Symbolism In Eliezer Wiesel's Broken Faith

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Broken Faith, an artwork by Adeline Nguyen uses skillful symbols to display a consistent theme in Night by Eliezer Wiesel. Using colored pencils and a piece of plain white paper, she draws a rotary phone adorned with the symbol for Judaism. On the opposite side of the page, she draws the phone itself facing a small yellow circle. However, the wire of the phone is broken and torn in half, leading to the phone presumably not being able to function. The illustration suggests many ideas about what the theme of the art could be, but most likely the art is the abstract portrayal of an absence of relationship between people and the god they believe in.
With its use of color, the art takes on a strong and straightforward impact, with only three colors being used throughout the entire art piece. We see the most use of the color black, a color that embodies darkness and hatred. Red is used to engrave the Star of David, the symbol of the jewish community, but in a negative context the color tends to symbolize anger. Typically, brighter colors like yellow or blue should be used to represent your …show more content…

When looking at this art, a feeling of desperation through the artist might be felt similarly to how Eliezer feels. He says, “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (Wiesel 34). With the broken telephone wire, embellished with twists and knots, wavy lines are used to denote uncertainty that is felt by the jews. Just like how we slowly see doubts in Eliezer’s belief in god, the uncertainty that the telephone line emits connects to the main theme of the piece. With his relationship with god deteriorating, the art reflects this with the clever use of a torn phone line. The broken and not functioning telephone wire is embellished with twists and knots symbolizing the turbulent parts of the connection between Eliezer and