Theme Of Night By Elie Wiesel Zusak

As Molching recovers from its first air raid, Liesel witnesses the parade of the enslaved Jews for the first time as they pass through the town on their march to a labour camp in Dachau. Markus Zusak’s bleak depiction of the scene is emphasised by the confronting imagery, muted by the overall absence of speech and the normalised degradation of the Jews. Presented without inner thoughts, the traumas of reality are illustrated plainly on their bodies and rendered all the more devastating in its overarching theme of loss. Throughout the passage, the Jewish fate of endless dehumanisation is perpetuated by the silence of the audience in response to the soldiers’ cruelty. The passage opens on a dictionary definition for ‘misery’, establishing a

By opening with “On Munich Street, they watched,” Zusak immediately depicts the crowd as passive onlookers, and renders them active in “Others moved in around and in front of them”, emphasising a form of mass movement as the crowd satisfies their curiosity in the great suffering of the Jews. This is then portrayed conversely by the Jewish prisoners as they trudge by; a stray link between the two communities. Deprived of identity, the prisoners are depicted as withering on their feet. They greet Death “like their last true friend” as they walk to their deaths in all-consuming isolation, stripped of individuality and human rights. Zusak’s use of similes to describe their hollow bodies highlights their deteriorating states; “bones like smoke” placing additional emphasis on their dissipating bodies. Following this, alliteration is used consecutively here, their “eyes were enormous in their starving skulls” stressing the pervasiveness of their malnutrition down to the bone. Like the confused actions of Hans, so too do the Jews wear their emotions unconsciously: “a few wayward steps of forced running before the slow return to a malnourished walk”, a depiction of movement that represents the ultimate collapse of mind and body. Between the curious audience and the “depleted” Jews is the tenuous link of humanity, demonstrated by the imagery of the prisoners as they “reached across to them”—hands outstretched, universally symbolic of pleading with those in power. As the narrative viewpoint, Death notes the Stars of David that were used by state forces to identify the Jews that were likened to “misery”, a reflection of the opening dictionary definition and a recurring stress placed on their