Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is narrated by Eliezer, a young Jewish teenager whom is caught up in the struggle between Nazi Germany and his regular daily life in his town, Sighet.  In the exposition, one of the most important characters is introduced.  This is Moshe the Beadle, and although a few pages after he is brought into the novel he disappears, the wise notions he makes are continually shown throughout the book.  Moshe is Eliezer’s teacher during the exposition.  Together they study the Torah and the Cabala.  Eliezer soon loses his teacher when the Nazi army shows up and deports Moshe earlier then the rest of the town.  This isn’t the last they will see of him however.  A few days later Moshe returns and tells the Jewish community of a horrible even he witnessed first hand.  He explains to them that while he was on the train, the German Gestapo boarded the train and took everyone out and butchered them in groups.  The town did not believe him; they wanted to know if the Germans butchered everyone how did he escape?  They decided he was a lunatic and refused to believe his words. 

At this point in the story the rising action is just beginning, and things soon to become faster paced especially in the spring of 1944.  During the first months of spring the Germans arrive in Sighet, and quickly push restrictions on to Eliezer and the Jews.  Soon after the first restrictions, the Jews are relocated into tiny, overpopulated ghettos in Sighet. The Germans decided rather quickly that the ghettos were not the right place for the Jews and they carted them into cattle cars and took them to the gateway of Auschwitz.  Here Eliezer and his father were separated from his other family members whom they never saw again.

Camp life is difficult for Eliezer and his father but they soon learn to adapt to the changes.  They realize that not standing out is important.  They soon learn the horrific truth that Nazis are dumping babies into furnaces, and each week they stand at attention and watch many a Jew being hung for a crime that made no sense to them.  They learned to be emotionless on the outside as they watched little children being shot.  And yet, even as they had to withstand all of these incidents without uttering a sound or crying out, the only way they were able to survive was by comforting each other.

The climax of the book occurs when Eliezer is take to the hospital for a foot injury.  Each day is a day of anticipation and a day of nervousness.  If they were to do a roll call or selection on a day where he was unable to

Present himself, he would be killed.  However word reaches him from a new prisoner that the Russians are closing in on the death camps.  They would soon be at Auschwitz.  That’s when the Nazis call for an evacuation.  They told everyone in the hospital they would be left alone, and that they could stay if they wanted to.  Eliezer not wanting to take any chances, or leave his father made the journey with his hand on his father’s shoulder for support.  Later, after the war was over Eliezer learned that the Germans really did leave those in the hospital alone and that he would have been emancipated.

After the Jews go through a death march they are once again herded into cattle cars.  At the beginning of the journey there were one hundred Jews in each car.  When they reached their destination, there were twelve left in Eliezer’s car.  Both he and his father had survived.  However, his father passed on shortly after in the new camp.  He had suffered from abuse and eventually dysentery took his life.

The falling action is very short and is blended in with the closing of the book.  After his father dies Eliezer skips much of the camp life, and jumps to the day that the American army liberates his camp in April 11, 1945.  He describes himself as an empty shell of a man.