Night Analysis

Serenity Gray
February 27, 2014
Night Literary Analysis

Close your eyes. Now imagine being ran out your house, unacceptable racism and discrimination towards you, your family, and your beliefs. Horrific feelings that tomorrow might be your last, and a feeling of relief when it’s not. Seeing your mother one day, then being gone the next, or what about watching your father die basically in your arms and his last words being your name. Now open your eyes. In “Night” through and overcame the struggle in the 1940’s during the holocaust. Wiesel uses many literary devices such as flashback, symbolism, and imagery to let you go back with him and help you understand the cruelty, and inhumanity. Elie Wiesel uses symbolism throughout the book to briefly illustrate death and his faith. But one main part where he uses it, is to describe the flames. Madame Schachter has many outburst when she got visions about fire and flames. “Jews, listen to me! I can see a fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace!” (Wiesel 34). She cries. The whole entire time she had the visions, everyone thought that she was delusional. As the Jews arrived to the concentration camp, they had realized a whole new side to life. Madame Schachter was right. Wiesel uses flashback throughout “Night” to briefly tell how he’ll never forget what happened with his experiences during the holocaust. That it’ll stay with him forever. In one part of the story he says:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” (Wiesel 32).
Elie tells how his first day in camp went, and how not only his faith was destroyed, but his beliefs with God were also. Elie Wiesel uses imagery throughout the book to basically symbolize death and his faith. Wiesel goes through so many obstacles during his time in concentration camps. He discuses about how babies, woman, and man were yes you heard correct, babies were being burned in the crematory. He tells:
“ I pinched my face. Was I still alive? Was I awake? I could not believe it. How could it be possible for them to burn people, children, and for the world to keep silent?” (pg. 30) Reading this put a bad image in my mind. It’s sad because they treated them terrible. How could someone let this happen? It was not humanity. In “Night”, Elie Wiesel uses symbolism, flashback, and imagery to illustrate the unfailing trauma that he endured throughout the holocaust. He goes back in a horrific time where inhumanity, racism, discrimination, and hatred occured. A time when Jews didn’t matter, and were looked down on.