Dignity In Elie Wiesel's Night

In the World War II extermination camp Chelmno there were 150,000 deaths, the camp Belzec had 435,000 deaths, and the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp ruled with over 1,000,000 deaths. In the unbelievable novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author gives the audience a first person look on his experiences throughout his time at several prisoner of war camps as a Jewish teenager. Through the use of motifs about the night and a person’s eyes, Wiesel writes about the deeper meaning of how he kept his dignity in the face of inhumane cruelty. By analyzing the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, one can interpret the central theme of the story into a deeper meaning from the descriptions of the night and eyes, which is important because it helps younger generations to understand clearly what Holocaust survivors endured.

During the second world war, prisoners of war were often troubled between maintaining their pride or choosing survival. For example, Elie’s first memories at camp showed the immense struggle he had that night with understanding his situation. After some thought, his interesting conclusion was that, “the stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us” (21). Later in the novel, as the prisoners were being prepared for the long march, Elie concluded he must persist through the route to keep his dignity and to live. In fact, before the trip Elie looked at the gates in front of the prisoners that would lead majority of them to their death. Once outside the camp, “it seemed as though an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side” (84). The motif of night can be identified effortlessly because of the key words and attention grabbing context of the literary