Survival In Elie Wiesel's Night

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, there is a motif of survival and a central idea that when one is put in a desperate situation, developments that may otherwise seem either mundane or horrifying may instead be seen as remarkable or amazing. When all the guards leave their posts because of an alarm signal, two cauldrons of soup are left unattended. All of the prisoners quickly take note of the soup and are in awe, “two cauldrons of soup with no one to guard them! A royal feast” (Wolff 59). The author’s use of hyperbole in describing the deliciousness and quality of the soup makes the disparity of the prisoners clear. The reader does not consider two cauldrons of soup that has been described as nothing better than “thick” to be a “royal feast”