preview

Theme Of Silence In Night By Elie Wiesel

Decent Essays

After nearly 2 years of misery, anguish, and despair, a young boy is finally freed to a normal life he had almost forgotten existed. Elie had started to become accustomed to the fact that indifference would be what decides if he survived in the concentration camps or not. In the novel, Wiesel employs the motif of silence to illustrate that silence from the Jews represents the fear, apathy, and the absence of God which results in them constantly feel hopeless and are mentally defeated.

While the Jews in the camps are silent, this doesn’t mean they’ve nothing to say, but rather means they’ve grown used to anything they say being in vain and they are too afraid to protest anything. Their cries for help are constantly ignored, even by each other. …show more content…

The silence from the world as well as the presumed absence of God had embedded a significance in the novel that Wiesel had started to accept muteness as a standard part of his life. He no longer expected anything from anyone but impartialness and has reached the point where he has submitted to the painful realization that his God had also chosen to spectate without action to their grief. While Elie is in the midst of perceiving this unjust reality he believes he is “Terribly alone in a world without God and without man” (65). The impassiveness from what seems to be everyone, has caused to Elie to feel that he is isolated in this camp and will continue to simply be ruled by the Nazis. Wiesel isn’t sure why God has chosen to turn a deaf ear to him and the other Jews as he wants to “Pray to the God within [him] for the strength to ask Him the real questions” (3). He wants the strength to ask God these questions because know why He and the world could be so cruel as to ignore the situation of the people in the concentration camps. Their neutrality only helping the

Get Access