Freedom In Elie Wiesel's Night

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Freedom is a privilege many of us share. Most of the time we do not give our liberty a second thought, because it doesn’t seem relevant. However, during the holocaust, millions of people did not get to experience freedom, because they were taken into camps and brutally tortured till their death. During these painfully godless times, many would hope and pray for just a taste of the freedom they once had. In Elie Wiesel’s astounding novel Night, Wiesel uses imagery to further the idea that confinement can make one long for the freedom they once took for granted.

In Night, Wiesel not only uses the word night as symbolism for gloom and hopelessness, but he also uses it as imagery to describe the miserable days. In chapter seven he states that “The days were like nights, and the nights left dregs of their darkness in our souls.” (Wiesel). Instead of simply saying the days were dark and the nights were darker, Wiesel takes a few words to describe just how dark and melancholy the hours felt. Basically Wiesel is saying that the days felt as depressing as a normal night, and the night took the lowest of emotions that it had to offer and left it for the prisoners to experience. Just by reading this one could pick up on the subtext that Wiesel longs to feel the happiness and warmth of a day, the freedom. Another example of imagery is on page seven, which states that Eliezer and Moshe would meet “in the synagogue after all the faithful had left, sitting in the gloom, where a few half-burned candles still gave a flickering light”. This signifies that the candles had been burning all …show more content…

This theme is not just important in a famous holocaust recollection, but is constantly seen in our world today. Millions of people are trapped and wish for freedom, but the free do not normally cherish their freedom every instant. Confinement can make one long for the freedom they once took for