The Holocaust and Book Title Night
Night “Today everything is possible, even the crematoria. This compound hyperbole describes Elie Wiesel’s memoir of all the treacherous events that took place during the holocaust. Elie witnessed the whole experience first-hand. Weisel titled the book Night, evoking both literal and symbolic descriptions of his dark ordeal as a holocaust victim and survivor. “That’s it, God is no longer with us. ” In this excerpt, Elie Wiesel used syntax to figuratively exaggerate the despair the Jews faced.
Although all Jews felt that God was either no longer there or simply did not exist, this quote was used as a hyperbole to make a seemingly inferior race feel the heat of a religious upheaval. “Never shall I forget that first night in camp, which has turned my night into one long night seven times sealed. ” By using hyperbole, this excerpt lets Wiesel express this symbolic complex sentence to exaggerate the agonizing feeling of the holocaust being one long and dark quandary. “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. By giving the personification that his dreams were turned to dust helps us as readers understand the full extent of the gruesome nature that had changed the lives of millions forever. This book is a perfect example of Man’s inhumanity to man. Babies were shot and burned right in front of Elie. This could be like someone kicking a puppy in front of you and knowing you can’t do anything to stop it. The book title Night helps us as readers understand the dark, outstretched gloomy nature of the holocaust, and the symbolic side of the emotion being felt during war.
The holocaust was full of remorseful and dark memories like the night sky is black. Elie’s book titled Night truly shows how terrifying this war was. “Over there, that’s where you’re going to be taken. That’s you’re grave. Over there. ” This literal compound sentence was an excerpt from the book. Its literal effect on readers helped us understand that the thought of death could not be escaped. There was no place the Jews could go, and nothing Jews could do to escape the horrific thought of a horrifying death. Whether this be starvation, a bullet to the chest, or the rematorium, the thought of death haunted them all. What was described as one of the scariest things happening during this time were men turning on family members. Between killing for a piece of bread and abandoning parents or children for being weak, the holocaust had men acting not as men, but as wild animals. Also on the literal side the excerpt “Never shall I forget that smoke. ” The smoke that represented where he could have died, and the smoke that turned innocent infant children into nothing more than a diminishing pile of ash.
During the holocaust men were not treated as such. To the eyes of German SS soldiers Jews were merely dirt. Wiesel’s symbolic side of the book was shown through personification, hyperbole, syntax and a variety of various sentence structures such as using ways to describe how dark and gloomy his “long nights” stay at camp was. The title also brought out the more literal side like the smoke he swore never to forget. The symbolic and literal nature of the title Night was a description like no other of Elie Wiesel’s journey through hell.
