Night By Elie Wiesel Essay

The memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel is written about the author’s traumatic experiences during the Holocaust, using a variety of elements such as imagery, tone, and point of view to develop the story he has to tell. Through the use of plotline, he provides an insight of the events during the Holocaust through his own perspective to emotionally and ethically appeal to the reader and prevent such events from happening again. Although the memoir includes numerous significant events during the Holocaust, the structure of his plotline is set to represent and emphasize important moments he had witnessed. Nonetheless, incidents such as the climax of the death of his father, often evoke depressing and traumatizing emotions from the readers to urge the

Although death became norm within the camp, those that are the most significant to Elie are the deaths of those he knows. Because of this, the death of his father had become notably more devastating for him than the numbness he feels for the deaths of the other prisoners within the camp. The suffering and passing of the only family member he had left impacted him greatly then, causing Wiesel to describe the situation in vivid details in his memoir. The sacrifices he was willing to make for his father affects the readers gravely; from the helplessness Elie feels when his father was dying to how he had to suppress his sorrow for the sake of his own survival. A foreboding tone was set while his father weakened, before it turned into a somber and dark tone for his death. Through Elie’s experience in the camp, he developed immunity to deaths, even towards the death of his own father. The readers would feel sympathy along with sorrow, towards his situation in a way that makes them rethink their thoughts or opinions about the Holocaust and similar events. The death of Elie’s father is only one in millions of lives that were taken away during the

Wiesel’s survival has ensured that his experiences would be passed onto future generations so history would not repeat itself. Ten years after his liberation, Wiesel was convinced by Mauriac, a French Catholic writer, to write about his time in Auschwitz during the Holocaust after being haunted by his experiences long after it was over. He feels that he was still suffering from the events that he had been forced to witnessed that he “made a vow: not to speak, not to touch upon the essential for at least ten years. Long enough to see clearly. Long enough to learn to listen to the voices crying inside [his] own,” (Seidman 2). However, when he had settled and was able to reflect on his experience, he felt the need to “teach, sensitize” and write in order for people to have the knowledge of the events that he had gone through during the Holocaust (Schleier 3). During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Wiesel stated, “I have published by now 47 books. Do you know, I believe often that I haven't even begun. And I feel it [in Auschwitz] more than ever. I have not begun. But I have the feeling I didn’t do enough, you know?” ("A Special Presentation: Oprah and Elie Wiesel At Auschwitz Death Camp"). Despite his works, Wiesel still feels like he hasn’t done enough because there are still people in the world who are still