Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
Symbolism in the things they carried literary criticism
The use of symbolism in the novel
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Symbolism in the things they carried literary criticism
The use of symbolism in the novel
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel remains a constant reminder of the horrors that happened to him and many others during the Holocaust in 1930’s through the 1940’s. The Holocaust was a tragedy that resulted in millions of Jews being murdered. One of these unlucky people who experienced this was Elie Wiesel. While in the camps, he experienced beatings and defeat daily. The torture he endured changed both his relationships with close family and friends and his faith.
Elie Wiesel has a somber mood in the text ‘Night’. He does this by using imagery and symbolism, Wiesel does this so curiously, as not to plunge into a sad mood, but slowly eases the reader into the despair. The author describes a boy as “angel faced” that slowly moves towards a tragic ending. The angel is a power symbol throughout all cultures, and using that symbol to be placed onto a boy, and expressed through imagery creates a sense of dread and despair. Eliezer depicts a young boy to a “sad faced angel”, in the sense that the boy seems holy, and innocent, yet being in a labor camp, reinforces our idea that the Nazis have no respect for anything good or sacred in the world.
Imagine yourself being beaten, starved, and worked to the core by german ss guards. In Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night the reader exposed to the life that a 14 year old jew had to go through when separated and put to work in a concentration camp. The text is full of Similes, Metaphors, Allusions, especially symbolism. The author uses the Cattle cars, The Star of David, and a Violin as the symbols in the book.
The book, “Night”, by Elie Wiesel is a first-hand account that traces his life before and during the holocaust and in the concentrations camps. There were many experiences that Wiesel faced that impacted him as a person. Wiesel coped with these experiences and his new life in Auschwitz by pretending as if he wasn’t there and by not caring about anyone else. Out of the many experiences Wiesel faced in the book, there were three main ones that stood out to me.
Prisoners in Auschwitz received about three “meals” a day. Half a liter of “coffee” for breakfast, and a liter of soup for the noon meal. For dinner, the prisoners usually received about 10 ounces of black bread, with 25 grams of sausage or margarine, or a tablespoon of marmalade of cheese. The small amount of food prisoners got in concentration camps caused them to starve. In the story, Night, the absence of food caused Eliezer and others around him to slowly change themselves and their morales, hoping for a little extra soup or a crust of bread.
The symbol I chose was God for Eli because he does talk about God quite often during his days in the holocaust from the book Night. This picture I choose is a pile of dead bodies to represent death for the symbol God. The reason I choose this picture because Eli had witnessed a lot of cruel things at a young age. He had worshipped God so much and had trust and love for him.
Wiesel;s personal experiences serve as a powerful example of the trauma that so many Jews faced during this dark period in history. For example, He writes about his fathers death: “I woke up to the sound of someone groaning beside me. ‘Father,’ I called out. ‘Father, wake up. They're taking you away.’”
Night Elie loses his faith throughout the book, but it was not always like that. Elie used to be very religious and wanted to learn as much as possible about his faith. “One evening, I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in sighet to teach me the Zohar, the Kabbalistic works, the secret of jewish mysticism” (Wiesel 5). Elie said to Moshe the Beadle. His father wasn’t supportive of his decision so he took things into his own hands.
Symbolism can be seen through both good and bad alike. Though when it comes to instances that have to do with the holocaust, it’s almost always, if not always, a painful connotation. The holocaust is one of if not the the largest instance of mass genocide in recorded history. Leaving each Jew that survived with a different story to tell. While their story’s remained different, the pain that they each experienced was not.
Insert title here To you and me night is a time of rest, a time of safety, and a time to put all our troubles behind us, for Elie night was feared, his troubles would follow him even through the night. The book night was written by Elie Wiesel in 1956 and is about the hardships that the Jews had to face. What is so significant about night? Why is the book called night? Night and darkness symbolize a world without god’s presence and for elie night, was very dark.
Through Night, Elie Wiesel shows the horrendous reality he and his family are put through when forced from their homes into cattle cars on a treacherous journey to Auschwitz. At the camp the captives go through horrors unexplainable; finally, the camp is liberated, and prisoners are free. During this time, Elie Wiesel is faced with unremembered deaths, losing his own self, and intern his emotion… expires. First, the night Elie arrives, he sees unimaginable things.
Eliezer is a young Jewish boy who studies Talmud and Kabbalah. The next day, his teacher Moishe the Beadle a group of deportees are on a train that get hijacked and everyone is taken captive. A very awful, tragic event occurs, the Gestapo (the group that hijacks the train) executes the deportees who were “used as targets” (6). Moishe survives the massacre but is very unstable and is driven to despair and cries “tears, like drop of wax” because the people do not believe him (7). There are now new laws to abide by, every Jew has to wear the yellow star and no longer has the right to perform certain acts.
Night is a memoir written by Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel. The Holocaust was a grueling time in history in which the purpose was to wipe out the Jewish population and race. Wiesel titled this memoir Night to symbolize a world without God's presence, lack of hope, and a loss of sense of humanity. Night symbolizes a world without God’s presence because Wiesel’s experiences during the holocaust made him lose his faith and god and feel the emptiness that follows. The Jewish New Year had just arrived and the Jews were gathered around the camp praying for new beginnings as well as safety from their god.
The Holocaust. The devastation, deportation, extermination, and starvation of millions of human beings, targeted for their creed, their heritage, and their complexion. No words can capture the magnitude of this misery, but one can only try. In his memoir, “Night”, Elie Wiesel attempts to comprehend the mass suffering and distress caused by this event. His chosen title reflects his reaction to his experience, Night, meaning absolute darkness for a period of time.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.