ipl-logo

Theme Of Horror In Elie Wiesel's Night

1104 Words5 Pages

Night is neither good nor evil, darkness the same. We humans do not fear the darkness or the night itself. We are afraid of what is lurking behind the curtain absent of light. It is fear of the unknown that scares us because it is foreign, something we cannot control. Wiesel’s own story, of which he names Night, plays with a different context of the word. He uses it to explain the dark harrowing of human nature, the bleakness of existence, the feelings of the loss of empathy and compassion, the curtain of different emotions that cloud over us. Wiesel’s story lays out a book dished in cruelty and despair. Wiesel shows horror. He shows the horror of what happen when night drapes over a tragedy and what happens to those who cannot escape it curtaining …show more content…

That is the smallness that makes horror big. Wiesel didn’t write about the statistical numbers of people dying in the camps. He wrote about the incrementalism- “The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal...”(pg. 11)- and its horrible effects- “Something was being burned there... small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes... children thrown into the flames.” (pg. 32). Wiesel does not write on the battles fought during the war by armies but the small struggles comparatively- the ones that made an impact on them. Wiesel writes on the boy who killed his father for bread. He writes of those he saw hung like the child, the pipel,-“...the third rope was still moving: the child.. Still breathing... he remained...lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes...He was still alive... where is God?... This is where-hanging here from this gallows...”(pg 65). Elie writes true horror by focusing on the small, focusing on what we, the reader, can sympathies to.

Horror is a tool used by a writer to add layers to the story they are trying to weave. Elie Wiesel’s night is a horror story. The Holocaust makes us sad for what happened to him and all of those victimized. Wiesel writes his own story of the horror of human to human conflict and the smallness of what makes horror horror. He give context to the tragedy. As we truly fear what is behind the darkness and night, we see the horror in the Holocaust comes not from the name, but the context filling the word itself. That is horror, and that is what we must fight to dissolve to make the future

Show More
Related

  • Examples Of Survival In Night By Elie Wiesel

    300 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ever since humans came to be, they have done many things to ensure their survival. It’s the reason why we humans have evolved as much as we have. Humans have invented devices, accomplished many challenges, and have even relied on nothing but willpower to survive. When somebody survives a tragic event they are left with some terrifying memories that haunt them forever, but a few survivors are courageous enough to share their experience. Obviously, one of the shared experiences is the book called Night by Elie Wiesel.

    Read More

  • Diction In Night By Elie Wiesel

    1015 Words  | 5 Pages

    Night, an autobiography that was written by Elie Wiesel, is from his perspective as a prisoner. The book focuses on Wiesel and his father experiencing the torture that the Nazis put them through, and the unspeakable events that Wiesel witnessed. The author, Wiesel, was one of the handfuls of survivors to be able to tell his time about the appalling incidents that occurred during the Holocaust. That being the case, in the memoir Night, Wiesel uses somber descriptive diction, along with vivid syntax to portray the dehumanizing actions of the Nazis and to invoke empathy to the reader.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Corruption In Night By Elie Wiesel

    281 Words  | 2 Pages

    From the small town of Sighet in Transylvania to the huge concentration camps of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, the author and victim of the book Night, the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Wiesel is a 15 year old Jewish boy who was captured by the Germans or “Nazis” during WWII. He went through an overwhelming amount of trauma, like when he got separated from his mother and sisters and watching his father suffer an unbearable amount of pain that eventually killed him. The fact is, power is a tool that can corrupt itself and others, it can ruin people’s lives and it can do that without people even realizing it.

    Read More

  • Nighttime In Elie Wiesel's Night

    1090 Words  | 5 Pages

    At times, it appears unviable for one’s life to transform overnight in just a few hours. However, this is something various individuals experienced in soul and flesh as they were impinged by those atrocious memoirs of the Holocaust. In addition, the symbolism portrayed throughout the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, presents an effective fathoming of the feelings and thoughts of what it’s like to undergo such an unethical circumstance. For instance, nighttime plays a symbolic figure throughout the progression of the story as its used to symbolize death, darkness of the soul,

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel's Journey In The Book Night

    153 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.

    Read More

  • Fear In Elie Wiesel's Night

    598 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fear is Destructive Fear causes people to makes judgements. It’s what makes people cautious and skittish, mostly in unsafe situations. Without fear people’s life would be at risk. Throughout the memoir Night fear builds up over time, starting when the Germans taking over Sighet, they slowly start to take over their lives.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Devices In Elie Wiesel's Speech

    806 Words  | 4 Pages

    Wiesel’s speech shows how he worked to keep the memory of those people alive because he knows that people will continue to be guilty, to be accomplices if they forget. Furthermore, Wiesel knows that keeping the memory of those poor, innocent will avoid the repetition of the atrocity done in the future. The stories and experiences of Wiesel allowed for people to see the true horrors of what occurs when people who keep silence become “accomplices” of those who inflict pain towards humans. To conclude, Wiesel chose to use parallelism in his speech to emphasize the fault people had for keeping silence and allowing the torture of innocent

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel's Transformation In Night

    487 Words  | 2 Pages

    Wiesel changes vastly throughout the book, whether it is his faith in God, his faith in living, or even the way his mind works. In the beginning of his memoir, Wiesel appeared to be faithful to God and the Jewish religion, but during his time in concentration camps, his faith in God wavered tremendously. Before his life was corrupted, he would praise God even when he was being transferred to Auschwitz, but after living in concentration camps, he began to feel rebellious against his own religion. In the book, Elie

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Analysis

    609 Words  | 3 Pages

    When Wiesel makes it clear that he has suffered personal loss, he is evoking an emotional response from his audience. By stating that he senses their presence “The presence of my parents, that of my little sister.” the audience empathizes with him and the horror of the Holocaust is made more clear for them. They cannot only understand his feelings; they can connect to them which strengthens their understanding of the need to act whenever they witness inhumanity.

    Read More

  • Loss Of Faith Theme In Night By Elie Wiesel

    611 Words  | 3 Pages

    To begin with, Wiesel could not believe what was happening. He didn’t believe how cruel the Germans were. Wiesel was living a nightmare and couldn’t escape it. For instance, Wiesel stated, “I pinched myself; was I still alive? Was I awake?

    Read More

  • Fire Quotes In Night By Elie Wiesel

    874 Words  | 4 Pages

    The memoir written by Elie Wiesel, Night, is illustrating the Holocaust, the even which caused the death of over 6 million Jews. Auschwitz, the concentration camps, is responsible for over 1 million of the deaths. In the memoir Night, Wiesel uses the symbolism of fire, and silence to clearly communicate to the readers that the Holocaust was a catastrophic and calamitous event, and that children should never be involved in warfare. Elie Wiesel enters Auschwitz at the age of 15, and witnesses’ horrific events as a prisoner in Auschwitz, including the deaths of numerous children, and the beating and death of his own father. All these inhumane things were done just because Adolf Hitler wanted to cleanse the German society of the Jews.

    Read More

  • Why Should Elie Wiesel's Night Be Banned

    882 Words  | 4 Pages

    Wiesel uses a lot of very detailed descriptions and expresses his feelings in a way that we easily start to trust him. He knows that this is one of the most terrible periods in the history and he tries “to help prevent history from repeating itself” (Wiesel VII). “He does not want his past to become [the children’s] future” and that is why he writes his book to be seen by the people who do not realize how poorly people were treated (Wiesel XV). These two quotes from Night show that the holocaust shouldn’t be repeated. The author shows this with all of the feelings, facts and descriptions he uses.

    Read More

  • Denial In Night

    867 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout Night, Wiesel depicts a situation in which the Jews were stripped of all emotion, as it transformed into an excess burden that was too strenuous to retain. Despite the fact that the victims of the Holocaust once lived joyous, genuine lives, they were leached of anything worth living for until they became hollowed shells whose only emotion was the lack of any emotion. In the end, the denial of their doom led to their dense apathy which coexisted with a plethora of fragments, which once formed their humanity, that were

    Read More

  • Theme Of Dehumanization In Night

    197 Words  | 1 Pages

    Throughout the story Night by Elie Wiesel, the most relevant themes that stand out are dehumanization as the Jewish people are labelled as nothing, loss of faith because their constant struggles makes them question a higher power and camaraderie between one another to sustain the death

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Essay On Night By Elie Wiesel

    910 Words  | 4 Pages

    Night Critical Abdoul Bikienga Johann Schiller once said “It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons”. But what happens when the night darkens our hearts our hearts? The Holocaust memoir Night does a phenomenal job of portraying possibly the most horrifying outcomes in such a situation. Through subtle and effective language, Wiesel is able to put into words the fearsome experiences he and his father went through in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. In his holocaust memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes imagery to show the effect that self-preservation can have on father son relationships.

    Read More

More about Theme Of Horror In Elie Wiesel's Night

Open Document