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Similes In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Three examples of figurative language from Night by Elie Wiesel are similes, rhetorical questions and personifications. He used the simile “I was putting one foot in front of the other, like a machine” (85) to describe the time when he was running, with the SS officers behind him commanding him to quicken his pace. The similes shows how Wiesel feels inhuman, how he feels more like a machine than a person. No one thinks twice about machines, we use them until they’re broken, and then fix them up a little before they break again. We use them whenever we please, however we please, as much as we please. The SS officers treated Wiesel and the other Jews the same way. They were ordered around until they were nearly dead, then gave them a bit of …show more content…

He doesn’t think anymore, he doesn't care anymore. He's just trying to do his job. His foot was injured, and yet he completely forgot about the pain. This simile is used to impact readers, like myself, and to think about the situation more and understand what it was like and put ourselves in Wiesel’s shoes. The simile makes you think about how people were losing their humanity just because everything was so disciplined and uniformed. They were forced to do practically inhuman things, things no one today would ever have to do, or even attempt. Wiesel and the other Jews ran at least 20 kilometers with empty stomachs, parched throats and cold bodies, without a single moment of rest. The entire time Wiesel was thinking about Death, and how much easier it would to be a completely “broken machine” with no way to fix it. It makes the reading experience more comprehensible and touching. Books about topic that you cannot relate to can sometimes be boring and make you indifferent on the subject if the author doesn’t help you grasp the tone and how the character’s perceive the situation, which I think is exactly what Wiesel is trying to accomplish. He wants us to understand how important and serious the

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