Elie Wiesel Motif Of Faith In Night

Although many people, when looking back at the Holocaust, immediately think of the Nazis terrorizing the Jews, what some people do not realize is that there are other factors that influenced this atrocity, which stripped the Jews of their basic human needs, their families, and their faith. Several survivors narrate just these things when asked to recount their time during the Holocaust; however, the ambience being felt stills remains a mystery to some. However, there is one survivor who specifically focuses on this fact. Written by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, a devout Jew, his memoir Night recounts his life from before the concentration camps up to the time he was taken to Auschwitz, and the Americans finally

For instance, this can be seen close to the beginning of the memoir, right before Wiesel's family is getting ready for deportation. Wiesel narrates, “Night. No one prayed, so that the night would pass quickly. The stars are only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes” (18). Whereas stars are traditionally portrayed to be signals of hope; in this case, Wiesel assigns a negative light to them. Not only that, but he also mentions the fact that no one prayed, and for him of all people, who wants to study Jewish religion to the highest level, this goes to show just exactly how terrifying the situation is. Perhaps this is why ‘night’ is used quite symbolically, rather then literally in most

In another scenario, when Wiesel first gets to Auschwitz, he hears a veteran prisoner yelling at all of the newcomers, “He [veteran prisoner] was growing hysterical in his fury. We stayed motionless, petrified. Surely it was all a nightmare? An unimaginable nightmare?” (28). Although night is a real event that occurs every day, a nightmare is generally known to be much more fictitious, whereas using ‘night’ usually brings the reader straight bad into reality. In this case, however, Wiesel finds it more fitting to incorporate the concept of a nightmare just to show how abstract and unreal the situation feels like, for at the time, it certainly did. The motif of night, which is mostly associated with death, darkness, loss of hope, and cruel acts, can also be used to describe indifference between people. As is evident when Wiesel narrates what his time is like on the train towards Buchenwald, “Pressed up against the others in an effort to keep out the cold, head empty and heavy at the same time, brain a whirlpool of decaying memories. Indifference deadened the spirit. Here or elsewhere – what difference did it make? To die today or tomorrow, or later? The night was long and never ending" (Wiesel 93). This not only proves the horrors the word night is associated with, but also, goes to show that the Holocaust dehumanized people to such an unimaginable degree then in the end, almost all the