Reading Between the Lines of Night
Since the dawn of humanity, people have been using the power of words to convey anything desired. From simple conversation to soul defining monologues, words possess the strength to touch individuals. The same goes for writing. The way a novel is written can cause one to conceptualize the author’s point of view, therefore allowing it to be read the way intended. For example, when reading Night by Eliezer Wiesel, one is intended not only to understand the historical events of the Holocaust, but also to visualize the author’s emotional state and changes. Wiesel symbolically exposes thoughts and emotions provoked by the Holocaust through his original writing style. Some things are so uniquely awful that they resist attempt to be put into language. …show more content…
This offers readers this a chance to interpret the text in a way that will relate or speak to oneself. Wiesel displays symbolism through his main motifs, one literally being the symbol, night. Throughout the novella, night is used to symbolize loss of faith, loss of the soul, darkness, and death. This motif comes up most repeatedly, as it is also the title of the book. Examples include, but are not limited to, the instance when Elie and his father first arrived at Auschwitz and found the smell of death lingering in their noses as they waited all night, the nightly soup that boils with the taste of death, the marching at night, and not to mention that every time a prisoner is smothered to death in the midst of other prisoners, it occurs in the night. The night Elie and his father were deported to Buchenwald, merely surviving off of snow and rare rations of bread, Wiesel writes, “The days were like nights, and the nights left the dregs of their darkness in our souls” (Wiesel 100). Night is thus a symbol for the way the soul is submerged in the lessening of hope and the rise in
Since the dawn of humanity, people have been using the power of words to convey anything desired. From simple conversation to soul defining monologues, words possess the strength to touch individuals. The same goes for writing. The way a novel is written can cause one to conceptualize the author’s point of view, therefore allowing it to be read the way intended. For example, when reading Night by Eliezer Wiesel, one is intended not only to understand the historical events of the Holocaust, but also to visualize the author’s emotional state and changes. Wiesel symbolically exposes thoughts and emotions provoked by the Holocaust through his original writing style. Some things are so uniquely awful that they resist attempt to be put into language. …show more content…
This offers readers this a chance to interpret the text in a way that will relate or speak to oneself. Wiesel displays symbolism through his main motifs, one literally being the symbol, night. Throughout the novella, night is used to symbolize loss of faith, loss of the soul, darkness, and death. This motif comes up most repeatedly, as it is also the title of the book. Examples include, but are not limited to, the instance when Elie and his father first arrived at Auschwitz and found the smell of death lingering in their noses as they waited all night, the nightly soup that boils with the taste of death, the marching at night, and not to mention that every time a prisoner is smothered to death in the midst of other prisoners, it occurs in the night. The night Elie and his father were deported to Buchenwald, merely surviving off of snow and rare rations of bread, Wiesel writes, “The days were like nights, and the nights left the dregs of their darkness in our souls” (Wiesel 100). Night is thus a symbol for the way the soul is submerged in the lessening of hope and the rise in