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. While she sees these flames, the situation out and inside the car gets worse. The Jewish people are crammed in a little cattle car and most people are struggling to breath. Outside of the train, the weather starts to turn bad as it starts to get really cold as it begins to snow very heavily. Mrs. Schachter is freaking out because she literally experiences Hell on Earth.“‘Jews, listen to me,’ she cried. ‘I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames!(25) Although she knows she is experiencing Hell on Earth, people think she is hallucinating and faking it because nobody would ever expect …show more content…
The pain and suffering that the prisoners were enduring are shown using flames and fire. The conditions of the Holocaust and the scare tactics that the Nazis used are usually involving flames because flames on Earth symbolize the flames of Hell and how torturous it is. Flames as shown by Wiesel in the memoir, show Hell on Earth and how Hell can really come to Earth with the evil of other people. As expressed, the flames and events of the Holocaust can relate to the flames of Hell and what is believed to go on in Hell because of their many
In the 1956 memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, he illustrates that witnessing human cruelty was his traumatizing memory of the Holocaust. Weisel supports his illustration through the use of symbolism, which demonstrates that witnessing human cruelty had more effect on him that anything else he will ever experience. He uses the flames that he saw as a symbol for the atrocities that he saw, because the flames themselves were the first example of cruelty that he ever witnessed. The author’s purpose is to explain why he will never forget “that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night”, so that the reader can understand the consequences of cruelty. Instead of simply stating that the cruelty he witnessed tore his dreams
There are a lot of themes in “Night” but there are a couple really big themes that are important for the reader to know, and understand and I am going to be talking about them threw this essay. Team work is a big theme with the “Night” because Ellie and his father place in a concentration camp where they are forced to work to death. They have to work with each other to survive the hard times. In the book Ellie feeds his father when he is weak and sick. They also got to work with each other in a factory to put things together or else they will be killed.
In Night, the theme is loss. This is illustrated in the text by telling us about how some people lost their things. Many people lost many of their belongings such as family members, teeth, homes, and personal belongings. In the beginning of the story, Elie lost his home because he and his family were forced to go to a concentration camp and work.
Themes in a story help to describe what the book is about. It does this in the book Night by helping describe what World War 2 was like for the Jews. It also helps to see what the people in the camps went through. My two themes from night are imprisonment and survival. The first one I will talk about is imprisonment, then i’ll talk about survival.
In brief, this story is labeled “night”, the author is Elie Wiesel. The tone of this story is intimate, and affectionate, it characterizes the extraordinary painful and personal experience of a single victim. The setting first takes place in Sighet, Transylvania, and then Elie is transported to several concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Gleiwitz; he spends the time there in the years 1941-1945, during World War II. Eliezer struggled to maintain faith in a caring God; Silence; Inhumanity to other humans. The first symbolism is fire; Madame Schachter foreshadows death and horror “look, look at it, fire, a terrible fire, mercy, oh that fire”.
“ You don 't need religion to have morals. If you can 't determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy not religion. ”- unknown. Night by Elie Wiesel, during World War II, in Germany and Poland, Jewish people taken to concentration camps and forced to do labor.
American psychiatrist, Judith Lewis Herman once stated that “Those who have survived learn that their sense of self of worth of humanity depends upon a feeling of connection with others”. This quote is explored in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night as it retells the experiences of teenage Elie and his father as they navigate through several camps. Facing hardships like public hangings, loss of family members, brutal punishments, and a great deal of death. Their bond is put to the test as they must face decisions for the benefit of one another or for themselves.
Before reading Night by Elie Wiesel, what I know happened during that time was from school and of my grandfather and his father’s story. My grandfather’s story was one told to one person and from an early age I was told not to ask about how he lost his leg and later do not to ask him about his time, with the only accounts coming from oral history and documents from the Arolsen Archives. From knowing his story some of what appears in Night is similar to the little bit that I know about his story. Unlike my grandfather, Elie Wiesel wanted to let people know what happened to him and his family. He explains why he thought the way he did at the time rather than focusing on changing events.
The delusion that one day the Jewish people would know peace. As noted in the novel Night, Elie Wiesel the narrator describes the Holocaust. " Hunger-thirst-fear-transportation-selection-fire-chimney: these words all have intrinsic meaning, but in those times, they meant something else" (Wiesel ix). The novel Night gives the perspective of the Holocaust through a young man 's eyes.
“Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. ”- Shania Twain.
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.
However, in Night, it is the opposite. The symbolism of fire, is used as a symbol to represent the cruelty of the Nazi’s. For example, “She was howling, pointing through the window: "Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire!
Imagine the world as you know it is no longer. The plain scentless air is now the stench of burned human flesh. You’re torn from your family not knowing their fate. You are no longer free to roam earth but now trapped in a torturous cage with the only escape being death. For Elie Wiesel and many other Jews of this time, this was their reality.
Elie Wiesel’s Experiences In the book Night, Elie Wiesel recounts his experiences of the Holocaust. Throughout this experience, Elie Wiesel is exposed to life he previously thought unimaginable and they consequently change his life. He becomes To begin with, Elie Wiesel learns that beings aware and mindful are more than just important. On many occasions, he receives warnings and hints toward the impending tragedy.
In the novel Night the protagonist, Elie Wiesel, narrates his experiences as a young Jewish boy surviving the Holocaust. Elie 's autobiographical memoir informs the reader about how the Nazis captured the Jews and enslaved them in concentration camps, where they experienced the absolute worst forms of torture, abuse and inhumane treatment. Dehumanization is shown in the story when the Jews were stripped of their identities and belongings, making them feel worthless as people. From the start of Elie Wiesel 's journey of the death camps, his beliefs of his own religion is fragile as he starts to lose his faith. Lastly, camaraderie is present as people in the camps are all surviving together to stay alive so as a result the people in the camp shine light on other people 's darkness.