Night Symbolism In Night By Elie Wiesel

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

Elie Wiesel concluded his memoir, Night, by describing his feelings when he sees himself in the mirror for the first time since he left the ghetto. The purpose of this is to portray the state his body and mind is in. Elie describes himself as a corpse because his humanity had been stolen from him after so many years of suffering. Elie also was at the brink of starvation and death, which would have contributed to his corpse-like appearance. Elie went nearly an entire week without eating, and this is detrimental to his body.

For my creative response to Night by Elie Wiesel, I decided to make an alternative book cover. The theme that I chose to portray in my adaptation of the cover is the journey from darkness to light. My cover is black at the top and the amount of black reduces towards the bottom of the cover. I did this to show the transition from darkness to light that is shown during this novel.

The brutality the Germans displayed in the 1930s through the 1940s was utterly horrifying. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author’s harrowing experience is shared. The Holocaust is worldly known as being one of the largest genocides in history, but not many truly understand what it was like to live through and witness. Many who encountered the cruelty and merciless of the Germans have passed but a few remain that live to tell their story to the world and try to explain the feelings that coursed through them during the genocide and even now. Wiesel, who lived in Auschwitz for nearly four years, shares his story and symbolism is prevalent throughout the text.

Before I begin discussing about the symbolism in Night, I want to point out the importance of symbolism in any form of storytelling, and even in reality. In a way, symbolism is what makes ordinary objects or symbols into meaning. Symbolism can make anything as powerful as actual words. In that sense, symbolism creates the story being read. I believe a story can become more powerful and more touching if there is a very symbolic object or symbol involved.

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.

in the book “night” Eliezer Weisel says, “night fell, night had fallen, and night was falling. Eliezer Weisel means that by night people were dying and passing away. This has a reference to death because when people die they close their eyes, and its night forever. There were people dying left and right. Some people believed that if they died they would be with God.

In the short novel, Night by Elie Wiesel, the author discusses an event of tremendous scarring effect to him and all those unfortunate to be caught in it’s scourge, The Holocaust. From the new age diaspora, death marches, cremation, and many other tyrannical actions from the German Reich that left all witnesses traumatized. These horrendous acts brought out a primal version of self preservation in the prisoners. The prisoners self preservation is displayed through their fight for rations of bread, their relentless labor to avoid the path to death that is tested by Dr. Mengele, leading the prisoners ultimately to the crematorium.

The Nazi's dehumanizes the Jews like animals by being psychologically deprived of their necessities. In the beginning of the story, the Hungarian police and later the SS soldiers force all the Jewish people into ghettos, Elie says: "There was no longer any distinction between rich and poor, notables and the others; we were all people condemned to the same fate" (Wiesel 21). The Hungarian police and the Nazi's take away the Jews individual rights as people and their safety as they are placed in a confined space they are seen as the same. Consequently, at the death camp, Auschwitz Elie was given a number along with other Jewish people to symbolically show them that they are inferior to the Germans: "I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other

Although the German dictators are trying to destroy the minds of their prisoners in order to create more compliant slaves, the Jews find ways to rebel and reasons to live. The Nazi soldiers take away everything they can from the jews except the basic human needs, but however hard they try, they can not take away their faith, hope, and friendship. These forces can not simply be taken away and they have become a coping mechanism for the repressed Jews because they are reasons to live and they make the grueling work easier. Most of the Jews in Night come from religious backgrounds, so they pray to get through difficult situations. Practicing their religion is a way of “escaping from reality” and “not feeling the blows” from the truncheons that

Death plays a bigger role in life than life itself. When people die, people cry, and while people cry, a clear moment of lucidity occurs. Death is what makes every moment worth living and is told through stories of books and movies with symbols both subtle and blunt. Night, for example, is an autobiographical novel recalling Eliezer’s experience through concentration camps while The Book Thief is a historical fiction film where Liesel is a bystander who participates in activities symbolizing war. History is intertwined death.

God Help Us Through its survivors, memories of the Holocaust live on today. During World War II, Adolf Hitler was destined to exterminate all Jewish communities in occupied Europe. Nazi Germany began this exterminated in concentration camps, which eventually became death camps. Elie Wiesel, a fifteen year old Jewish boy, becomes mindful to the corruption of human nature caused by concentration camps, which eventually become death camps. The remembrance of the Holocaust is resurrected in Elie Wiesel’s Night, where Elie proves to lose faith in God by evoking his feelings about the corruption of humanity.

Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer seems to be able to get through the holocaust with much, if not all of his humanity intact. Although not the boy he once was, and although after his father dies he seems not to care about anything but food, he still wants to live and he wants to make it out alive: “ ‘Go back to your block. The germans plan to shoot you. Go back and don’t move.’ We returned to the block” (Wiesel 114).

The darkness of night can foment fears and apprehension of what is to come in the future. Ultimately, the fears of night can be used to symbolize death and the evil within man. In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel shares his difficult experiences at the concentration camp of Auschwitz during the Holocaust. His survivor testimony records the deaths of his family members, the abrupt loss of his innocence, and his confrontation with the absolute evil in man.

In Elie’s statement, he claims he looked in the mirror for the first time since the ghetto, stating that all he saw staring back at him was his withered, and frail figure which will not only haunt Wiesel for the rest of his life but also show the death of his spirit. “From the depths of the mirror, the corpse was contemplating me. ” (Wiesel 115) In this quote, Wiesel describes his body, referring it to a corpse. Wiesel did not truly recognize himself as he immersed in the depths of the mirror, this is what Elie implied when he said “...