Symbolism In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night is about the character, Eliezer’s, experience at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The cruelty Eliezer and other characters face throughout the literary work is the foundation of several themes. One of the major themes is the struggle to maintain one’s faith. This theme can be better understood by examining how cruelty functions in the memoir and what Eliezer learns about himself while facing these cruelties.

Night Elie loses his faith throughout the book, but it was not always like that. Elie used to be very religious and wanted to learn as much as possible about his faith. “One evening, I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in sighet to teach me the Zohar, the Kabbalistic works, the secret of jewish mysticism” (Wiesel 5). Elie said to Moshe the Beadle. His father wasn’t supportive of his decision so he took things into his own hands.

Many immediately think to blame the Nazis, and only the Nazis for the Holocaust. This is not the case however, as many groups all share a portion of the blame. In Elie Wiesel's book, Night, it is evident that blame be passed to Elie’s God, the Jewish people themselves, and the non Jewish Europeans. Elie writes how his non Jewish neighbors watched, the Hungarian police force the Jews to march. When this was happening, the Jews were insulted, and beaten; it was clear the police had dark intentions.

“I want to know how you keep holding on and believe again or how you never stop believing to begin with.” These words by Jessica Watson perfectly accentuate the battle that Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, struggles with throughout the novel. In the village of Sighet, Romania, a young Wiesel is enthralled by Jewish mysticism and believes the existence of an omnipotent God. One day, however, the Jewish people of Sighet are forced to live in supervised ghettos, and later brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Wiesel suffers with the physical torture of forced labor and hunger, as well as the mental and emotional torture of losing his family.

Elie Wiesel has a somber mood in the text ‘Night’. He does this by using imagery and symbolism, Wiesel does this so curiously, as not to plunge into a sad mood, but slowly eases the reader into the despair. The author describes a boy as “angel faced” that slowly moves towards a tragic ending. The angel is a power symbol throughout all cultures, and using that symbol to be placed onto a boy, and expressed through imagery creates a sense of dread and despair. Eliezer depicts a young boy to a “sad faced angel”, in the sense that the boy seems holy, and innocent, yet being in a labor camp, reinforces our idea that the Nazis have no respect for anything good or sacred in the world.

Elie Wiesel’s touching memoir, Night, shares intimate details about the cruelty of World War Two concentration camps and the horrors that occurred within them. Concentration camps were spread throughout Germany and Poland from 1933-1945 as the result of strong anti-Semitic views radiating from the President and Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. In the memoir, Night, Wiesel shares of the time that he and his father endured being held captive in several concentration camps, and the battle to escape death, day after day. In the memoir, the significance of night was used throughout the piece to draw connections and emotions from the reader. In Night, night was used both literally and symbolically to portray the unknown, pain, and the end of a journey.

The dark, mysterious and life changing setting the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel contributes to the protagonist’s hardships between a spiritual character (God) and a minor character (his father). Eliezer, the protagonist, is faithful meaning that he respects and is influence by his God. “Oh God…have mercy on us” (20) as Eliezer “[prays] to his God…for strength,” (5) when arriving to the Ghettos. However, when arriving to the man-made settings such as the concentration camps, the relationship starts to diminish. The setting alters Eliezer’s judgment and now relies more on God’s faith to help the people at the camps.

Elie Wiesel loses faith in God and his family through the events that he undergoes in the Nazi concentration camps. To begin, Elie is deprived of his religion in the camps. He struggles physically and mentally, therefore, he no longer believes that there is a higher power: "Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust..." (34). Imprisoned in a factory of death, Elie does not believe that his God will give him the strength to keep him going.

Symbolism can be seen through both good and bad alike. Though when it comes to instances that have to do with the holocaust, it’s almost always, if not always, a painful connotation. The holocaust is one of if not the the largest instance of mass genocide in recorded history. Leaving each Jew that survived with a different story to tell. While their story’s remained different, the pain that they each experienced was not.

Point A (topic sentence): The author’s point of view is communicated by imagery because is conveyed by Imagery because Wiesel uses this device in order to create a bigger impact on the reader. Evidence (and page number): In the following quote, the author uses imagery in order to convey Elie’s Dad being brutally beaten “The officer wielded his club and dealt him a violent blow to the head. My father groaned once more, then said…. ‘Eliezer’” (Wiesel, 11)

“ 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.

It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.

Silence symbolizes dread, apathy, and incapability. Wiesel cannot understand how the world can remain silent as the Nazis committing atrocities on the Jews. It also symbolizes the silence of the subjugated and oppressed. Eliezer, for example, stands silent when his father is beaten, unable to help him. The whole town of Sighet remains silent to the pleas of Moshe the Beadle, who warns the town of what is coming.

In pages eight-five to one hundred-three, several events happened. There was another selection. This time, Eliezer and his father were split up, Eliezer in the healthy line, and Father in the not healthy line. Luckily, Eliezer case enough comotion to get Father to his line. After this, all of the healthy people were put into cattle cars with no roof.

Wiesel used foreshadowing in the story of Mrs. Schachter by having her yelling about a fire. Of course, no one knew of what she was talking about, so they quieted her. She continues to yell later as well and so the young men gagged her. When they arrived at Auschwitz Mrs. Schachter was screaming about the flames and the fire. When the train stopped, everyone jumped out avoiding the strike of a stick, they thenk smelled the stench of burning flesh from the fire.