“Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live,” from the thoughts of Eli Wiesel after his first night at camp (Wiesel 34). The Holocaust, lasting over ten years, not only did it seize the lives of millions, it disfigured the souls of corpses who survived. Gratefully some of these outlasts shared their stories to protect society’s future. In Night, Eli Wiesel uses foreshadowing, imagery and figurative language to illustrate the brutality aspect of humanity. Vivid descriptions sprung out of in every page of Wiesel’s book. For example, Wiesel asked himself, “Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women and children were being burned and that the word kept silent? (32)”
Imagine not knowing where you’re going, if you’ll survive the night, or if you’ll ever see your family again. After Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the lives of millions of innocent Jews were placed into the hands of the Nazi Party. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel uses his personal experiences to tell about his life during Holocaust and the horrific events he witnessed. The author uses foreshadowing to strengthen the plot and give the reader clues to the atrocities he goes through during his two years in the concentration camp.
Throughout the novel, Wiesel's figurative language displays how hope got him through some of the atrocities of the Holocaust. An example where their hope is brought up in the novel is when the anti-Jewish laws are put in place in Wiesel's hometown, he states that, "To the very last moment, a germ of hope stayed alive in our hearts" (Wiesel 25). Wiesel uses the metaphor "germ of hope" to figuratively describe how the amount of hope was not abundant, but it never completely vanished. He states that this hope lasted till the last moment, which also implies that this is what got the Jews through the Holocaust. An instance where Wiesel's language displays what hope got him through is when he describes the hangings that he witnessed, upon which he reflects that the soup tasted like corpses that evening (Wiesel 72).
Language has the ability to impact the mood and tone of a piece in literature. In Night, Wiesel uses imagery, symbolism, diction and foreshadowing to illustrate dehumanization. The deeper true horror of the Holocaust is not what they Nazi’s did, but the behavior they legitimized as human beings being dehumanized by one another through silence and apathy.
Night contains a significant amount of figurative language. Select 3 examples from the text to analyze. In analyzing each example, be sure to explain how the specific example impacts the text. (How does it affect the reader? How does it affect the reading experience? Why did Wiesel make that specific choice?) Please use a different type of figurative language for each example.
At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize
Elie Wiesel published the memoir “Night”, in 2006, which extrapolated on his terrifying experiences in the Nazi extermination camps during the World War ll. Elie, a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, is projected as a dynamic character who experiences overpowering conflicts in his emotions. One of his greatest struggles is the sense of helplessness that he feels when all his beliefs and rights as a human are reduced to silence. During the time spent in the concentration camp, Elie is engulfed by an uninterrupted roar of pain and despair. However, what remains uninterrupted is the sheer torture and dehumanization of Elie’s nation, the Jews. Throughout this horrific experience, Elie’s soul perishes repeatedly as he faces constant psychological abuse, inhuman living conditions, and brutal negation of his humanity.
Night tells of an unexplainable tragedy, known as the Holocaust, that affected many parts of Europe. Elie Wiesel’s view of the Holocaust, through his experiences, is able to show that the Holocaust had a strong affect on not just the people enduring it, but also the people that heard about or witnessed it. The readers are introduced to the new perspective of the Holocaust. It caused emotional and physical damage to many of its victims. There were dead bodies along the streets, and people were burned alive. Families were torn apart and friendships were ruined. None of the people had any idea of what was going to be on the road ahead of them, let alone what would happen when they turned the corner. During desperate times, some people seem to
The Holocaust claimed millions of lives, and the survivors witnessed an event incomprehensible to the remainder of humanity. Elie Wiesel, a burdened survivor of the Genocide, describes his own experiences in his autobiographical memoir Night. Throughout the years in the concentration camps, Wiesel and the other Jews witness countless events of Nazis intentionally dehumanizing the Jews. After hearing these brutal remarks for years, Wiesel begins to internalize these thoughts. His writing reflects his internalization as he often compares himself and the others to animals. Elie Wiesel animalizes the Jews while personifying darkness to further dehumanize the Jews and show how the Nazi’s mental warfare continues to affect him.
In the book “Night” written Elie Wiesel, Wiesel wants readers to know the pain and struggles he had to face in the holocaust. In 1944, in the village of Sighet, Transylvania, a boy named Elie was taken from his home and was taken to a concentration camp and spends time talking about being invaded by the Nazi. The purpose of the book was the remembrance of the holocaust and how it causes him to lose faith and his identity. Although the concentration camps were a bad place the people were forced to work, the rhetorical devices imagery, symbolism, and diction is used to present loss in faith and identity.
Elie Wiesel’s short memoir Night recounts his experience surviving the concentration camps during the Holocaust. In the third chapter of the book, he focuses on describing what it was like to arrive at the first concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the process the men had to go through to transform from men into prisoners. In addition to lying about his age and occupation, Wiesel lost his hair, his clothing, his mother and sisters, his name, and most importantly, his faith. Elie Wiesel's use of imagery and diction in Night makes readers understand the true atrocities of the Holocaust.
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious
Such injustices that happened in the holocaust makes it so difficult to speak of the past, but when one finds a way to convey the horrors effectively, others will be able to understand one's silence as well as the hardships that come living with it. Elie Wiesel used multiple techniques to display the unspeakable, allowing others who chose to stay silent to be heard, and the people who heard their silence to be able to understand it. Furthermore, one can convey the unspeakable by explaining personal memories, displaying visuals and imagery, and comparing different word choices.
Imagine a world where people are treated like dogs, what they are given to eat can barely be described as food, and they live in constant fear of their future. This is what Elie Wiesel and millions of other innocent people were faced with during the Holocaust. In Night by Elie Wiesel, he expressed to his readers the terrorizing events that occurred through his time as he moved from one concentration camp to the next. Wiesel detailed the struggle to maintain faith through various Jewish people such as Moishe the Beadle, Akiba Drumer, and himself.
“His eyes would suddenly go blank leaving two gaping wounds, two wells of terror” (Wiesel 75), is a rousing example of the horror Elie Wiesel portrays in Night by using imagery. Elie uses layers of figurative language to help facilitate the meaning of the text beyond its literal interpretation and enhances the reader's experience. Not only does his use of figurative language produce vivid imagery to draw in readers it also accurately portrays his primary account of the dismay he experienced during the holocaust. Night is filled with wonderfully descriptive figurative language to elevate the effect and take the reader on Wiesel’s painfully haunting and incomprehensible journey. Likewise, in the novel Night Elie portrays his firsthand account