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His enlightenment comes when he is forced to be fully self-reliant. He realizes that he cannot depend upon his father or upon anyone else for omniscient knowledge, and that he is left to his own devices and beliefs in a world without morality. Like the cave-dweller, Elie eventually realizes that the material world does not offer moral answers; rather moral answers come from his own mind, sense of fortitude, and faith.
Even Oedipus experiences this final, sinking revelation, after living as an ignorant but happy king of Thebes. Oedipus thought he was wise because he believed he had escaped his fate to kill his father and marry his mother and had solved the riddle of the Sphinx. At the end of Sophocles' tragedy, the former king blinds himself in horror that he has fulfilled the Delphic oracle's promise and also because he knows that he is unable as a human being to manipulate the material world where he dwells, he is only a plaything of the gods, just like the Last Emperor and Elie Wiesel will learn in their...
Only one's moral fiber and goodness can be trusted, not what transpires in the world.
From the shadows of not knowing, to the false puppets of seeming to avoid fate and being king to final enlightenment, Oedipus' journey from the cave is a terrible, rather than a sadder and wiser journey, like the Last Emperor, and unlike Elie Wiesel he cannot even feel happy he has left his tormentors behind, as he must wander the world as a blind man and parricide for the rest of his days.
Although the happiness of a gated palace may seem nice, however, it is not paradise, as "The Last Emperor" shows us. Philosophical enlightenment and escaping the cave does not bring pleasure, necessarily, but even the youngest boy dimly knows and hates the prison of the cave, and no matter how painful the journey, there is only one way to go -- outward and upward into the terrible, blinding light of knowledge and insight.
This is why he fled his adoptive parents' home, and confidently volunteered to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. Because he believed he had the ability to outwit fate he confidently issued a proclamation to Thebes, telling the suffering citizens he would be sure to punish whomever was the cause of the plague -- and unwittingly condemning himself. But in "Oedipus at Colonus," Oedipus is a humbled man. He
"And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now." (Night 5) Even as they were taken to death camps, many Jewish individuals continues to believe that God was with them and that they needed to act in agreement with his plan, despite the fact that it involved them having to suffer. While Wiesel started to doubt God's plan, he continued
In "A Story of an Hour" the protagonist must confront the idea that for her to live, her husband and her conventional, protected domestic existence must die. What has been really killing her is not her weak heart, but her entrapment in misery, and when she is returned to the prison of her misery, she expires -- not of joy, but of the shock that she cannot escape. The
.. We appointed a Jewish Council, a Jewish police, an office for social assistance, a labor committee, a hygiene department -- a whole government machinery. Everyone marveled at it. We should no longer have before our eyes those hostile faces, those hate-laden stares" (Wiesel, p9). Chances of surviving the camps depended largely on whether one was deported to a work camp or a death camp and whether one was of sufficient age
Because Elie Wiesel's Night provides one of the most graphic and intimate accounts of the horrors of the holocaust and the effect it has on the human psyche, it serves as the best primary source that can be used to teaching the Holocaust to a secondary level high school classroom. Not only is it an essential book to read, it serves to move the curriculum forward in teaching students how
The prize is not awarded every year, since 1901 there have been 19 years in which it was determined that no candidate fit the criteria. However, in 1986 Wiesel received the prize because of his continual work towards reminding humanity that violence, repression and racism have no place in the modern world. Since 1958, and the publication of Night, Wiesel continued to write, lecture, and advocate a continual "message