Lauren Bujel Mr. Deines 17 January, 2023 The Writing Techniques of Elie Wiesel The Holocaust is an event in history that took place in Nazi Germany during World War II. The Jews were kept in concentration camps that were designed to either kill the Jewish people or to have them work until they’re no longer useful to the Nazis. About six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The book Night is about the Holocaust and Elie Wiesel’s experience with being kept in the concentration camps. He was only fifteen when the Holocaust started. Night was written because Wiesel felt like it was his duty to show people through his writing what he and others had to go through while being stuck in the concentration camps. I believe that …show more content…
The ellipsis marks help understand the desperation to keep each other going by the families in the Holocaust and how much the prisoners worried about whether they would be killed or kept alive. On page seventy two Wiesel wrote “I felt as though I had been running for years…You are too skinny, you are too weak … At last I arrived.” Wiesel also wrote on page eighty eight “Not here… Getup … A little farther down. There is a shed over t h e r e … Come … " These examples show how the writing isn’t exaggerated but is still making it so the reader can understand how hard the prisoners had to fight for their lives and how hard they tried to keep each other going. Both of these examples of ellipsis marks help show the lack of exaggeration in this sober writing style but still communicates the emotions that the prisoners are …show more content…
The symbolism used by Wiesel helps understand the feelings of the prisoners while they were ordered around and didn’t have much of their own freedom. On page sixty three and sixty five Wiesel wrote “Then the entire camp, block after block, filed past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue hanging from his gaping mouth… I remember that on that evening, the soup tasted better than ever…” and “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… That night, the soup tasted of corpses.” Wiesel also wrote on page seventy three “The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly.” The symbolism of soup shows that at the beginning the prisoners were happy that they even lived through the day so the soup tasted great even though someone else got hung but the day that a young kid was hanged, the soup tasted of corpses. The bell felt like something that ordered them around and they had to go by the bells schedule. This shows the development of Wiesel's sober writing style because of the grave events that
As the train reached their destination Elie felt that “the night was growing longer, never-ending” and as “a grayish light appeared on the horizon” nothing was left except a “tangle of human shapes… like a cemetery covered with snow” (Pg. 98). Wiesel utilizes a simile to compare the prisoners to a cemetery, enforcing the theme of death when correlated to the symbolic meaning of “Night.” Furthermore, the number of deaths that occurred during the night was substantial as “twenty corpses were thrown from [Elie’s] wagon” and when “the train resumed its journey” it left in its wake “hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb” (Pg. 99). Wiesel utilizes a common theme of objects when using figurative comparisons; usually objects associated with death such as a cemetery and a tomb.
Wiesel shows his hunger, pain, torture, and fear throughout the book. For example when the airstrikes hit the camps two cauldrons were left unattended, elie states, “ Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. Two lambs without a shepard, free for the taking. But who would dare?” In this quote, the two lambs represent the two cauldrons of hot soup and the hundreds of wolves represent all of the starving
Throughout the text, Wiesel creates a sense of routine in the camps when he presents what the daily life of Elie is like to establish the struggle they go through in their new daily life. To present this, Wiesel writes about Elie’s life and his experience during his time in Auschwitz. He states, “In the mornings: black coffee. At midday: soup. By the third day, I was eagerly eating any kind of s o u p ...
Despite the atrocities he witnesses and the loss of his family and friends, Wiesel never completely loses hope. Throughout the novel, he clings to the belief that he will survive and reunite with his loved ones. This hope keeps him up during the darkest of times and helps him to persevere even when he feels like giving up. Likewise, Wiesel’s hope also serves as a unifying force, bringing together him and his fellow prisoners in a shared sense of solidarity and purpose. Amid their struggle, they turn to each other for support and comfort, forming deep bonds of friendship and togetherness.
Since the boy being hanged was so young, the prisoners were in a state of grief and shock when it was time for his execution. Elie claimed during the execution that the “SS seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter.” (Wiesel 64.) This proved that the people running the camp were also disturbed about hanging a child.
They were murdered as innocent children, not knowing why they were being sentenced to this tragic fate. Furthermore the book says “ We did not know which side was better right or left; which road led to prison and which to the crematory.” (Wiesel, pg. 30) A simple flick of the wrist by one officer either denied someone their life, or sentenced them to a living hell. Their right to decide their own fate was robbed by men who were no better than they were. Unjustly, their chance for greatness was stolen from them.
I hadn't seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me” (pg.83). This show how the holocaust change people life and left them with horrible memories like when Elie look at himself, The last time he saw
Holocaust The Holocaust was one of the most horrifying events in human history. About six million Jews, among other groups of people, died in the hands of Hitler and all of the Nazis. Elie Wiesel, a survivor from Auschwitz, has become an important character in the history of the Jews and of the whole world. In his book, Night, he narrates the horror story that he and many Jews lived during the Holocaust.
Another poignant moment in this chapter occurs when the inmates are put under the control of a young polish man that seems to value the lives of the inmates sincerely. After the man tells them to go to bed, Wiesel adds that the man’s words where the “first human words” (39) that the jews had heard while at the camp. This brings into perspective the fact that people in concentration camps were not treated as human. Instead, they were treated as a problem that needed to be taken care of. This can be said for all genocides: one group of people dehumanizes another group of
In this example Wiesel uses the heat to foreshadow that their situation was only going to get worse. Another example of a similar situation that the prisoners were in is when they were living in the concentration camp barracks. The barracks were overstuffed with prisoners making it extremely hot and uncomfortable for everyone. In chapter 3, Wiesel describes that the conditions in the barracks became so unbearable that some prisoners experienced hallucinations and became delusional. Wiesel writes “The heat was unbearable.
In this portion of the book it is easy to imagine the nooses around the necks of the men and boy. Because readers can so clearly see the devastating scene, they will have a hard time forgetting about the brutal, unfortunate actions that took place during the Holocaust. Another time Elie Wiesel uses imagery is while the people of his neighborhood are being taken away to the concentration camps. People had left their houses along with their least important
During the first hanging, people did not feel pity for the man who died, yet they complained that the ceremony wasted them so much time. I believed that, not only the person who complained about the ceremony, all the people in the camp, including Wiesel, had the same kind of emotion without pity and sorrow. All the prisoners in the camp, in order to survive, cared only about what and when they eat and became more and more heartless and selfish. For those people, this hanging ceremony was only a chance to get extra bread and soup. “I remembered that on that evening, the soup tasted better ever…” Wiesel wrote about the taste of soup at that night reflects his reaction to the execution.
Wiesel begins to use darker comparisons as the novel progresses, which begin to document how circumstances were changing and negatively affecting victims. An instance of this is when he describes the hangings that he witnessed, upon which he reflects that the soup tasted like corpses that evening (Wiesel 72). Wiesel uses this comparison to depict one of the most gruesome scenes throughout the book, which symbolizes how these horrific events had such a great impact on him. He conveys how the hangings affected him by addressing how this event lingered on his mind for prolonged periods of time. In addition, another example where Wiesel 's figurative language marks a decline in optimism is when the victims must decide whether or not to fast during Yom Kippur, but Wiesel states that due to the food rations at the camps, "The whole year was Yom Kippur" (Wiesel 76).
Levi writes about the tender care the mother possessed even during such a horrific time; this elaborates on how Levi wanted his readers to really imagine in our minds what was going on. Similarly, Wiesel also pays very close attention to detail. He describes the head of camp by saying that, “he was a stocky man with big shoulders, the neck of a bull thick lips and curly hair.” (47). Wiesel’s choice of words help paints a picture of what Wiesel was seeing at the camp.
The author continues to display multiple symbolism, however the interpretation behind his words grow more explicit. Moreover, he discovers himself entangled in situations from being separated from his family to sacrificing his personal belongings. In the midst of adjusting to the harsh circumstances of the concentration camp, Wiesel states, “The three "veteran" prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713.