In what way are the poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow connected to Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night?
Refer to direct passages, words, or phrases from the poems AND the book that allowed you to make your connection.
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The poems “Sympathy,” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are remarkably closely related to Elie Wiesel’s most celebrated novel, Night. For instance, both “Sympathy” and Night portray the hardships of an enslaved person; one who cannot break out of their imprisonment. For example, Dunbar’s masterpiece includes the lines, “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me/When his wind is bruised and his bosom sore,--/When he beats his bars and he would be free; /It is not a carol of joy or glee.” These simple words seem at first sight to mean that the bird is singing as if in its heart there is still a gleam of hope. However, once read again, the reader can conclude that this passage was written to portray the feelings of a person who is so lost, so empty of hope or change, that the person screams out in anguish or in longing. Much like in this passage, Night includes a character, Madam Schachter, a woman being sent to the same concentration camp as Elie himself. Whenever the darkness of night crawled through the bars of the cattle car in which they rode, Madam started to scream “Fire!” out of pure madness.
Also, Longfellow’s written masterpiece “The Witnesses” reveals the life of a slave on the slave trade in the nineteenth century. Written into the poem are the lines, “Within the Earth’s wide domains/ Are markets for men’s lives; / Their necks are galled with chains, / Their wrists are cramped with gyves,” a passage greatly relating to the hardships the passengers aboard the train in Night. When Elie writes about the way people were packed into the cattle cars, eighty to a car, it symbolizes the chains binding the men to the ship as Longfellow writes. Plus, Amistad, a chillingly realistic movie about the African slave trade, is greatly related to Night. For instance, in the novel, Elie recalls a German officer barking, “’There are eighty of you in this wagon…If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot, like dogs….” This, much like Amistad, refers to dehumanization, or the act of taking away a person’s identity and individuality. In Amistad, the slaves are whipped if put out of line and given slop for food, in their hands. Therefore, the holocaust greatly relates to the slave trade, and all literature written about the topic, such as Night, “Sympathy,” and “The Witnesses” can be proved alike.
The poems “Sympathy” and “The Witnesses” are like the book Night in a few ways. One way they are connected is that there is some place that the main character wants to be, and that place is so close to them, but they cannot get to that place. I think that place is also a little bit of symbolism that refers to situations, like doing something you don't want to, just for the end result, or doing something wrong that the whole world knows about, but does not punish, like caging or slavery or the Holocaust. For example, the bird in “Sympathy” is trying to get to the spring day outside, the slaves in “The Witnesses” are trying to get off of the ship, and Elie in Night is trying to get off of the cattle car that he is on. In “Sympathy,” it says,”Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; for he must fly back to his perch and cling when he fain would be on the bough a-swing.” That shows that the little bird has tried to get out of the cage so many times. In “The Witnesses,” the slaves have not tried to get out because there was something stopping them: “Skeletons in chains, with shackled feet and hands.” That means that they were prevented from trying to escape, which means that there must be someplace out there that makes people want to leave. Lastly, in Night, Elie was trapped inside a cattle car being transported to Auschwitz. He knew that something bad was going on, so he wanted to get off the cattle car. “The world was a cattle wagon, hermetically sealed.” By that explanation, freedom, which is what Elie wanted was just outside of a couple inch-thick walls. But, he could not get to it; the protection was too good. The similarity between the poems and the book is that there is a situation that people want to be somewhere that they are inches away from, but they can not get to.
The poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can connect to Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night in many ways. The poem “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar is about Dunbar’s life being an African American and having to face the racism during his time period. The poem “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar can connect to Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night because the book is also a reflection on racism. One of the lines in the poem “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar is, “When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; when the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, and the river flows like a stream of glass” (lines 2-4). In those lines the author is saying how he is trapped inside, but he can see the sun and he wants to be out there with everyone else. In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, when Elie and his family are in the cattle wagons on their way to Auschwitz, there are only very small windows with bars on them in the wagons. They can see the country side roll by threw the small windows, and they want to be free just like the bird in the poem “Sympathy”. The poem “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can connect to Eli Wiesel’s memoir, Night. For example, in the book Night it says, “Without passion, without haste, they slaughtered their prisoners. Each one had to go up to the hole and present his neck. Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as targets” (page 4). The Nazis used a lot of violence, murdered a lot of people and they didn’t even care. That example connects to the poem “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow because the poem is about the African slave trade and the hardships that they had to go though at sea while they were traveling. The slave traders treated the slaves as if they weren’t human. They beat them and wiped them. Also, if the there were slaves who were sick, or they weren’t well enough to sell, the slave traders would throw them over board, so they would drown. For example, “Murders, that with affright, scare school-boys from their play! All evil thoughts and deeds; anger, and lust, and pride; the foulest, rankest weeds, that choke life’s groaning tide!” (lines 23-28). This example shows how cruel the slave traders are to the slaves. This poem connects to Night because the slave traders are cruel and treat the Africans badly just like the Nazis are cruel to the Jews and treat them badly. As you can see, the poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can connect to Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night.
The poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are similar and are comparable to Night, the memoir of Elie Wiesel, in many ways. Firstly, all three of these works use descriptive language, and remarkably so. When describing a smell that he noticed while in his first moment at Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel says “There was an abominable odor floating in the air” (25). Paul Laurence also regards and acknowledges smell by stating, “…the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals” when speaking of a flower. When Henry Wordsworth Longfellow describes slaves, he says that they have “fettered, fleshless limbs.” These three articles also uncompromising in the scenarios which they depict, leaving out no important detail, however disconcerting that it may be. Longfellow tells about “The bones of slaves”, while Dunbar talks of a bird who wishes freedom at any pain, “ I know why the caged bird beats his wing, Till its blood is red on the cruel bars”. Wiesel describes the painful and unceremonious disposal of dead infants in this excerpt: “They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load- little children. Babies!” These three authors could have spared their audiences from these unusual and powerful moments, but they chose otherwise. It cannot be neglected to mention another poetic element present in two of these works- the constant application of questions, so as to keep the person reading the story or poem interested. “Was I still alive? Was I awake?” (30) says Wiesel after a traumatic event. The Witnesses ends with a question “We are the Witnesses!?” These elements show how these three written sources are related.
The poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Deubar and "The Wittnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can connect to "Night" because they all make the reader feel sorrow for the main characters. They use imergery very well and make me picture thing I never wished to see or believe. They all are about imprissonment and being trapped. Like in "Sympathy" how the bird beats it wings until they bleed and he does it over and over again with no hope of escaping. In "The Wittnesses" it talks about the slaves and how thin they are because of malnourishment. The same thing happened to Elie, he was beaten, forced to work, deprived, and imprissoned.
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By: Wyatt Hackett
The poems “sympathy” and “The Witnesses” are related to Elli Wiesel’ s Night. For example in sympathy “I know what the cadged bird feels” is related to night because in night they are cadged into Concentration camps. Also from “Sympathy”, “And a pain still throbs in those old, old scars, and they pulse again with a keener sting I know why he beats his wings.” That passage is related to Night because in Night the prisoners get beaten over and over and they get scars from whips, and when hey get beaten and whipped again the scars can reopen and cause new pain. Also, “I know why he beats his wings” is like the prisoners begging to be let free or wanting to escape. From the poem “
‘The Witnesses” “Half buried in the sands lie skeletons in chains with shackled feet and hands.” That is like saying the prisoners are condemned to death because the Nazi’s are going to kill them all eventually. Another quote is “They gleam from the abyss they cry, from yawning waves, ‘We are the witnesses!’” That is like how the prisoners witness their comrades and friends die and be killed by the Nazi’s. That is how those two poems are similar to Elli Wiesel’s Night.
In all three of these readings, “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence, “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Night by Ellie Wiesel, someone or people are being tortured, beaten, and killed. In the poem Sympathy”, Paul Laurence compares himself to a bird, who is trapped in a cage, and for Paul Laurence, him in his own skin. I know that he is being beaten dot toured because, “ .. Till its blood is red on the cruel bars… And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars” (Stanza 2). This shows that he has very old scars that still hurt and blood is shown on him. This poem also says, “ When his wing is bruised and his bosom is sore”(Stanza 2 line 2). This is showing that he is in pain. In the Poem, “ The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, it also shows how people are being tortured, beaten, or killed. By the second line in this poem we are already told that people are killed, “ Half buried in the sands, Lie skeletons in chains, With Shackled feet and hands” (2-4). The poem doesn’t directly tell us but when know that these are black slaves that are killed. These poor men, women, and children were thrown to the bottom of the ocean with shackled feet and hands so their life would come to an end, drowning. In the video clip that we watched, we saw this happening to some men and women. It is a terrible sight. And lastly the book Night, by Ellie Wiesel, Jews are being tortured, beaten, and killed by the Nazis. Jews are being beaten “.. He dealt my father such a clout that he fell to the ground, crawling back to his place on all fours”(36-37). Shlomo just asked to go to the bathroom, and he got hit. Jews were being tortured, “ We went to get our evening meal of bread and margarine. I was dreadfully hungry and swallowed my ration on the spot”(41). And being killed, “Do you see the chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames? (Yes, we did see the flames.) Over there- that’s where you’re going to be taken. That’s your grave, over there. Haven’t you realized it yet? You dumb bastards. Don’t you understand anything? You’re going to be burned. Frizzled away. Turned into ashes”(28). These three readings all are connected by what other people are doing people. In all three of these, the Jews and the African Americans are being beaten tortured, and killed.
There are many ways in which “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow connect to Night by Elie Wiesel. In “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the poem talks about a bird stuck in a cage, while outside the cage is the beautiful outside world, with the bright sunlight, fresh flowers, and a streaming river. However, because the bird is caged, it cannot get out and enjoy the rest of the world, and is just confined to the cage, bringing the bird much pain and suffering. This is similar to Night where Elie and the other Jews are trapped in concentration camp. They cannot escape and are left to endure through the torture of the place. In “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, slaves are on a slave ship. The conditions are terrible, and when there wasn’t enough room on the ship for slaves, they would throw some of them overboard, with shackles and chains still stuck on them. The slaves are discriminated against, treated as though they are nothing, and even sold; basically dehumanized. This is very similar to Night. The Jewish people in the story are sent to concentration camps, where they are treated like they are nothing. They have nothing to do, except await a painful and slow death, like many of the slaves. Also, on the way to the camp, Elie and a lot of other people (80) are piled onto a cattle car to get to the concentration camp. The conditions were so bad, and the car was so full, that people had to take turns standing, which is about as bad as the slave ships when they carried slaves across the ocean. Also like the slaves, the Jewish people are very dehumanized, given little food, no clothes, and beatings.
"Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow connect to Elie Wiesel's Memoir, Night because in all of them the character has no control over their own fate. In "Sympathy" the caged bird is stuck and cannot fly even when he tries so hard " till its blood is read on the cruel bars." In "The Witnesses" the slaves are all tied up, "Their necks are galled with chains, Their wrists are cramped with gyves." They are also mistreated and are even thrown overboard. They do not get a say in any of this because they are treated as property and not as humans. In Night, Elie and his family are sent off to Auschwitz on cramped cattle trains. The German SS officers are making all their decisions even if they live or die. The Jews and the Wiesel family have no control over the mass killings there. These are similarities between Night, "The Witnesses" and "Sympathy" they all had characters with no control over their life.
The poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are connected to Eli Weisel’s memoir Night in many ways. In the book, Eli is forced to get on a cattle car, which the Germans seal and can’t get out. She gets trapped inside the car. In the poem “The Witnesses” it talks about slaves being chained up and they are forced into a space that they do not want to be in. It says, “With shackled feet and hands… there the black Slave-ship swims.” Both in the poem and in the book the author is talking about people being forced into a place that they do not want to be in and they are both chained in. Earlier in the book Eli and his community are forced to live in a ghetto secluded from everyone else. This is just like in the poem “ Sympathy.” The poem talks about a caged bird and how the bird wants to get out but can’t. The poem says, “ I know why the caged bird beats his wing till its blood is red on the cruel bars; for he must fly back to his perch and cling.” This is just like Eli and the rest of the community who want to get out of the ghetto but can’t.
There are many ways in which “Sympathy” and “The Witnesses” are connected to Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night. In the poem “The Witnesses” the major story being portrayed in the poem is about how brutal the slave trade was. In the poem it used examples like “Their necks are galled with chains… dead bodies,” These lines give the feeling of how terrible the slave trade was and how poorly the slaves were treated. They would chain the slaves’ necks with chains and kill them without mercy. This is similar to Night because although the passengers of the cattle cart are not physically chained they are mentally restricted to the cart. In addition people were put in cramped corners and tight spaces fighting for every morsel of food. Also, the first line of the poem “Sympathy” really relates to some of Elie’s feelings. “I know what the caged bird feels” Elie is like a caged bird in the cattle cart and he can’t set himself free. Also in the poem “Sympathy” it states how the “wing is bruised” and “he beats his bars” and this is how Elie feels. His arms and legs are badly bruised and he tries to get out but there is no way. All in all the feelings portrayed in both poems and Night connect to each other very well.
The three masterpieces, “Sympathy”, “The Witnesses”, and Night are very similar. The mood, or what the reader feels, is almost identical. In all of them, I am awestruck. This means that when I read these three incredible pieces, I was overwhelmed with feelings of fear and sadness. The way Dunbar writes, “Till its blood is red on the cruel bars.” The way Longfellow says, “Lie skeletons in chains, with shackled feet and hands.” Even the way Wiesel says, “Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.” All of these make my heart tremble, and cause chills to run up my spine. Additionally, all three of them use alliteration causing the words to roll off your tongue when they are read. In “Sympathy” it says, “When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass.” Along with that, “The Witnesses” reads, “Freighted with human forms, whose fettered, fleshless limbs are not the sport of storms.” Furthermore, in Night, Elie Wiesel writes, “…which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.” "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Night by Elie Wiesel are connected due to the common mood and use of alliteration.
The poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are greatly connected to Elie Weisel’s memoir, Night. The poem "Sympathy" resembles to Elie’s experiences so far in the book Night.
When Paul Laurence Dunbar writes in the poem, "Sympathy", “When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings, I know why the caged bird sings,” this is how Elie feels when he arrives at Auschwitz. He knows why the other Jews are saying the Kaddish, not because it a carol of joy but because they thought they were walking themselves to their own graves. As he starts to get further into the camp he starts to say the prayer also and metaphorically speaking he knows why the cage bird sings.
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes in his poem, "The Witnesses", “Freighted with human forms, Whose fettered, fleshless limbs, Are not the sport of storms. These are the bones of Slaves; They gleam from the abyss; They cry, from yawning waves, ‘We are the Witnesses!’” Elie could probably relate to this too, because he is a witness of men being cremated, families being separated, and men being beaten. He saw the dead people being taken away and he saw a man get shot in front of him. He is a witness of cruelty and dehumanization. Those are two examples of how Elie could relate to the poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are connected to Elie Wiesel’s “Night” in a few ways. One way that they are similar is the physical pain described. For example, in “Night”, Wiesel writes, “And he began to beat him with an iron bar. At first my father crouched under the blows, then he broke in two, like a dry tree struck by lightning, and collapsed.” (p.52) In “Sympathy”, Dunbar writes, “I know why the caged bird beats his wing Til its blood is red on the cruel bars;” and in “The Witnesses” Longfellow writes, “Half buried in the sans Lie skeletons in chains, With shackled feet and hands.” In addition to the physical pain the writings all contain, they also depict emotional agony. In “Sympathy”, a trapped, caged bird struggles and fails to be released from his cage. “The Witnesses” describes the pain of slaves and the hardships they faced during the Middle Passage. In “Night”, Wiesel tells his own story of the Holocaust and his loss of faith. These examples all relate to each other. Finally, the 3 works of literature are similar because of the concept of dehumanization that they all contain. During the Middle Passage, people fought each other for food, even going so far as to steal it out of their neighbors’ mouth. In the Holocaust, the same kind of thing occurred concerning food rations. The living conditions during both time periods were also awful, even going so far as to treat the victims as animals.
The poems, "Sympathy" is very closely related to Elie's memoir, in fact, when I first read it, I thought that Elie had written it. The strong imagery and use of similes is very similar to Elie’s writing style, and one can even say that the poem is about the prisoners of the Holocaust. The second stanza can be related to the prisoner’s attempts to free themselves, and how they ‘Beat [their] wing/ Till the blood is red on the cruel bars...’ This can be read as the prisoners as the bird, trying to be free, and the cruel bars being the SS officers, caging them in and beating them back from freedom. The other poem, “The Witnesses” can also be very closely related to the Holocaust. Although the poem talks about slaves on the middle passage to the Americas drowning in their ship, the poem still holds the idea of people being treated wrongly for what they were born into, and the lines: “They cry from unknown graves/ We are the Witnesses!” Can really relate to the Holocaust, because people were made to dig ditches, literally graves for themselves, and then forced to stand in line and be shot. These are the witnesses to the injustice that the Nazis committed to others of the human race.
-Morgan
The poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are connected to Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night. The themes of the poems are closely related to Night.
Both poems are about slavery, which is a violation of human rights. The focus of Night is the Holocaust, which was also of the violation of human rights. In the poems, passages such as, “There the black Slave-ship swims, freighted with human forms, whose fettered, fleshless limbs…” and “I know why the caged bird beats his wing till its blood is red on the cruel bars,” depict the brutality of slavery. In Night, passages such as “Babies! Those children in the flames…” and “So many crazed men, so many cries, so much bestial brutality!” convey a sense of despondency. All of the examples shown above depict or symbolize the malice that humankind has inflicted upon itself. What the poems represent and what the book, Night, represents are the same; they merely illustrate different examples of the same horror.
The poems “Sympathy”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, and “The Witnesses”, by Henry Wadsworth, are very similar and connected to Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night. One way the three pieces of literature are all alike is in the message. Each one conveys a feeling of being trapped in a terrible situation. In “Sympathy”, the caged bird “beats his wing till its blood is red on the cruel bars.” The bird in the cage is just like the Jews in the concentration camp, yearning to escape. Furthermore, the bird looks out to see his beautiful surroundings and longs to be there. Elie and the rest of the Jews see life carrying on without them, and they also long to be a part of it. In “The Witnesses”, the slaves “cry from unknown graves.” The Jews, burned in mass killings, are just piled in giant ditches crying from their mass grave. The two poems are very similar in meaning to “Night.”
“Sympathy”, “The Witnesses”, and “Night” are also connected by many literacy strategies. Each of them uses excellent imagery. For example, in “The Witnesses” phrases such as “fettered, fleshless limbs,” “gleam from the abyss,” and “skeletons in chains.” These all help us picture the image in our head. This is also used in ”Night.” One part where Wiesel uses imagery is when Elie and his father are walking toward the ditch. He says, “Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames.” This is not only imagery, but it is also personification. These three great works of literature are all related to on another.
The poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are both connected to Elie Wiesel’s memoir "Night". First, “Sympathy” is about how a caged bird feels, and when reading this poem, I am imagining this is what the people in the Holocaust must have felt, as well, when they were in concentration camps. The verse: “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, when his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, when he beats his bars and would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, but a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, but a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings…” makes me think of the people in "Night" at Auschwitz, beaten and bruised by the SS officers, and praying to God that He will set them free. They feel like caged birds. “The Witnesses” is about slavery, but it reminds me greatly of Wiesel’s memoir. This is probably because the Jews in the Holocaust were treated as if they were slaves. They had to obey orders and do hard labor, just like slaves. The lines “Freighted with human forms, whose fettered fleshless limbs…” remind me of the dead, now fleshless bodies that are thrown into the fire pit at the concentration camps. The lines “They cry, from unknown graves, ‘We are the Witnesses’” I can connect to with the Jews in "Night" that are the witnesses to the evil and inhumane crimes committed by the Nazis and SS officers.
The poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow connected to Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night. In the poem “Sympathy,” I imagined that it was about someone being or feeling lock up like a cage bird. In Night, I thought that Elie, his family, and the other passengers on the train had felt that same way. They seem locked away when Elie says, “The doors closed. We were caught in a trap, right up to our necks. The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed.”(pg. 22) In the poem “The Witnesses,” I picture slaves in chains being thrown over board into the ocean, just like in the clip of the movie we saw in class. Their bodies sink to the ocean floor, turning to skeletons; they become the witnesses and watch the murders of others. This relates to Night because when Elie was at Birkenau, he saw the pits children, babies, and adults were thrown into. That was where they were burned alive, burned to death. For example, in the book he says, “Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load—little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it—saw it with my own eyes… those children in the flames.”(pg. 32) He witnesses the deaths of innocent people.
The poems "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are connected to Elie Wiesel’s Night, in many ways. “Sympathy” is connected to Night in the sense that the main characters in these pieces of literature are “trapped.” It says in the poem that the bird was trapped in the cage and it wanted to get out. In Night, Elie is trapped in a few places; He is trapped in the train on the way to Auschwitz and when he is in the camp. This is why “Sympathy” and Night are connected. Night and “We are the Witnesses” are connected because the antagonists are discriminating against a separate race. In the poem, the white people are discriminating against the Africans. In the novel, the Nazi Germans are discriminating against the European Jews. Elie himself is a Jew and the Germans are trying to eliminate the entire population of Jews. “We are the Witnesses” and Night are also similar in the way that the Jews are technically shackled even though they are not physically shackled. In the poem, the Africans are physically shackled with chains around their ankles and wrists. It says this in line 4, “With shackled feet and hands.” This is how Night, “Sympathy,” and “We Are the Witnesses” are alike.
The poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “The Witnesses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow can be connected to Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night in many ways. First, In Night when Elie first arrives at the concentration camp known as Auschwitz, he sees some bad things happen. For example he sees Jews being burned in the “crematory”. Elie explains his experience in the quote, “Never shall I forget the little faces of the children whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky” (p.32). The reoccurring line in the poem “The Witnesses” that says “We are the Witnesses!” can connect to when Elie witnesses these people being burned. The line “We are the Witnesses!” can also connect to how some Jews became Kapos, who were in charge and had power of the working Jews. The Kapos were harsher than the SS officers. The Jewish people were witnessing the holocaust and dehumanization through their own eyes. These people were actually doing the dehumanizing. Also the line in “The Witnesses” that says, “Murders, that with affright—scare school-boys from their play!” can connect to the murders that were happening at the concentration camps. Hundreds of people were murdered everyday at the camps but no one in the world was hearing about them. The line says that these murders would scare children and are frightening, but even though this is true not many knew that this was occurring. Next, the line from “Sympathy” that says “I know what the caged bird feels!” can connect to how Elie must feel. He is stuck inside that camp with no freedoms and he almost feels caged in. Also when he goes from camp to camp in chapter three and has a chance to be outside in the sun, it is like the line from “Sympathy” that says “When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; — When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass” (first stanza). Lastly, Elie keeps fighting and making sure he stays alive no matter what he does. He makes sure by eating a lot, staying somewhat healthy, and choosing his words wisely so he does not get sent anywhere. This could connect to how the caged bird keeps on beating his wing in “Sympathy”. The two poems can be related to the memoir, Night in several ways.
tg
The way that the poems,"Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "The Witnesses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are connected to Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night is that they all talk about being stuck and not allowed to be free. This is seen in Night when he is captured by the Hungarian police. “The bars at the window were checked, to see that they weren’t loose. Then the cars were sealed,” this shows how Elie is caged and not allowed to be free. An example of being locked in the poem; “Sympathy” is that “I know why the caged bird beats its wing /till its blood is red on the cruel bars.” This shows how both Night and “Sympathy.” The way that “The Witnesses is connected to the both of them is when it states, “Lie skeletons in chains, / with shackled feet and hands.” This shows how they are all stuck and can’t be free. One last way that all three are connected is that they all talk about violence. This shows up almost immediately in Night. It states, “The Kapos beat us once more.” This is related to “The Witnesses” because in the poem it talks about “Dead bodies” and “Murders with affright.” They all talk about how there is death and a great deal of violence in each text. For example in “Sympathy” it tells about how the bird has “a pain sills throbs in the old, old scars.” These show how each of the great pieces of literature are related.
U.A
2/4/10
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