Theme Of Silence In Night By Elie Wiesel

The literary devices used in the preceding passage show us not only the importance but the combination of images and their consequences give the preceding excerpt its considerable impact. As he reflects upon his horrific first night in the concentration camp and its lasting effect on his life, Wiesel introduces the theme of silence, his loss of faith in God and his own struggles and development. He uses anaphora, which involves the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a line or sentence, commonly known as a poetic device. It was used to emphasize the novel's major theme: to never forget. It is because he will never forget that he constantly struggles with not only his faith, which was essentially his entire world, but himself as well. Wiesel's struggle with religion is a man’s struggle with not only …show more content…
It is the idea of both the world and God’s silence that Wiesel finds most troubling. Elie and his companions are left to wonder how a supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful God can allow such horror and cruelty to occur, particularly to such devout followers. The existence of this horror, and the lack of a divine response, essentially destroys Elie’s innocence and leads him to question his faith.“Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.” (Wiesel, 34) There is another type of silence weaved throughout Night: the silence of the victims, and the lack of resistance to the Holocaust. It is insinuated throughout the text that silence and inertia are what allowed those horrific events to continue. Wiesel’s writing of Night is itself an attempt to break the silence, to grab the world's attention and make them see the atrocities of the Holocaust and, in this way, to try to prevent anything of this nature from ever happening