Examples Of Figurative Language In Survival In Auschwitz

Ethan Saiewitz
October 19, 2015
English 4: Holocaust Literature
Ms. Beal
Dehumanization and Poetic Language

When one word or image is unable to describe the indescribable events of the Holocaust, many authors turn to metaphors, similes, and other figurative language to draw comparisons between the horrific acts and something readers might be familiar with. In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi uses figurative language to convey how the Nazis dehumanized the prisoners and to make the traumatic experiences more relatable to the reader. Levi often draws comparisons between the prisoners of Auschwitz and animals. For example, in describing a fellow prisoner, Levi states:
“He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man. I think that even he has forgotten his name, certainly he acts as if this was so. When he speaks, when he looks around, he gives the impression of being empty inside, nothing more than an involucre, like the slough of certain insects which one finds on the banks of swamps, held by a

No more water, or electricity, broken windows and doors slamming to in the wind, loose iron-sheets from the roofs screeching, ashes from the fire drifting high, afar. The work of the bombs had been completed by the work of man: ragged, decrepit, skeleton-like patients at all able to move dragged themselves everywhere on the frozen soil, like an invasion of worms. They had ransacked all the empty huts in search of food and wood; they had violated with senseless fury the grotesquely adorned rooms of the hated Blockältester, forbidden to the ordinary Häftlinge until the previous day; no longer in control of their own bowels, they had fouled everywhere, polluting the precious snow, the only source of water remaining in the whole camp” (Levi