Two Themes In Elie Wiesel's Night

The memoir Night written by Holocaust survivor Eliezer Wiesel is a recollection of the Holocaust. In the memoir Eliezer describes his experience during the height of the Holocaust near the end of the second World War. A time of concentration camps and prejudice on Jews from the Germans/Nazis. In Eliezer’s memoir he uses literary devices to help bring his experience to life for the audience. Using similes, metaphors, irony, symbolism, imagery, and so much more.

Anyone who ever lived in a concentration camp knew that they could have died any day. They knew that they no longer had control over their lives. Living in a place like that changed people drastically. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses characterization, imagery, and symbolism to show how awful his time in the concentration camps was and how it contributed to his loss of faith. Wiesel uses characterization of himself when he was a young boy and when he was a teenager in the concentration camps by explaining how much he loved his religion and how much more he wanted to learn about it and then by explaining how it regressed the longer he was in the concentration camps.

This selection determined the difference between life and death for several individuals. One instance of this is a Jewish survivor known as Elie Wiesel. His first person narrative Nigh publishes his horrific experiences during the Holocaust. The memoir discusses the impressions the event had on him. Upon analyzing Night for the personal or cultural principles that were prioritized during the Holocaust, Wiesel utilizes literary devices to reveal that humans begin to lose faith, hope, and morality when subjected to circumstances of injustice.

During the second world war, prisoners of war were often troubled between maintaining their pride or choosing survival. For example, Elie’s first memories at camp showed the immense struggle he had that night with understanding his situation. After some thought, his interesting conclusion was that, “the stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us” (21). Later in the novel, as the prisoners were being prepared for the long march, Elie concluded he must persist through the route to keep his dignity and to live. In fact, before the trip Elie looked at the gates in front of the prisoners that would lead majority of them to their death.

To begin, the males and females are immediately separated. Unfortunately, this includes Elie being separated from his mother and sisters; which immediately takes a toll on his identity. Then, shortly after, Elie recounts getting assigned numbers, or new names. On page 42, he says, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel, 42) The many people dwelling in the work camp become so fixated on survival and when they would receive their next meal, that they lose their former qualities and morals.

Forced to live in horrible conditions with hardly any food, Eliezer ceased to pray, and began to believe God had no sense of justice. Not long after, Elie and his father were moved to another camp where conditions were just as bad. Elie’s experience at this camp was dehumanizing. He was beaten and saw things no human should have to see.

Fire is often a symbol of pain and suffering and is particularly evident throughout different personal accounts of historical events. Throughout Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel gives an accurate account of his life throughout the Holocaust while using different motifs to symbolize the horrors of the Holocaust. Wiesel uses motifs to show things without actually saying them directly. Throughout Night, the motif of fire is portrayed as a symbol of Hell on Earth and usually indicates that a bad thing will start to happen and is shown in multiple moments including Mrs. Schaechter, the Crematoriums, and the Death March. At the beginning of the book, Mrs. Schachter hallucinates images of flames, a sign of a great calamity.

People often cannot feel confident in who they are unless they know their past. In the novel Keeper’ N Me Richard Wagamese develops Garnet Raven as a young indigenous man taken away from him his family as a child, which in turn causes him to struggle through life feeling uncertain of who he is and longing for a sense of belonging. Initially, Garnet tries to conceal his true identity as an “Indiyun” because his people have been portrayed as alcoholics and unproductive people throughout his life. Due to this concealment he feels a part of him is missing inside and is determined to fit in somewhere. It is not until Garnet receives a letter in prison from his brother Stanley that he realises in order to fill this lonely pit inside him that

One of the most compelling themes in night is Identity. Identity is such an issue for Wiesel because the events of Night coincided with Wiesel’s adolescence. Elie is seemingly firm in his identity and self awareness at the beginning of the Novel. He prioritizes his faith and he conceptualizes his place in society in relation to others. Once Elie is forced to spend an impressionable part of his adolescence in the Concentration Camp, his sense of perception is warped.

Elie Wiesel did not meet the final stage of acceptance throughout the book he did have anger and depression that conflicted him throughout, however when he got older he started accepting it more. In the book it explains the horrible childhood he had moving from camp to camp and losing a lot of friends and family along the way . Elie was a boy who had to learn and accept how to live on his own and take care of himself at a young age, acceptance is a hard process and it takes time to go through, therefore Elie started to accept but did not meet the final stage in the book. Angry is a stage of grief you have to experience before acceptance and In the book Elie mostly feels angry for what was going on in his life, it would make him angry seeing all the bad that were happening and especially when they would hurt his father. Many times Elie had to accept that this may have been his last day alive, he would think to himself why was he in this place.

In the book Night, Elie Wiesel describes his struggles as a Jew in a concentration camp using a depressing and serious tone, meant to reflect the horrific conditions the Jews were forced to face and the theme that adversity can cause a loss in faith. From the time Elie first arrived at the camp and heard everyone saying prayers, to when the young pipel was hung, and even when the Jews had to make the long, arduous, trek to the other camp, the reader could see his faith dwindling as he continued to question where his God was and why he wasn’t helping the Jews. Not only was a lack of faith evident in Elie himself, but the other Jews around him, even the priests, were having trouble believing in their God. Elie’s disheartened and somber tone

When people think about the life of living in a concentration camp, they think about how unbearable and inhumane the way people were treated and how they had to live in order to survive. Elie Wiesel will help you better understand the way they lived and what they went through in their everyday life and what it felt like to finally be free. He tells us a story about the lifestyle in living in a concentration camp, how he and his father and many others try to survive, and how the people who survived were finally able the live free again and he tries to get people to understand everything that happened and how everyone who was brought the the camps understood what had happened. In the beginning of the book Night by Elie Wiesel everybody was being

(Gerund, provides evidence on how hard it was -ing) “The look in his eyes as they stared into mine, has never left mine” (Wiesel, 119) Going to a concentration camp being poor can truly be challenging. Beneath the poor man he was telling them information because being down in the dirt traveled on many times people don’t look at him with respect. (Prepositional phrase) But, of course, the people didn 't listen because he was poor. Of the stressfulness and miserable images they had in their head they were way too scared to only image what was next. (Infinitive, starts the sentence “of”) He closed his eyes as though to escape time” (Wiesel, 17).