensibility that must accommodate the sorrow and wisdom implicit in living through a tragedy. Shocking, brutal, perceptive, and only slightly variant from Wiesel’s own personal and familial history, Night is a testament of memories, wounds, and losses. But this memoir is also a testament of the Jewish people. Night speaks for Wiesel and his family while also speaking for all Jews who knew about life and death in the camps; like many other eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust, it looks to the individual in order to convey the psychological and emotional injuries of all who carry the burden of survival.
--Hill and Wang Teacher's Guide
Prereading Journal
Click on the hyperlinks below to download study guide information or make-up quizzes.
Vocabulary
helpful vocabulary for understanding what is going on in the book
Chapter 1-2
Study Guide (.pdf format)
Chapter 3
Study Guide (.pdf format)
Chapter 4
Study Guide (.pdf format)
Chapter 5
Study Guide (.pdf format)
Chapter 6-9
Make-up Quiz (.pdf format)
Overall Study Questions
Night Required Speech Presentation
In order to prepare students for their post-secondary lives, students must be able to speak in public using significant facts and details to support their topic. To that end, students will be required to select a topic (a Nobel Laureate) from the list provided by me. They will spend a couple of days in the library researching the life and Nobel Prize of their topic. They will take notes, create an annotated bibliography of their sources, and create a formal, typed outline for their speeches, and present a speech (minimum of 5 minutes, maximum of 10 minutes).
Nobel Laureates Topic Choices
To research from home, students will be able to access both the Nobel biography site and the Ebsco research database using this link. Library Resources Students will need a password to access the database from home; that password is discovery.
Students will use a minimum of 3 sources from the Nobel and Ebsco databases.
Assignment:
(.pdf format)
When they have finished their research, they will then do an Annotated Bibliography with correct MLA format for the source citations. Annotated Bibliography will be uploaded to turnitin.com on the due date, December 3.
Annotated Bibliography
(.pdf format)
Sample Annotated Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography Grade Sheet
When they finish researching, they will organize their information and note cards to create a formal, typed outline to be turned in after presenting their speech.
Sample Formal Outline Format
Lastly, they will create some sort of visual aid (poster, PowerPoint, etc.) to adequately illustrate their topic.
Speech Rubric