Rhetorical Devices In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel stated, “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented,” in his Nobel Prize Speech in 1986. In doing so, he clearly states the purpose of writing Night: to demonstrate the horrors that he experienced during the Holocaust, not becoming reticent in the process. In expressing this message, Wiesel utilizes a myriad of literary and rhetorical devices including but not limited to foreshadowing, diction that conveys inferiority, and analogies. An example of foreshadowing is seen early in the book when Mrs. Schächter, a friend the author’s family, started to lose control during the train ride to a concentration camp when “a piercing cry [from Mrs. Schächter] broke the silence: ‘Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!” (Wiesel 24). Others, still dubious of the horrors to come, responded with, “‘you’ll see, you’ll find your husband and sons

During an air raid, two pots of soup were left unattended with “hundreds of eyes were looking at them, shining with desire. Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. Two lambs without a shepherd, free for taking” (Wiesel 59). The analogy compares the starving Jews to wolves, to show how the Jews had been disgraced to the point of being animals. By writing the analogy, Wiesel emphasizes how poorly they were treated, giving the audience a glimpse at what occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, the audience is shown the terror that the Jews suffered during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel survived through that torture, and later wrote the book Night in an attempt for others to understand what happened. He used foreshadowing, diction that conveys demoralization, and analogies to aid his writing to depict what he saw. Though millions of Jews were killed senselessly in the Holocaust, words are everlasting, meaning Night will continue to enlighten people’s