Book Thief Imagery

Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, is a powerful testimony to the horrors of the Holocaust. Throughout the book, Wiesel employs various literary devices to convey his experiences and emotions. In this literary analysis essay, we will explore the literary devices used in Night and their impact on the reader. One of the most prominent literary devices used in Night is imagery.

In this paper I will argue that through the use of diction, tone, and symbolism both authors convey the emotional toll and psychic impact of traumatic events, such as witnessing a hanging and having someone close to them die, which deeply influences the readers interpretation of the memoirs. In Wiesel’s Night the build-up of trauma is correlated with his gradual loss of faith in God, especially when he witnesses the hanging of a child. The author explains that he had grown accustom to watching the hanging of prisoners in the concentration camp, in fact he mentions being unaffected by these occurrences. This is not the case when he witnesses the hanging of a young pipel who has been commended to death for keeping his silence over the crimes of his commanding Oberkapo. Wiesel’s diction in Night is emotional for the most part; this is particularly true for the passage where he describes witnessing the hanging of the pipel.

Accessed 23 April 2018. Mays, Kelly J. “Chapter 1 Understanding the Text.” The Norton Introduction to Literature 12th Edition, edited by Spencer Richardson-Jones, W.W. Norton & Company, 2017, pp 92 & 1421. McGuire, Thomas G. and Bryan Doerries. "Bryan Doerries Discusses the Theater of War & the Palliative of Shared Suffering."

When torment and fatality lingers closely around the corner, humanity's view of the world battles for pleasantry amidst the despair. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Wiesel and the ensnared Jews of his community struggle through the transition of leaving their tranquil town and entering a life of strenuous work inside Auschwitz. Throughout their transition, the Jews struggle to keep a jubilant view of the world surrounding them as they enter a life filled with dismay. Wiesel uses whimsical and despairing diction to contrast the Jew’s consoling denial of death and the impending shock and agony of the crematoriums. Showing the misery soon to come, Wiesel uses assuaging phrases that are quickly contrasted by foreboding ones.

Mr. Wiesel’s words are vivid and his message is very powerful. Wiesel exemplifies the theme of hunger and death to vividly express his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main focal point was to describe the traumatizing scenes and feelings he suffered as a repressed jew. As generations passed on, people found the actions of Nazis unimaginable. The book “Night” more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.

The pain one suffers not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well. This wicked and compelling testimony unveils the motives of the concentration camps during World War Two. The story is told through the eyes of Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who struggles to stay alive, as well as many other Jews, including his father. Death is staring Elie face-to-face as he hangs on to what life he has left in the camps. When death literally surrounds Elie and his father, their faith, humanity, strength, and courage are greatly challenged.

Through this, the central idea expressed is that there is great importance in breaking the silence and remembering those lost by sharing their stories. A specific case of the value of speaking out for the victims of the Holocaust during Night emerged in the preface of the novel when Wiesel talks about how difficult it is to understand the conditions and circumstances at the time truly, but also how difficult it can be for survivors to reflect on their experiences. This can be seen as he questions how society could ever understand how truly horrendous the Holocaust was, but “having lived through this experience, one could not keep silent no matter how difficult, if not impossible, it was to speak” (Wiesel, preface). As

People’s actions have a significant impact on an individual's perception of life. Whether in verbal, or physical form, it can completely alter one's beliefs and optimism. In Night, Elie Wiesel explores the devastating impact of the Holocaust on the faith of the prisoners; It illustrates how the dismay of the concentration camps and the cruelty of the Nazi regime can shatter even the strongest of beliefs in God, humanity, and oneself.

The Holocaust is a notorious event during World War II where six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. In “The Book Thief”, written my Markus Zusak, and the “Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum”, by Michael Kimmelman, both seek to engage and educate the citizens all around the world about the horrors of the Holocaust; however, they teach about the Holocaust from different perspectives. To start with, “The Book Thief” was a fictional book taking place during the Holocaust and WWII. What makes this book so interesting is that it was told in the perspective of Death as if Death was a human being, so the audience gets the portray through Death’s “eyes” himself.

Liesel has realized she must respect the man who was the reason for her and her entire families suffering. She has realized she officially has lost her home, that she is completely isolated from the community. “It was quite a sight seeing an eleven year old girl try not to cry on church steps, saluting fuhrer”(Zusak 115). After losing all of these emotionally wrecking things Liesel learns and understands she needs to keep going forward. She refuses to give up she although times are rough manages to think, it could be worse.

Death is not afraid to show its face around others, especially during times of war or genocide. Both Liesel Meminger in “The Book Thief” and Elie Wiesel in “Night” can attest to this. In each story, Liesel and Elie undergo unimaginable hardships, but are able to overcome these experiences. Through these trying times, the authors of both “The Book Thief” and “Night” advance the theme of perseverance through grief.

He presents his memoir this way because there is no way for language to adequately describe the terror. Furthermore, language depicting feelings cannot properly bear witness so that is why it is not present. Rather Memoir, and this selected passage is written bluntly describing the torment of the Holocaust. The sense of verbal language and body language found within this piece were powerful despite being very simple. The right or left was known to all as the difference between life and death.

Empathy helps Liesel connect with others, specifically her foster father, Hans Hubermann. She creates a close bond with him because he demonstrates kindness and empathy to Liesel, which helps her learn the value of empathy. As a result, this has an effect on how she communicates with others, such as her foster mother Rosa and her friend Rudy Steiner. Liesel develops a passion for books and reading, which becomes a way for her to cope with the harsh realities of her life. As she reads books to others, such as her neighbors during air raids or to Max, a Jewish refugee hiding in her basement, Liesel realizes the power of words to comfort, inspire, and connect people.

Both Timothy Findley’s ‘The Wars’ and Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ delve into extreme detail on the absurdity and tragedy of war and life itself. The books and the characters within are often befuddled, bemused, or held subject to the mad whims of a world that is ultimately apathetic to whether they live or die. Both books utilize their unique narrative structures to emphasize the absurd nature of death, specifically, the meaning of death in wartime. The authors of both stories utilize the effect that the deaths of others have on the protagonists, the selective revealing of information to both the readers and the characters, as well as the beliefs and thoughts of important figures in the narrative to impart two very powerful messages

Life as a Jew during the Holocaust can be very harsh and hostile, especially in the early 1940’s, which was in the time of the Holocaust. “Sometimes we can only just wait and see, wait for all the things that are bad to just...fade out.” (Pg.89) It supports my thesis because it explains how much the Jewish community as