Literary Analysis of "Night" By Elie Wiesel

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Elie Wiesel was a victim of the Holocaust during WWII. His story- like many other people who witnessed the gruesome events that occurred during WWII- seems nearly intangible. Most people can not grasp the fact that millions of innocent Jews were murdered strategically by Hitler and his followers. For many of the victims of the Holocaust, it was hard for them to keep their will to live and continue with their religious views because they were suffering tremendously. The use of symbolism, concrete language, and choppy diction in Elie Wiesel’s writing portray the fact that during tough times it is easy to let go of one’s faith and give up hope. While at the concentration camp, the author discusses his reoccurring struggle to believe that his God is a great God. The author asks questions like “why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”(33). Once he witnesses the awful things that are happening at the camp to the Jewish people, he begins to question his religion; the author wonders why his God would allow something so terrible happen to his followers. In the novel he describes the time spent in the camp as a time without God. In the bible, when God is creating the earth, His first action is to make light to banish the darkness; meaning that darkness refers to life with no God. Wiesel uses the night as a symbol throughout his work to depict that his time at the camp was one long night; a night without his God. The first night Wiesel spent in the camp was described as “the first night in camp that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed” (34). This is the place in the novel where this symbolism was first introduced; when things for the author begin to go wrong. As the dreadful events of the Holocaust continued, the symbol of night sustained through
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