In Elie Wiesel's novel Night, there are details of his experiences as a young Jewish child during the Holocaust. Like the vast majority of Jews, Wiesel underwent painful physical and sentimental experiences. The novel functions as a potent reminder of both the atrocities executed during World War II and the endurance of the human spirit under terrible misfortune. Wiesel explores symbolism using a variety of symbols, such as bread, darkness, and others. Therefore, in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, fire symbolizes inhumanity, death, and fear. First and foremost, fire symbolizes inhumanity. Throughout Night inhumanity is reflected through physical abuse and starvation. “He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground, and picking me …show more content…
Fear serves as an illustration of how humanity and hope were lost in the death camps. This is due to the fact that captives were made to see the burning of their fellow inmates and the deterioration of their own bodies and spirits via hard labor and starvation, which resulted in a severe sense of terror and despair.“How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept quiet” (Wiesel 32). This quotation explains the immense trauma Elie went through. Then Elie utters, “All this could not be real” (Wiesel 32). Elie is so terrified that he believes it to be a dream that is not truly occurring in real life. The fear he expresses in that sentence is only one of many things that caused him to relinquish hope. Elie goes on to say, “We stayed in Gleiwitz for three days. Without food or water for three days" (Wiesel 91). Elie was physically frail due to the fact that he and other captives lacked the necessities for living, which made his desperation even worse. This resembles fire, much like fear, because it increases the sense of despair and helplessness experienced by individuals in the