MYP English 10F
Mrs. Jennifer Hunter
08 December 2015
Literary Analysis of Night by Elie Wiesel
Horrific events like the Holocaust need to be remembered as long as history doesn’t find a way of repeating itself. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, 12 year old Eliezer has been removed from the house he grew up in, in Transylvanian town, to ghettos and different concentration camps. Eliezer’s story takes place in Germany during the 1940s. In this autobiography, Eliezer’s character is developed from a young, naïve boy into a young man who survives tragic circumstances. Wiesel uses repetition, tone and metaphors to present the concept of how the lack of inhumanity during times of inequality leads to the corruption of the body and mind. …show more content…
After Eliezer and his father are separated from his mother and sister, all the men were heading for the crematorium where they would be burnt alive. Just as Eliezer was a few steps away from entering the crematorium, they were told to turn around. Eliezer said “Never shall I forget that smoke…Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever…Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into ashes…Never.” (Wiesel 34). The same four words are reiterated throughout the whole paragraph. The phrase “Never shall I forget” gives the reader a glimpse of how traumatized Eliezer was when he saw the bodies being burnt. The reiteration of the phrases emphasizes how much of an impact these situations had on Eliezer. On page 58, one Sunday after Eliezer was whipped by Kapo Idek for laughing at him, the prisoners were resting. When all of a sudden sirens went off, which meant they had to evacuate the premises. Eliezer was afraid at that time because his father wasn’t with him. The same sirens go off again on page 106 and 114. Every time the sirens went off, Eliezer was paralyzed with the fear of losing his father. Wiesel chose to include this event every time it happened because it had always left him shaken up. By iterating this event at different points in the story, Wiesel shows the reader how significant the sirens were to his time during the