Introduction
The novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel is ranked along with “The Diary of Anne Frank” in the list of the most famous and popular books about the Holocaust. The author of the work, Elie Wiesel, a Jewish writer, writes about his stay in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps in 1944-45(Mukhamedova 551). Elie tells how he was separated from his sister and mother, who were sent to the ovens. He and his father were assigned to a labor camp.
“Night” fits in the canon of the author’s works because it is the autobiography of an author who ended up in Auschwitz with his father at a young age (Nistandra 56). The ability to identify literary techniques will help clarify this story’s general meaning or purpose for the reader. Therefore, I will analyze four elements of the story – allegory, theme, symbolism, and imagery – and through such analysis, understand a terrifying reality that becomes even more monstrous because the child describes it.
Allegory
Many allegories in the text are not complicated and do not require a literary or educational background to understand them. They are used to convey the images surrounding the boy in colors. For example, in one of the scenes designed to show how people have lost their human qualities in terrible conditions, many allegories give an animal shade (Wiesel 90). In this scene, the son decides to leave the fallen, weakened father, who has become a burden to him. With the help of an allegory, the author turns the father into a victim and the son into a beast.
The father is described as a “shadow trembling in the wind,” and the simile “trembling” is characteristic of a predator’s prey (Wiesel 90). This old man has a “half-dead face,” this allegory also testifies to the loss of human qualities and the mortal fear of the victim (Wiesel 91). Then, the son attacks the father, taking away his bread. The author describes him as “devouring,” using allegory to give violent animal associations (Wiesel 92). With the help of an allegory, the author introduces the image of animal instincts, the only thing possible for survival.
Theme
Religious theme in the story is used to emphasize that higher powers have left the victims of a concentration camp resembling the underworld (Praba 2705). Therefore, a religious teenager in the past who was a committed Hasid concluded denying the divine (Wiesel 100). This can be seen in one of the fragments where the hero admits he stopped praying. He describes himself as “strong,” although physically and spiritually exhausted in the camp.
This theme is contrasted with the image of God, whom the hero calls “the accused” (Wiesel 100). Telling that “fervent prayers” were not read over his father’s grave, the hero uses religious ritual to say that with his father’s death, the flame of religiosity in him went out (Wiesel 100). Thus, using the religious theme, the author describes the metamorphoses that occur to the hero due to being in a concentration camp.
Symbolism
Symbolism is used to add contrast and as a reminder that these people had humanity outside the camp. It was not the scenes of beatings and humiliation that were genuinely creepy and heartbreaking, but those that, with the help of symbolism, reminded these people of another world that once existed for these people on the other side of the walls. For example, symbolism is present in a fragment where a boy dying of hunger, cold, and exhaustion plays the violin for the last time, which he incredibly keeps with him.
The author describes the boy holding the violin, clutching it to him “like a mother’s body” (Wiesel 49). With this simple traditional symbol of a musical instrument compared to a woman’s body, Wiesel demonstrates that even when basic needs such as food or warmth are not satisfied, a child remains a child and, above all, needs a mother.
Imagery
The scene where the use of imagery is indicative is the hallucinations of fire and fire that haunted Ms. Schechter. Since the author is religious, the comparison of the concentration camp with hell is often present on the pages of the story (Praba 2705). Ms. Schechter tormented everyone with her stories about what she saw as “hellish fire”(Wiesel 88). In her madness, she anticipated the appearance of gas chambers in their lives, and her cry was a kind of warning. However, she was shut up by other prisoners so as not to worry even more, to hide her head in the sand in front of an imminent fate. At the same time, the imagery the author used through her hallucinations was prophetic because what the concentration camp prisoners had to go through was absolute hell.
Overall Evaluation of Story Elements
Thus, allegory, symbolism, imagery, and theme are designed to characterize the main characters, emphasizing that children suffer and how monstrous conditions deprive people of humanity. The Narrative’s use of imagery, such as bread or religious symbols, is implemented using classical epithets and similes (Wiesel 90). They reveal the plot using the theme of a child in a concentration camp and draw a parallel with hell, emphasizing that God left this place. The author conveys the moments of death, horror, grief, loss, and actions, as well as the characters’ thoughts, through these plot elements (Kalay 23). The symbols introduced into them create visual images that evoke a strong emotional response from the reader.
Conclusion
Through the use of easily understood allegory, symbolism, imagery, and themes from a young man’s speech, the author creates a frightening, even more horrific reality because of the child describing it. Analyzing the contexts in which these techniques were used makes it easier to understand the author’s motivation, attitude toward the characters, plot twists, and events. New insights about the literary devices and themes that arise from analyzing the novel lie in the fact that they reveal the concepts often used in the literature of a new side of detachment from religion and deprivation of human qualities.
We should take with us that war does not bypass anyone, even children and the most religious people. The main thing I uncovered in the story worth remembering is that you must try to preserve humanity even in the most challenging moments of life. It is the only thing that separates a person from despair and mental death.
Works Cited
Kalay, Faruk. “Elie Wiesel’s Dangling Child: The Protagonist of Night.” Turan-Sam, vol. 7, no. 41. 2019, pp. 22–28.
Mukhamedova, Shushan. “The Embodiment of Humiliation and Terror Against Jews in the Novel Night by Elie Wiesel.” Bulletin of Science and Practice, vol. 7, no. 4, 2021, pp. 546–553. Web.
Nistandra, Namrata. “History from Below: An Analysis of Elie Wiesel’s Night.” Writers Editors Critics, vol. 9, no. 2. 2019, pp. 55–61. Web.
Praba, Felicita Mary. “Trauma – Then and Now in Elie Wiesel’s Night and Susan Abulhawa’s the Blue Between Sky and Water.” Journal of Positive School Psychology, vol. 6, no. 11, 2022, pp. 2702–2709. Web.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Bantam Books, 1982.