Motifs In Elie Wiesel's Night

Fire is often a symbol of pain and suffering and is particularly evident throughout different personal accounts of historical events. Throughout Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel gives an accurate account of his life throughout the Holocaust while using different motifs to symbolize the horrors of the Holocaust. Wiesel uses motifs to show things without actually saying them directly. Throughout Night, the motif of fire is portrayed as a symbol of Hell on Earth and usually indicates that a bad thing will start to happen and is shown in multiple moments including Mrs. Schaechter, the Crematoriums, and the Death March. At the beginning of the book, Mrs. Schachter hallucinates images of flames, a sign of a great calamity. While she sees these flames, the situation out and inside the car gets worse. The Jewish people are crammed in a little cattle car and most people are struggling to breath. Outside of the train, the weather starts to turn bad as it starts to get really cold as it begins to snow very heavily. Mrs. Schachter is freaking out because she literally experiences Hell on Earth.“‘Jews, listen to me,’ she cried. ‘I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames!(25) Although she knows she is experiencing Hell on Earth, people think she is hallucinating and faking it because nobody would ever expect

The pain and suffering that the prisoners were enduring are shown using flames and fire. The conditions of the Holocaust and the scare tactics that the Nazis used are usually involving flames because flames on Earth symbolize the flames of Hell and how torturous it is. Flames as shown by Wiesel in the memoir, show Hell on Earth and how Hell can really come to Earth with the evil of other people. As expressed, the flames and events of the Holocaust can relate to the flames of Hell and what is believed to go on in Hell because of their many