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Symbolism In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Before I begin discussing about the symbolism in Night, I want to point out the importance of symbolism in any form of storytelling, and even in reality. In a way, symbolism is what makes ordinary objects or symbols into meaning. Symbolism can make anything as powerful as actual words. In that sense, symbolism creates the story being read. I believe a story can become more powerful and more touching if there is a very symbolic object or symbol involved. Readers can also reflect their own symbolism and emotions onto the story, which makes it more interesting. Now, I will be discussing three symbolic ideas in Night. First will be the word night itself, the second will be the various ways “corpses” are mentioned, and the last will be fire. Night is considered the …show more content…

It was mentioned in a literal sense sometimes, and it was mentioned in a metaphoric sense at other times. In one of the meal scenes, it is said that their soup tastes like corpses. In a way that is saying the soup tastes extremely bad, and it also means that the people eating the soup could only think of dead bodies. The air must’ve smelt like corpses as well for the soup to taste like it. When Elie looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in a while, he did not see himself as he remembered it. After living with other people who slowly decayed due to the conditions of the camps, he could’ve thought that he wasn’t decaying at badly as the others were. The corpse he sees in the mirror could also have reminded him of the dead bodies he saw, and what physical toll the camps took on his body. Lastly, his belief died. The reason these families were in the camps was because of their belief. It seems very illogical for their god to allow this to happen. Elie also truly felt his belief die out when he saw baby corpses in the ditch. Babies are completely innocent while adults are not, that is why he questioned his god, then turned away from

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The book Night by Elie Wiesel is an incredibly written memoir about his struggle through the Holocaust. I have chosen to look at the motifs in this memoir. A motif is symbol or image that is constantly referred to in the text. In this paper we will focus on the motif of night and it’s significance to the story telling.

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The element of symbolism is so strong and predominant in the novel “Night,” we are able to delve deeper into the heinous experiences the Jews were subjected to during the Holocaust. There is no sure way to empathize with the victims of the Holocaust, but survivor Elie Wiesel opens the eyes of the reader to so many encounters that the Jews had to face in order to survive. Wiesel was able to portray individual emotions while using tangible objects or acts. Elie’s father, the march of the Jews, and the fire in the story all represent a deeper interpretation of themselves.

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For my creative response to Night by Elie Wiesel, I decided to make an alternative book cover. The theme that I chose to portray in my adaptation of the cover is the journey from darkness to light. My cover is black at the top and the amount of black reduces towards the bottom of the cover. I did this to show the transition from darkness to light that is shown during this novel.

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Throughout the book, Night, there are numerous life lessons that can be taken from the novel and applied to one’s life. The story is filled with several examples of these morals. From the appreciation and importance of family, perseverance through the hardest times, and gratitude for the blessings in your life, we see the common themes of ideals that are good reminders of how we should be living our own life. The first, most clear thing to take away from this book, is the idea of family.

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His experience with those horrific things changed him as a young boy. He lost his innocence and lost his individuality in the camp. When he looked into the mirror, the boy staring back at him was a stranger. He looked like a ghost, weak, and had no emotion. He noticed how the camp took

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Symbolism in Night Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. In the book Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the narrator’s father doesn’t see a problem with wearing the yellow star on his coat because he says that “no one has died from it”, but he doesn’t know or understand that it’s a symbol for something with a hidden meaning. The yellow star made the Jews easy to identify when deporting them to the camps. A different and deeper interpretation is that the yellow star represents isolation and was intended to humiliate the Jews and mark them out for humiliation and discrimination. There are many examples of symbolism in Night.

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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.

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Eliezer’s words in the middle of p.34, starting with, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed,”(34) gave a new meaning to the word night. The story had gone more in depth on the horrors of the time, also it reinforces what I had said in my previous journal, that Night, the title, refers to the never ending darkness that surrounds Eliezer. In this part of the book Eliezer writes “Never shall I forget,”(34) followed by everything he had seen, every story he will remember, everything he has endured. The repetition of the “Never shall I forget,”(34) isolates every attribute he doesn’t want to forget, which almost honors it and then he moves on to the next.

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in the book “night” Eliezer Weisel says, “night fell, night had fallen, and night was falling. Eliezer Weisel means that by night people were dying and passing away. This has a reference to death because when people die they close their eyes, and its night forever. There were people dying left and right. Some people believed that if they died they would be with God.

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At the end of the book Elie called himself a “corpse”. Why he said this because he went through a lot during the Holocaust, mentally, physically and emotionally. It all started when his family and him were placed in the ghetto. He was lucky enough to have his own house in the ghetto. He got to sleep in his own bed and live in his own house.

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“Never shall I forget the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed, and seven times sealed” (Wiesel 32). As portrayed in this passage from Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, “night” is used numerous times as a central symbol. The nonfiction novel takes place during the Holocaust throughout several concentration camps. The word “night” literally means the period of darkness in each twenty-four hours; the time from sunset to sunrise, but symbolically it commonly represents sadness, fear, and negative commendations.

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Elie Wiesel mentioned in his Novel "Night" that the prisoners came from a religious community, ¨The Jew of Sighet¨ (p. 3). Yom Kippur was a solemn Jew religious holiday where adults abstained from eating and drinking for long hours, except for sick people, children, pregnant women, or those who gave birth. Jews sought forgiveness of their sins by fasting. Even In a non-ordinary situation like the death camp, some Jews believed that they needed to fast more than any other day to clean their soul and seek forgiveness from God. They could not give away everything and became nonbelievers regardless of the horrific circumstances, especially for Elie, who learned and studied his religion at an early age, ¨ I studied Talmud, and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the

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Losing faith is like clearing off a foggy windshield. The true pain and suffering of the world are revealed. During the Holocaust, the SS would often force prisoners to witness the deaths of fellow prisoners, to scare them into obeying the SS and to show the prisoners what would happen to them if they did not follow orders. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses symbolism and metaphors to show the theme that suffering will weaken religious faith.

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