Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." Hope and an optimistic attitude are characteristics of a rational and humane mindset. Documenting how these ideals change throughout a period of time in writing can be done through various means of rhetoric including figurative language. In Elie Wiesel 's personal memoir Night, he incorporates similes and metaphors to effectively convey how the victims ' humanity deteriorated throughout the course of the Holocaust. Wiesel 's figurative language at the beginning of the novel conveys how the Jewish people followed commendable politesse and practiced reasonable behavior early on in the Holocaust. An example of this is when anti-Jewish laws …show more content…
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). Comparing a religious fast to purposeful food deprivation displays the negative attitude that Wiesel is building towards his own religion. This shifting mindset displays how the Holocaust had a negative impact on ideals close to the victims ' personalities. A third example of the Holocaust 's negative impact is when Wiesel recalls Juliek playing the violin in the middle of the night, where he could only hear, "the violin, and it was as though Juliek 's soul were the bow. (Wiesel 100). In this scene, Juliek displays defiance of the Nazi authorities by playing his violin, which shows a new resistant attitude towards …show more content…
Towards the end of the novel, Wiesel 's use of figurative comparisons displays how behavior became more inhumane and conditions worsened as circumstances became increasingly dire. An example of this is when the Germans throw bread around for the victims to scramble and eat and relates the men 's behavior to, "Wild beasts of prey, with animal hatred in their eyes;…" (Wiesel 105). Wiesel implies that the victims have been so deprived of nutrition that they have no regard for human etiquette. This shift in nature from acting tactfully to behaving like wild animals signifies that the victims have lost their sense of humanity. Additionally, Wiesel conveys how circumstances were challenging when his father fell ill and had, "become like a child, weak, timid, vulnerable" (Wiesel 110). By comparing his father to a weak child, Wiesel shows how the inhumane living conditions were affecting the victims. Father figures are usually associated with great strength and might; to contradict this by considering his dad to be vulnerable shows how Wiesel depicts the egregious conditions in the camps. A third example where Wiesel depicts a shift from rational behavior is when his father is ill and asks for a cup of coffee, so Wiesel makes his way to the coffee table, "Like a wild beast" (Wiesel 111). Towards the end of the novel, Wiesel makes multiple allusions to how people began acting like animals and beasts. This suggests that the savagery is palpable among the victims in these
Elie Wiesel Rhetorical Speech Analysis Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and winner of a Nobel peace prize, stood up on April 12, 1999 at the White House to give his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”. In Wiesel’s speech he was addressing to the nation, the audience only consisted of President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, congress, and other officials. The speech he gave was an eye-opener to the world in his perspective. Wiesel uses a variety of rhetorical strategies and devices to bring lots of emotion and to educate the indifference people have towards the holocaust. “You fight it.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.
At times, it appears unviable for one’s life to transform overnight in just a few hours. However, this is something various individuals experienced in soul and flesh as they were impinged by those atrocious memoirs of the Holocaust. In addition, the symbolism portrayed throughout the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, presents an effective fathoming of the feelings and thoughts of what it’s like to undergo such an unethical circumstance. For instance, nighttime plays a symbolic figure throughout the progression of the story as its used to symbolize death, darkness of the soul,
In this memoir, Elie Wiesel uses imagery in order to develop the presence of animal-like behavior on people when they are being dehumanized. At this point of the story, Elie and the other prisoners are in a wagon traveling to a different concentration camp, and they are trying to survive in inhuman conditions. To begin, Wiesel describes, “We were given bread… We threw ourselves on it… Someone had the idea of quenching his thirst by eating snow.”
In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.
It becomes clear that Elie Wiesel`s commentary on human nature is that, during extreme circumstances, people are selfish and would achieve anything for their own survival. Furthermore, In Wiesel’s novel people strived to survive this injustice. For example, the Holocaust caused countless amount of
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer Wiesel narrates the legendary tale of what happened to him and his father during the Holocaust. In the introduction, Wiesel talks about how his village in Seghet was never worried about the war until it was too late. Wiesel’s village received advanced notice of the Germans, but the whole village ignored it. Throughout the entire account, Wiesel has many traits that are key to his survival in the concertation camps.
Paradox, parallelism, personification, repetition, rhetorical question, pathos. You may ask yourself: what importance do these words have? These words are rhetorical devices used to develop a claim. A person who used these important devices was Elie Wiesel. In his 1986 Nobel Peace Acceptance Speech, Elie Wiesel develops the claim that remaining silent on human sufferings makes us just as guilty as those who inflicted the suffering and remain guilty for not keeping the memory of those humans alive.
When Wiesel makes it clear that he has suffered personal loss, he is evoking an emotional response from his audience. By stating that he senses their presence “The presence of my parents, that of my little sister.” the audience empathizes with him and the horror of the Holocaust is made more clear for them. They cannot only understand his feelings; they can connect to them which strengthens their understanding of the need to act whenever they witness inhumanity.
To begin with, Wiesel could not believe what was happening. He didn’t believe how cruel the Germans were. Wiesel was living a nightmare and couldn’t escape it. For instance, Wiesel stated, “I pinched myself; was I still alive? Was I awake?
The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.
In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.
As much as Jew’s wanted to speak for themselves, or even save others, this wasn’t possible due to their fear of winning them causing silence. In the Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, shows how Wiesel’s experience was during this harsh time in his life as a teenager. During this experience, Wiesel discovers how others, also including him, decided to remain silent as a result of their fear, causing some choices to be avoided and not made. To sum up, Wiesel’s experience portrays that fear always wins and causes others to be silent. Throughout this experience, Wiesel meets another person who is going through the same situation as him.
In Night, imagery was shown to paint a picture in people’s head about how tragic their situation was and the pain that the Wiesel's encountered. “My father was crying. It was the first time I saw him cry. I had never thought it possible. As for my mother, she was walking, her face a mask,
Night Critical Abdoul Bikienga Johann Schiller once said “It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons”. But what happens when the night darkens our hearts our hearts? The Holocaust memoir Night does a phenomenal job of portraying possibly the most horrifying outcomes in such a situation. Through subtle and effective language, Wiesel is able to put into words the fearsome experiences he and his father went through in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. In his holocaust memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes imagery to show the effect that self-preservation can have on father son relationships.