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The Night By Elie Wiesel

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It was in Auschwitz during 1944, at the time of arrival about midnight when the smell of burning flesh saturated the air. There was an unimaginable nightmare of a truck unloading small children and babies thrown into the flames. However, this is only one event in this entire tragedy of events to be remembered in order to understand how deeply literal and symbolic the book entitled Night by Elie Wiesel is. The novel brings light to the reader about what the Jews faced while in the fire, hell and night; nonetheless, the author portrays each and every day during this year as a night in hell of conflagration. "Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes." (Wiesel 20). When Wiesel arrived at the camp he counted the longest dreadful ten steps of his life; he realized that his nightmare has just become unimaginable.
Elie Wiesel employs symbolism through fire; this is mentioned all throughout after Wiesel 's first night at the camp. "Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever." (Wiesel 34). These visual memories were only the beginning of what the Nazi 's had in store for the Jews. The journey on the train to Auschwitz was the epitome of fire when Mrs. Schachter cried out for a fire several times; meanwhile the Jews could not understand why she kept screaming fire. In

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