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Why is the book night symbolic
Thematic stataments in " Night " by Elie Wiesel
Night by elie wiesel significance
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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.
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.
Elie states on page 109, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” Every person before they entered a concentration camp had a full life ahead of them. They were young with a bright future and many exciting
This quote is the final sentence of the book. Elie was liberated from Auschwitz, but had become ill so he was in a hospital room. He looked at himself for the first time since he was in the camp. Throughout his life in the concentration camp he became frail, and had lost a significant amount of weight. He had narrowly escaped death countless times, one being when he wasn’t chosen during selection, and another being the trip he had to endure during liberation.
He went from loving himself and the world to saying “from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me” (Wiesel 115). in the last line. Which shows that after all he went through he had seen nothing in himself anymore. All he saw was a dead corpse, a corpse that looked like all the bodies he saw in the camps. Lastly Elie becomes distant with his father.
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.
While you are reading Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, you get to see the decline in Elie’s faith. In the beginning, Elie was very devout, he even went out and found himself a teacher on his own accord. Only when you get farther in the book do you get to see the decline. While Elie’s time in the Concentration camps goes on, his faith starts to dwindle. Nevertheless, Elie begins by finding himself a teacher.
It is obvious that Jews did not think of revenge because they were trying to restore their basic needs. And even after “two weeks of life and death… [Elie] decided to look at [himself] in the mirror… and from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating [him]” (Pg. 115). This powerful final image of Elie is an excellent description to portray how decrepit his bodily and mental state was, even after 2 weeks of recuperation.
May His name be exalted and sanctified…’ (34)” Even though Elie still believed, barely, in God, “All that was left was a shape that resembled me (37).” He was consumed by the flames, he no longer was spiritual nor positive. In fact, he was lifeless, he had lost his innocence to the cruel Germans who had done many horrendous
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.
This describes Elie’s thoughts after witnessing the bodies of innocent Jewish children being cremated in front of him. He also doubted why he had been chosen to be alive but not others, and felt a sense of guilt. This horrific experience left Elie in shock and scarred him. It made him lose the faith in God that he once had because how could God let such inhumane events occur? Not only did he lose faith but also became dehumanized and would never be able to go back to the person he once was before.
As a 16 year old, I would say that I go through a lot in my day-to-day life. Waking up early everyday for school, staying in school for 7 hours, studying, and eating meals that I would argue are sometimes not the very best. If I had to imagine my 16 year old self getting stripped away from my home, being separated from my family, and to live in absolutely unlivable conditions, I wouldn’t be writing this essay right now. These conditions, however, are the exact conditions that the then-teenager Elie Wiesel and many countless others have gone through during the Holocaust. Wiesel accounts his personal experience through writing a memoir, Night, in it his experiences written with much symbolism.
Elie Wiesel loses faith in God and his family through the events that he undergoes in the Nazi concentration camps. To begin, Elie is deprived of his religion in the camps. He struggles physically and mentally, therefore, he no longer believes that there is a higher power: "Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust..." (34). Imprisoned in a factory of death, Elie does not believe that his God will give him the strength to keep him going.
After going through the holocaust many victims said that they suffered from PTSD, depression, and sleep disorders other had health problems due to the poor conditions of the camp. Night by Elie Wiesel is about the authors expirence of the holocaust as a teenage boy and how it slowly starts to break his pyche. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author uses conflict, characterization, symbolism to enhance the theme that putting people in tortuous situations causes mentality and body to break. The conflict of misery Elie and others had to go through because of the Holocaust.
