Rhetorical Devices Used In Night Elie Wiesel

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.

This is further supported by a similar excerpt later in the novel, when Eliezer witnesses the men in a wagon fight over a piece of bread, and then witnesses something similar years later. In this excerpt Wiesel describes a time when he saw a rich woman throwing coins to two young boys, and he watches them, “desperately fighting in the water, one trying to strangle the other,” (Wiesel 100). These two acts of cruelty, the Germans throwing bread and the woman throwing coins, directly mirror one another, and Wiesel’s reaction is indicative of the way his experiences have changed him. The presentation of these impacts further the intimate nature of the text, they force the reader to look at the holocaust as more than a historical

Elie Wiesel's harsh diction in the memoir "Night" shows how Wiesel beared witness to history. In multiple parts of the text, Wiesel uses more harsh words showing the fury in the Nazi's words and actions. In one situation, the Jewish community was shipped to the concentration camps. Receiving their assignment and rough punishments. Along with that, if the Jewish people weren't going fast enough to the German's liking they would have their human rights violated.

Through Wiesel’s choice of metaphors, he is revealing how careless and cruel the SS officers are towards all the Jews to lose faith. For example, when the prisoners first arrived at Auschwitz, “Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies!”

The third type of figurative language Wiesel uses in his writing is personification. On page 14, this figurative language is used when he describes “The shadows around me roused themselves as if from a deep sleep and left silently in every direction.” This evidence is a strong example of personification because it describes the tension in the room to help readers understand this part of the story on a deeper level. By using a variety of figurative languages in his memoir, Elie Wiesel was able to make the story more realistic and detailed for the

However, Wiesel did not just witness these appalling events he was a part of some as well. One of the most heartbreaking things he witnessed was what the Nazis were doing to infants. Wiesel went on the write about the horrors he witnessed while at Auschwitz on page 6 of the book Night: “Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for machine guns.” Although this was a horrendous scene Wiesel mentioned many more throughout the book. Wiesel had experienced a beating of his own also: “He leapt on me, throwing me down and pulling me up again, his blows growing more and more violent, until I was covered with blood” (Wiesel 50).

Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, is a moving and powerful account of the Holocaust. The book provides a first-hand account of the horrors of the concentration camps and the impact they had on the author’s life. In order to convey the emotional impact of his experiences, Wiesel uses imagery to evoke pathos, the appeal to emotion, causing the readers to feel sad but also hopeful. A way that Wiesel uses pathos in Night in order to create a sense of dread and sadness for his audience is by using vivid imagery of the horrible crimes he witnessed. “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children.

Wiesel writes, “This is what the antechamber of hell must look like. So many crazed men, so much shouting, so much brutality.” This quote shows just how bad the camps were because the only thing that Wiesel can compare it to is Hell, and wants the reader to feel sorry for

(Wiesel 41). In this passage, the chilling tone of fear and despair is conveyed through the narrator's description of his encounter with the SS man, who is referred to as the "Angel of Death." The use of this metaphorical language creates a powerful and haunting image of the inhumanity and brutality of the concentration camps. The imagery of the teeth chattering also emphasizes the physical and emotional toll of the prisoners' experiences. By using tone and imagery together in this way, Wiesel is able to convey the overwhelming sense of horror and helplessness that characterized life in the camps.

He did not believe in his father and he left him to die. It’s hard to imagine what he and his father went through. 3 years of brutal labor, harsh winters, and public executions were common day-to-day things that you would see at a camp. He had been dehumanized to the point that he had willingly chosen to let his father die and he never looked back. Wiesel uses imagery to show how dehumanization had effected the jews mindset.

The overall purpose of Wiesel’s speech was to emphasize the danger of indifference and the importance of compassion. He has made this compelling to the reader through his use of devices such as pathos, and by calling us, the readers and listeners, to take action, warning us that passivity is itself a choice. Wiesel’s prime exigence is his experience in the Holocaust, where ‘a Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night’ (118). This boy is a symbol; a version of himself separated and personified as another victim, lost to the horrors of the Holocaust. He is Wiesel’s naivety, his innocence, and his youth, and now Wiesel’s duty to remember.

In the beginning of this novel, Wiesel is this sweet innocent boy who holds the door open at church and shares his toys. But as the novel progresses, he starts to lose that sweet nature of himself when faced with his struggle to endure the hardships of the camps. “He had felt his father growing weaker and, believing that the end was near, had thought by this separation to free himself of a burden that could diminish his own chance for Survival.” on page 91.

Eli Wiesel’s story of his experience in concentration camps in the book Night, the emotion in chapter 3 that Wiesel is trying to convey is dreary. Wiesel, who was once a light-hearted boy, loses any feelings he once had causing him to fall into a lifeless body. After being treated like animals and being scared of the unknown, Wiesel felt the world go dark, his “senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self- defense, of pride, had all deserted us” (2).

Wiesel wanted to make us feel sad and trust him by using pathos in the speech. At the beginning of the speech, he states, “Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.” In this part of his talk, he tells the people that no one can ever make up for the loss of so many people in the concentration camps.

Nearing the end of his time in the camps, Wiesel's father was unfortunately dying of dysentery, causing Wiesel to worry incessantly and sacrifice some of his own rations for his father. As a struggling young boy himself, Wiesel did occasionally wish that he could forfeit the responsibility of his father, though he was always remorseful afterwards. As his father approached his deathbed, a fellow inmate advised Wiesel to remember his circumstances: “‘Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others’” (Wiesel 110).