Figurative Language In Night By Elie Wiesel

In both Elie Wiesel’s, Night and the excerpt from Rudolf Vrba’s, I escaped from Auschwitz, a sense of desolation and callousness loomed throughout each biography. The figurative language and diction in each autobiography illustrate the camps to be horrific and dismal. Wiesel’s creates a powerful tone of despair through vividly harrowing imagery. When describing the conditions of the camp prison life, Wiesel uses exaggerated painful imagery to produce the atrocious experience, and create the hopeless tone. To express the weather was cold and fierce Eliezer claimed the “glacial wind lashed us like a whip”(Wiesel 77).

In Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech he says, “For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences,”. This is such a powerful quote because it tells the truth. This quote tells you not everything is happy and kind and will turn out for good. This quote tells us that your perspective and your experiences are a representation of your life. Even with the horrible experiences Wiesel went through during the Holocaust he still was still able to catch some sparks of kindness. Elie Wiesel use characterization, imagery, and figurative language to relay kindness through the book Night.

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.

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.

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.

In the memoir “Night” the author, Elie Wiesel uses word choice to show the readers disbelieving tone. This choice is important to the narrative as a whole because it develops the reader's understanding of the characters conflict of dealing with his own sadness. When Elie was in the concentration camp, the author says “Never shall I forgot those moments that murdered my god and soul and turned my dreams into ashes”. This is an example of repetition and word choice. By including repetition and word choice the author make the reader feel the impact of what is happening to Elie because of I can’t imagine what he was going through and how he felt. Then is repeated when Elie was talking to his father and his father asks him if he remembers. The author

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.