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. Foreshadowing is a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. An example of foreshadowing Wiesel exercises is when he uses Moshie the Beadle to introduce the kind of person he was before and after his experience in a labor camp. Moshie’s suffering foreshadows his and his family’s outcome. Moshie had managed to escape and return to Sighet …show more content…
When Eliezer looks at himself after liberation he sees a corpse in the mirror. Diction refers to Wiesel’s distinctive style of expression. He uses the words “murder” and “consumed” to describe how he feels. This accurately portrays how the camp had changed him. He no longer looked to God for answers. He felt alone from his first day in captivity. There was no freedom or happiness in his life anymore. Death became imminent and insignificant. He was surrounded by men and watched each one become nothing more than bone and flesh. But liberation came only with strength and endurance. Even those who were physically prepared didn’t necessarily make it. He repeats throughout the entire memoir the phrase “never shall I forget…” to emphasize the horror of the Holocaust. Imagery means to use figurative language to represent objects, actions and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our physical senses. This was executed intensely from beginning to end. Elie said later in his treacherous journey that “the days resembled the nights, and the nights left in our souls the dregs of their darkness” (p100). His father died during the night. This only goes to prove that night, to Wiesel, represents the way his soul was immersed in torture and desperation. Wiesel exemplified the dehumanization of the Jewish prisoners in Night. He showed the readers a personal view of the Nazi's treatment to the prisoners. They lost their possessions,
First, the reader views Wiesel’s personality changes as a result of life in Auschwitz. Perhaps the most obvious change is his steadily increasing disinterest of religion. Before his internment, Wiesel demonstrates a growing interest in the religion of his parents. During the day, he studied Talmud, a legal commentary on the Torah, or the Jewish Ten Commandments. At night, he would worship at the synagogue, “to weep over the
In 1944-1945, Elie Wiesel was one of the few survivors to witness the lives during the Holocaust. He was only 15 years old to experience many brutal and harsh treatment between the Jews and the non-Jews. Growing up, Wiesel had faced many prejudice in the concentration camp as a prisoner by the Gestapos and other non-Jew workers. In 1960, Wiesel wanted to share his past experiences from the Holocaust by writing his memoir. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel discusses the theme of Racism. Through his use of atmosphere, tone, and foreshadowing, Wiesel is saying to reader that when one group deems themselves superior to another, they take the humanity away from the lesser groups.
Although there are many different stories about the holocaust, Elie Wiesel's story is very vivid and full of the jarring reality of his experiences. He doesn’t hold back any of the cruelness and torment he was forced to endure as an adolescent. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses repetition, imagery, and symbolism to illustrate the deprivation of his former self during his traumatic experiences during his time in the Nazi work camp.
The first and most prevalent example of symbolism in the book is the title itself. By calling the novel “Night” it is apparent to the reader that the Holocaust was a dark experience, full of terror and suffering. The entire novel is filled with “last nights”. Elie experiences the last night withEl his father, the last night in Buna, the last night in the ghetto, and several others throughout the book. The term “night” also references to a life without a God. Wiesel often says that God does not
Often, the theme of a novel extends into a deeper significance than what is first apparent on the surface. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the theme of night and darkness is prevalent throughout the story and is used as a primary tool to convey symbolism, foreshadowing, and the hopeless defeat felt by prisoners of Holocaust concentration camps. Religion, the various occurring crucial nights, and the many instances of foreshadowing and symbolism clearly demonstrate how the reoccurring theme of night permeates throughout the novel.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”, said Elie Wiesel the author of night. Elie Wiesel is a holocaust survivor, he went through 5 different concentration camps. He was dehumanized, malnourished, and abused. He lost all his possessions, his family, and his humanity. In Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, the German Army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the jewish prisoners by depriving them of family, food, and self esteem.
Cruelty surrounds the world constantly, and is used frequently in works of literature to reveal certain things about the theme. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, acts of cruelty are used to express the theme and enhance its message. One of the largest themes revealed by these acts is “man’s inhumanity to man,” which includes mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis, the common people, and other Jews. Watching the large amounts of violence, abuse, and discrimination that occur in this memoir show us the horrors of the Holocaust and how it transformed the men and women who it experienced it, as well as those who caused it.
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
In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel writes about his experience inside the concentration camps of Germany during World War Two. He realizes how his humanity changes after he is free. Elie ponders about if he can be re-humanized after he passes trials, when he looks at a mirror. Wiesel uses a gloomy tone to reveal the Nazis’ plan to dehumanize the Jews so that their suffering .
Firstly, Wiesel is bothered by the fact that everyone in the world can remain silent while the Jews and the others in the concentration camps are being put through such terrible torture. Eliezer asks, “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”(32) There were numerous people that eventually found out what was happening at these concentration camps, but chose to turn a blind eye. Although they were not directly involved in the slaughtering of the Jews, they did remain silent during this time and by ignoring it they are encouraging the
Elie Wiesel uses extended metaphor in his memoir Night to show a time where there is suffering, death, and when terrible things happen. After Wiesel describes how Madame Schächter was calm during the day, Wiesel states, "As soon as night fell, she began to scream: "There's a fire over there! " She would point at a spot in space, always the same one." (Page 24) Wiesel uses the word night to show a time with suffering, death, and terrible things when he said that Madame Schächter got visions of fire as soon as it was night and not during the day, and this shows that night has suffering because Madame Schächter was suffering from her visions and terrible things because fire can be terrible by causing death.
As Wiesel is deported to a concentration camp, we can see how his personality begins to alter, through him making comments questioning his faith, as well as sympathy, especially towards his father. His father takes abuse from the german officers for the first time in front of Wiesel, and he says “I stood petrified. What happened to me? My father had been struck in front of me and I hadn’t blinked;... only yesterday I would’ve dug my nails into the criminals flesh.” This was also reflected on the death of Wiesel’s father, where there was seemingly no remorse, or as he puts it, a relief that his father was gone. “ I did not weep. It pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at
Night is the detailed account of Elie Wiesel’s experiences as a Jew in Germany during the Holocaust. Night is considered a memoir, however, Wiesel uses fictional characters to tell his story. Eliezer acts as Wiesel’s author surrogate, a fictional character based on the author, and narrates the story. Over the course of the text Wiesel exposes the full face of the dehumanization perpetrated against the Jewish people. Through persuasive oration, Hitler was able to manipulate the Germans and justify the Aryan supremacist ideology of the Nazi Party. Hitler’s powerful rhetoric “brainwashed” the Germans into believing the Jews were the source of Germany’s hard times. The Nazi party dehumanized the Jews by depriving them of basic liberties, stripping them of their identity, and subjecting them to violence and intimidation.
The inhuman acts committed by the nazis under Hitler's rule deprived the Jewish people of their humanity. “Night” speaks to the dehumanization of the prisoners of the concentration camp. Throughout the novel, Wiesel and fellow Jews were deprived of food, water, clothing, and other necessities the makes one who they are. This results in the prisoners acting in animalistic ways. To study night is to study the result