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Theme Of Horror In Elie Wiesel's Night

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Night is neither good nor evil, darkness the same. We humans do not fear the darkness or the night itself. We are afraid of what is lurking behind the curtain absent of light. It is fear of the unknown that scares us because it is foreign, something we cannot control. Wiesel’s own story, of which he names Night, plays with a different context of the word. He uses it to explain the dark harrowing of human nature, the bleakness of existence, the feelings of the loss of empathy and compassion, the curtain of different emotions that cloud over us. Wiesel’s story lays out a book dished in cruelty and despair. Wiesel shows horror. He shows the horror of what happen when night drapes over a tragedy and what happens to those who cannot escape it curtaining …show more content…

That is the smallness that makes horror big. Wiesel didn’t write about the statistical numbers of people dying in the camps. He wrote about the incrementalism- “The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal...”(pg. 11)- and its horrible effects- “Something was being burned there... small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes... children thrown into the flames.” (pg. 32). Wiesel does not write on the battles fought during the war by armies but the small struggles comparatively- the ones that made an impact on them. Wiesel writes on the boy who killed his father for bread. He writes of those he saw hung like the child, the pipel,-“...the third rope was still moving: the child.. Still breathing... he remained...lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes...He was still alive... where is God?... This is where-hanging here from this gallows...”(pg 65). Elie writes true horror by focusing on the small, focusing on what we, the reader, can sympathies to.

Horror is a tool used by a writer to add layers to the story they are trying to weave. Elie Wiesel’s night is a horror story. The Holocaust makes us sad for what happened to him and all of those victimized. Wiesel writes his own story of the horror of human to human conflict and the smallness of what makes horror horror. He give context to the tragedy. As we truly fear what is behind the darkness and night, we see the horror in the Holocaust comes not from the name, but the context filling the word itself. That is horror, and that is what we must fight to dissolve to make the future

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The memoir written by Elie Wiesel, Night, is illustrating the Holocaust, the even which caused the death of over 6 million Jews. Auschwitz, the concentration camps, is responsible for over 1 million of the deaths. In the memoir Night, Wiesel uses the symbolism of fire, and silence to clearly communicate to the readers that the Holocaust was a catastrophic and calamitous event, and that children should never be involved in warfare. Elie Wiesel enters Auschwitz at the age of 15, and witnesses’ horrific events as a prisoner in Auschwitz, including the deaths of numerous children, and the beating and death of his own father. All these inhumane things were done just because Adolf Hitler wanted to cleanse the German society of the Jews.

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When Wiesel makes it clear that he has suffered personal loss, he is evoking an emotional response from his audience. By stating that he senses their presence “The presence of my parents, that of my little sister.” the audience empathizes with him and the horror of the Holocaust is made more clear for them. They cannot only understand his feelings; they can connect to them which strengthens their understanding of the need to act whenever they witness inhumanity.

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To begin with, Wiesel could not believe what was happening. He didn’t believe how cruel the Germans were. Wiesel was living a nightmare and couldn’t escape it. For instance, Wiesel stated, “I pinched myself; was I still alive? Was I awake?

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