Symbolism In Night By Elie Wiesel

Imagine yourself being beaten, starved, and worked to the core by german ss guards. In Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night the reader exposed to the life that a 14 year old jew had to go through when separated and put to work in a concentration camp. The text is full of Similes, Metaphors, Allusions, especially symbolism. The author uses the Cattle cars, The Star of David, and a Violin as the symbols in the book.

The second “kiss” from God Elie received was in the Rabbi’s words. When his life began to progressively become worse in the camps moments like the ones in the ghettos were not common; he began to become more despair. The book Night states, “He was the only rabbi whom nobody ever failed to address as "Rabbi" in Buna. He looked like one of those prophets of old, always in the midst of his people when they needed to be consoled. And, strangely, his words never provoked anyone.

In the beginning, Eliezer is a very strong follower of the Jewish Religion. In the early part of the book, before they are sent to the labor camps, Wiesel shows that he is strong with his faith when he says: “I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple (Wiesel 3).” This quote comes from the first page of the book, where Wiesel is talking about his life before the chaos started, circa. 1941.

Alienation occurs when someone is separated from society. Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. Everyday we hear of people being mistreated and harmed, yet we know very little of people’s personal experience of the event. To help us understand, authors use symbolism. In Night, we read of the experiences that Eliezer went through, and how it separated him from God.

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.

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.

“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.

For me, the greatest moment of sadness in the memoir is when Elie’s father dies. His death is gruesome and much suffering is shown throughout the last pages of the memoir. A dramatic shift is made in Elie’s perspective after this traumatic event. His father serves as his sole motivation to continue on in their cruel conditions and without him Elie is hopeless and alone. I feel Elie's father's death also symbolizes the unjustness of their situation.

In this scene from Night by Elie Wiesel (published 1958), Elie and many other men were crammed into train cars as they were transported from one concentration camp to another. Many men on the train had either reached their fate or were struggling though their last minutes. The men had been deprived of food for a very long time and were in desperate need of even the smallest crumb of food. Then, pieces of bread had been thrown into the wagon’s and everyone fought for the bread, not because they thought it would taste good, but because their lives depended on it. It was every man for themselves and people will willing to kill for a crust of bread, showing that life or death situations expose the evil side of people by showing their selfish natures.

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

In “Night,” Wiesel utilizes the title to symbolize death, loss of faith, and darkness throughout the story. During the Holocaust, death was extremely common among the laborers. The smokestacks are used to smoke the laborers and burn them to death. The objective of the laborers is to survive until they reach the end of the journey. While marching, Wiesel’s friend Zalman is becoming extremely ill and is in the process of dying.

The well-spoken Quintus Horatius Flaccus, more commonly known as Horace, once professed that hardship has the ability to provoke hidden skills that otherwise would have never displayed themselves. This philosophy is especially true in comparison to the life of Elie Wiesel, a courageous Holocaust survivor. Wiesel writes to all who haven't lived through the horror that is known as the Holocaust, in efforts of “transmitting the history of the disappearance” of those who were brutally and unrightfully killed. With a tone of gloom and mourning, Wiesel argues that if it wasn't for the fire that was ignited under him to relay the stories of those who were lost at Auschwitz, he would have never become the descriptive writer that he is. Many find that

Prisoners in Auschwitz received about three “meals” a day. Half a liter of “coffee” for breakfast, and a liter of soup for the noon meal. For dinner, the prisoners usually received about 10 ounces of black bread, with 25 grams of sausage or margarine, or a tablespoon of marmalade of cheese. The small amount of food prisoners got in concentration camps caused them to starve. In the story, Night, the absence of food caused Eliezer and others around him to slowly change themselves and their morales, hoping for a little extra soup or a crust of bread.

At the end of the book Elie called himself a “corpse”. Why he said this because he went through a lot during the Holocaust, mentally, physically and emotionally. It all started when his family and him were placed in the ghetto. He was lucky enough to have his own house in the ghetto. He got to sleep in his own bed and live in his own house.

Symbolism in Night Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. In the book Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the narrator’s father doesn’t see a problem with wearing the yellow star on his coat because he says that “no one has died from it”, but he doesn’t know or understand that it’s a symbol for something with a hidden meaning. The yellow star made the Jews easy to identify when deporting them to the camps. A different and deeper interpretation is that the yellow star represents isolation and was intended to humiliate the Jews and mark them out for humiliation and discrimination. There are many examples of symbolism in Night.