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

What is symbolism? It is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. What I will be talking about in this essay is how symbolism was used in the book “Night” by Eliezer Wiesel. While there are many different versions of symbolism in the story I will only be focusing on three that I think are the best to talk about. Those three include the yellow stars the Jews had to wear, the spoon and knife Eliezer got from his father, and the title of the book.

The word night can represent sleep and peacefulness, but it can also bring darkness and the unknown. The author of the book Night, Elie Wiesel, wrote about his traumatic experience as a teenage boy during the Holocaust. Wiesel chose the title Night because of the fear felt by the Jews which the word night symbolizes. Night symbolizes the fear because of the multiple times the Jews transfered location during night, the fear the prisoners experienced daily of what may happen to them and their family after hearing stories from fellow Jews, and the horrific killings and executions that happened throughout the memoir including the hanging of the young Pipel. The book focuses on the experiences Wiesel goes through during the Holocaust.

The element of symbolism is so strong and predominant in the novel “Night,” we are able to delve deeper into the heinous experiences the Jews were subjected to during the Holocaust. There is no sure way to empathize with the victims of the Holocaust, but survivor Elie Wiesel opens the eyes of the reader to so many encounters that the Jews had to face in order to survive. Wiesel was able to portray individual emotions while using tangible objects or acts. Elie’s father, the march of the Jews, and the fire in the story all represent a deeper interpretation of themselves.

The symbol is Night, the title of the book is also a symbol. Wiesel wanted to use this symbol to respond to what happened at night. Wiesel wanted to tell the reader what he had to do with his new headlines in the evening. Wiesel said the evening experience "made my life a long night, sealed seven times. " The author began to doubt that God could help him get rid of despair and pain, because he appeared in a long suffering and never saw the so-called God.

In brief, this story is labeled “night”, the author is Elie Wiesel. The tone of this story is intimate, and affectionate, it characterizes the extraordinary painful and personal experience of a single victim. The setting first takes place in Sighet, Transylvania, and then Elie is transported to several concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Gleiwitz; he spends the time there in the years 1941-1945, during World War II. Eliezer struggled to maintain faith in a caring God; Silence; Inhumanity to other humans. The first symbolism is fire; Madame Schachter foreshadows death and horror “look, look at it, fire, a terrible fire, mercy, oh that fire”.

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 novel "Night" by Elie Wiesel was full of symbolism, the word "night" in the first chapter was used as both a symbol and metaphor. Wiesel used the word "night" as a metaphor for the holocaust, the horror among thousands of families and the darkness that was upon them when entering the concentration camps. On the other hand "night" was used as a symbol as well, Wiesel illustrates the world with no light and no hope which he was faced to survive in. Essentially in the first chapter, one night elie's father had been telling a story to his family and was interrupted, forced to leave- only to find out the Jews were being deported- this story remained untold throughout the novel, and then symbolized what his family left behind when they were

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night"(Wiesel 34). Through Elie Wiesel’s witness of a genocide of his own people, the horrors that became his reality for a period of time was a never ending series of darkness. In his memoir Night, Wiesel uses night to symbolize a period of suffering and despair during his experience through the Holocaust. Night also symbolizes the darkness and hole left in Wiesel after this disaster has occured. Many survivors of the Holocaust are still terrified to tell their stories based on the fact that what they experienced still remains shocking to express.

“Never shall I forget the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed, and seven times sealed” (Wiesel 32). As portrayed in this passage from Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, “night” is used numerous times as a central symbol. The nonfiction novel takes place during the Holocaust throughout several concentration camps. The word “night” literally means the period of darkness in each twenty-four hours; the time from sunset to sunrise, but symbolically it commonly represents sadness, fear, and negative commendations.

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.

Eliezer is a young Jewish boy who studies Talmud and Kabbalah. The next day, his teacher Moishe the Beadle a group of deportees are on a train that get hijacked and everyone is taken captive. A very awful, tragic event occurs, the Gestapo (the group that hijacks the train) executes the deportees who were “used as targets” (6). Moishe survives the massacre but is very unstable and is driven to despair and cries “tears, like drop of wax” because the people do not believe him (7). There are now new laws to abide by, every Jew has to wear the yellow star and no longer has the right to perform certain acts.

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.

“Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. ”- Shania Twain.

The Holocaust was one of the most horrifying times in the world for Jews. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, he retells his terrifying experience and existence within a concentration camp that was nothing more than the destruction of human life. As a thirteen year old boy, Elie Wiesel becomes got trapped in a world of hell. Auschwitz, a death camp for all Jews, was controlled by the German soldiers. Within Auschwitz all freedom and humanity is denied.