Elie Wiesel wrote the novel entitled Night as a memoir telling the story of the author’s life as a Jewish boy during the time of the Holocaust. In his book, the author vividly creates a detailed account of his memories of the events surrounding the Holocaust and especially the tragic and painful experiences people encountered. The Naxi concentration camps and the whole anti-Jewish campaign are depicted as inhumane crimes against the whole people. The tragedy and darkness of the events portrayed deliver the main idea of the decay of religious and moral ideals as an indicator of the fall of humanity. Thus, this paper is designed to claim that Wiesel uses metaphoric language, rhetorical questions, and fragmented first-person narration to show that the life of Jews during the Holocaust was limited to survival.
The author deliberately uses an array of literary devices and techniques when delivering the theme of survival in one of the darkest periods in history. When creating the narrative, Wiesel repeatedly refers to metaphors and similes to draw parallels between the reality he observed in life under Nazi rule and his personal perception of it. Indeed, the memories of being taken to the concentration camp are intertwined with metaphorical language. For example, Wiesel calls soldiers “faces of hell and death” and describes his mother’s face as a mask under the burden of inevitable death (19). In addition, the main character describes his experience as if his “soul had been invaded – and devoured – by a black flame” (Wiesel 37). Overall, the use of darkness, Night, and blackness in the narration allows for reinforcing the theme of death and survival as a last resort throughout the book. Thus, metaphorical language helps the author emphasize the theme of survival as the only hope for people facing death.
In a similar manner, the rhetorical questions that persistently appear throughout the text make readers involved emotionally in the storyline and empathize with the depicted events. For example, within the memories of the time before being taken to the concentration camp, the narrator asks, “Where were the people being taken? Did anyone know yet?” (Wiesel 18). Being in the context of knowing where they were taken and the atrocities they would experience, the reader is persistently reminded of the desperation for survival that surrounded Jewish existence at that time. When the soldiers make the imprisoned Jews run, the author asks, “Who would have thought that we were so strong?” vividly showing the effect that the fear of death might have on an individual.
One of the most powerful techniques that the author uses in his book is first-person narration. Such an approach to creating a storyline allows for obtaining in a reader a feeling of witnessing the events not as fiction but as a reality, which, in the case of Wiesel’s memoir, is true. Moreover, a continuous repetition of oppositions contrasts the darkness of reality with the hope and peace of normal life. Indeed, the prayers the main character says when being taken to the concentration camp and the comparison of time waiting, flying like a cloud in the sky, remind readers of cruelty and inhumanity (16-20). Thus, Night is an emotionally charged and detailed story about survival during the Holocaust meticulously delivered by the writer as a reminder of atrocities that should never repeat again. Survival as the main theme is emphasized through the use of literary devices and techniques to oppose life as the highest value to death as a means of terror.
Work Cited
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Marion Wiesel, Hill and Wang, 2006.