Dark Connotations In Elie Wiesel's Night

The Holocaust was one of humanity's darkest events and was the most devastating genocide in history. Even in the darkest event in history, there were those who didn’t give up hope and survived. One of these survivors was Elie Wiesel. He recounts the horrors he faced in Night, a retelling of what happened inside the concentration camp Auschwitz. Elie was only fifteen when he was deported in 1944. He tells the story about how he survived through the camps. With Night, Wiesel hopes that it can convince future generations to not make the same mistakes that were made which caused suffering and death. They often dealt with issues like starvation and selection. However death always loomed over them. Wiesel often uses words with dark connotations and meanings to describe the horror he experienced and to get his message across.

The book often mentions the word selection. While selection is often regarded as a

When Elie first arrived at the camp he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He saw, “Children thrown into the flames” (32). He is seeing children thrown into flames, he is in shock and cannot believe what he’s seeing. The way the author describes this scene gives the feeling that the guards have no sympathy for the people being slaughtered. The author describes the children as dying and helpless, which describes the truly dark nature of the concentration camps. One of the biggest mass deaths was during the run to another camp. Nearing the end of the run Elie observed, “Death hardly needed their help. The cold was conscientiously doing its work” (92). During their run the Gestapo would shoot and kill anyone who fell behind. But as Elie realized people would drop like flies due to thirst, hunger, and most of all, cold. The authors words give a feeling of looming death in this scene, and puts that in a brutally cold winter