Figurative Language In Night By Elie Wiesel

He was finally free, no joy filled his heart but abandonment was drowning it. How dangerous is indifference to humankind as it pertains to suffering and the need for conscience understanding when people are faced with unjust behaviors? Elie Wiesel is an award winning author and novelist who has endured and survived hardships. One of the darkest times in history, a massacre of over six million Jews, the Holocaust and Hitler himself. After the Holocaust he went on and wrote the internationally acclaimed memoir “Night,” in which he spoke out against persecution and injustice across the world. In the compassionate yet pleading speech, ¨Perils of Indifference,¨ Elie Wiesel analyzes the injustices that himself and others endured during the twentieth century, as well as the hellish acts of the Holocaust through effective rhetorical choices.

Night by Elie Wiesel is the terrifying testimony of Elie’s memories of the death of his family, innocence, and faith. In the novel, Elie Wiesel uses the grotesque images of men collapsing from the torture of the S.S. and their mocking and ironic comments to not only display the pain and unjust cruelty that the victims of the holocaust endured, but to convey the theme of strength through syntax in the use of first person plural and allusions. At the beginning of chapter six, the prisoners are forced to run through the cold, winter snow by the S.S., to travel to another camp. As they are running the S.S. yell at them, “Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs…

As said by Audrey Hepburn; “Living is like tearing through a museum, not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can’t take it in all at once.” In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the Holocaust took place in an order of layers. As time passed, the extremity was increased each chapter he succumbed to. Elie expresses raw emotion in his memoir, Night, and leaves you in a complete, utter state of wonder and sadness. Not only this, but remembering and cherishing the importance of all the emotions from this time in history. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the theme of remembering is present before the Holocaust and in today’s society.

Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.

Have you ever been through a situation that has hindered you to an extent of where you couldn’t find the right words to express how it made you feel or what happened in that specific event? If so, then you’re not alone. Survivors of the holocaust, a genocide that took place during World War II to systematically kill millions of Jews, have too had a difficult time expressing the horrific period of their life after they were taken from the comfort of their homes and sent to concentration camps. Elie Wiesel, a main character in the novel Night, was a survivor and one of those people who didn’t know what words to use in terms of telling his experiences in the captivity. As a result, Wiesel found other techniques to use, which includes using words as symbols, repetition and explaining how the original meaning of a word is sometimes not enough to thoroughly tell the full story.

Elie Wiesel argues that indifference denies the humanity of victims and urges people to face their own indifference.

In the 1940s, while many of the people focused on the Second World War, Hitler and many of the Germans under his influence killed numerous groups of people that tainted the German or Aryan superior 4race. These people included Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, people with disabilities, prisoners of war, and communists. The Final Solution, or the Holocaust as it is known now, was a plan made by the top of the Nazi party and was executed primarily by Hitler's followers. Holocaust, the word now brings living fear to those who experienced the tragedy and those reading the survivors' accounts. Night by Elie Wiesel, a memoir using logos and pathos at a high efficiency, and Schindler`s letter by his Jews, excels at providing creditability, are two accounts that have ample amounts of rhetoric.

Night focus’ on the journey of a young, 15 year old boy named Elizer, and his movement from concentration camp to camp. In Night, an autobiography by Elie Wisel, the purpose is to inform the readers of the hardships of the heinous holocaust. Through negatively connotated figurative language and religious perspective, he emphasizes the emotional pain the prisoners endured.

The Holocaust, one of the most brutal cases of genocide this world has seen or may ever see for that matter. Elie Wiesel, author of Night and Perils of Indifference lived it. He lived through the beating, the torture, the running, the camps. The Holocaust. I think he delivered Night better. I believe that Night was viewed by more people and was more descriptive than Perils of Indifference.

Elie uses literary techniques to explain to the reader the dread and suffering during the Holocaust. Elie wanted to leave an impression on his readers so they would never forget the atrocities he and countless others endured. Elie used many forms of literary devices to show this. For example, he used simple, stark language, symbolism, juxtaposition, and much more in order to portray the feelings he felt. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he uses writing techniques in order to show his despair during his experiences in the Holocaust.

We communicate through words, but imagine if nobody could understand you at some point and you had to find different ways to express yourself. During World War II, two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe were killed, this attempt of genocide is known as the Holocaust. Survivors of this have had trouble searching for the right words to express their selves and experiences. Although they struggled, they managed to find ways to tell their stories through symbolism, the repetition of words, and confessing the failure of words.

Elie Wiesel narrates, “… I was alone — terribly alone in a world without God and without man.” (Wiesel, 65) Elie, a young Jewish boy, who grew up in the Jewish faith says these few words in the midst of captivity. Back in Elie’s hometown these few words could arouse angry responses, but presently many would agree with these few words. Along with Elie, many members of the Jewish faith can agree as all their faith is being evaporated. How and why is Elie experiencing a loss in faith? The answer is simple. During the novel Night, Elie Wiesel reveals a change in his faith as he experiences a loss in faith throughout the beginning, middle and end of the novel.

One way someone can speak the unspeakable is through repetition. Document A states, “ A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes… children thrown into the flames” (Elie). This shows how this event was so scarring to Elie, that he could not go back to a state of innocence after that incident. Also, the text states, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night 7 times folded” (Elie). The constant repetition of the phrase “Never shall I forget” speaks the unspeakable by emphasizing the fact that

“To be silent is impossible, to speak forbidden.” said author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. This quote here is Wiesel’s way of showing one who did not experience time during the Holocaust how it is fair to say that they could never begin to understand what it was like. If one were also to ask Wiesel to speak about the work he did or what he saw at the concentration camps, he may explain how speaking of it fails to acknowledge the depth of evil put out, and how it is discourteous to the memories of those who died during the Holocaust. Speaking may be forbidden, however, it is for the failure it may bring for speaking the truth about the Holocaust.

Elie Wiesel used his memories to emphasize his experience at the multiple concentration camps he attended. His experiences as a fifteen year old created memories not easily forgotten, and were often added on due to the many horrifying things he saw while attending those camps. Elie describes his first night by stating “Never shall i forget that night in camp that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed”, Wiesel would never recover from the images of babies being thrown into fires, and people dying all around him (Wiesel 34). A constant circle of death. This quote shows the effect memories have on us, and the effect that it creates in our minds. It creates how we feel about certain people and the way we look at our relationships. Night, usually standing for rest, and recovery, now turns malicious and amplifies the events seen that night by Wiesel. Wiesel also shows us the effect that memories have on us when deals with his memory of the child's death. “Their tongues were hanging out,