Night by Elie Wiesel Essay Sample

The word holocaust means to sacrifice by fire; 6 million Jewish people at that. A survivor of the holocaust, Eliezer Wiesel recounted the horrors he witnessed in his memoir, Night. Death is greatly explored in Wiesel’s novel – who it claims, how it is done, why is it done? Wiesel used symbolism, rhetorics, and dialogue to convey that while he survived this horrific moment in history, he had suffered several deaths throughout his time at the mercy of the Nazis. Wiesel had been stripped of his physical, emotional, and spiritual identities, until he had become someone he no longer recognised; a corpse of the boy he had once been – metaphorically murdered by the Nazis.

The Nazis stripped Eliezer of his humanity, until he no longer recognised the corpse he had become. Eliezer began to experience this dehumanisation from the minute he was considered undesirable and segregated in Sighet into the ghetto, because he was Jewish. Segregation contracts similarity to the caging of animals, which was expanded upon as Eliezer and the Jews from Sighet are transported to Birkenau in small carriages; sent to their death, “like cattle to the slaughterhouse”, Wiesel analogises.  The irony in being treated as animals, is that they were tattooed with an allocated number, as described by Eliezer, becoming A-7713, thus being stripped of their names, a large part of their identity. Eliezer was branded, so that the Jewish population was made to look like animals. Eliezer was forced to be naked and his heads shaved, as a farmer would do to his cattle. This process pays homage to the Talmud; prohibiting men from removing their hair, incise any marks on oneself, and maintaining dignity through clothing. Symbolically, Wiesel has also referenced ancient Jewish rituals, in which cows are sacrificed and burned, and their ashes used to purify one who had encountered a human corpse. Ironically, rather than undergoing the purification, the Jews were then becoming part of the ritual, and being burnt; they were the cows. The burning of the Jews was supposed to purify those who had been subject to corpses, however, in Eliezer’s case, it did the opposite – he began to act inhumanely.

Everywhere you looked in Auschwitz, you could feel, see, and smell death, but for Eliezer, despite this significant omnipresence, death did not become real to him until he was arguing with death itself. Throughout his time in the concentration camps, Eliezer was subject to horrific acts, in which he constitutes his now “sleepless nights” to. However, the turning point for the young protagonist was when his prime motive for survival – his father, Shlomo, was upon his death bed, waiting for the end of his suffering. Prior to the holocaust, Eliezer describes his father as “unsentimental” and their relationship is traditional – the biblical commandment to honour one’s parents is evident in Eliezer’s family. This relationship significantly develops when Eliezer and Shlomo were separated from the rest of their family upon their arrival to Birkenau, and their fear of losing their sole support – to be left alone; holding hands to express their need for one another. This relationship then becomes Eliezer’s main reason for survival, as his “father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me [him]… what would he do without me [him]?”. The rhetoric showed Eliezer pondering his father’s life without him, where ironically, he did not consider what he would do without his father. Shlomo’s road to death was debilitating for Eliezer, as he was “arguing with death itself”; whom won the argument of Shlomo’s demise. While Eliezer had become emotional several times in the book – weeping when praying, expressing frustrations in His God, and clutching to his father at the fear of being left alone, he did not weep at the passing of his father. For Eliezer, all human concerns had come secondary to basic bodily needs; to eat, to breathe, to survive. After the liberation of Buchenwald, survivors indulged in bread rather than considering the horrific acts they had witnessed and the families they had lost; which for Eliezer, his father was his prime motive for survival; so what was the point of living? Eliezer no longer felt anything but hunger, he did not grieve, he did not weep – he had become emotionally numb; emotionally dead.

Eliezer’s characterisation throughout the book shows that traumas from the holocaust led him to lose his spiritual identity. From the beginning of his life, Eliezer was influenced by his orthodox Jewish family to pursue the religion, in which he ensued passionately. Praying had become second nature, as highlighted in the rhetorical question, “Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”, when asked by Moche the Beadle his reason for praying. Through comparison of praying to simple components essential to life, the extent of devotion Eliezer holds to his god is conveyed. Eliezer questions the presence of God as one would the importance of oxygen; imperative to survival. However, when Eliezer’s world begun to be fraught with peril, and he was subject to inhumane acts, instead of seeking guidance from God’s divine power, he questioned its’ mere existence. On his first day in Birkenau, he witnesses “flames that consumed his faith forever” as he watches infants and children being tossed into [the] flames. These flames, symbolic of death and destruction, congeal the idea that Eliezer’s faith had been murdered, by none other than the Nazis. Upon witnessing this horrific act, Eliezer feels anger at those praising His holiness, and expresses “Why should I sanctify His name? The almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”. The parallelism of Eliezer’s perception of his faith conveys the spiritual death that Eliezer had experienced. Prior to Birkenau, Eliezer devoted his entire life to the study of Jewish Mysticism, to which he intended to make his profession of being a Rebbe. Yet after, he was left without this powerful belief and doubting the existence of any divine power. He was left questioning who the person he saw in the mirror was, what did he believe, what had he seen; he no longer recognised himself as the largest part of his identity – his belief, had been murdered.

Wiesel used his memoir to convey that death comes in many more forms than simply physical. Through the use of rhetorics, symbolism, and dialogue, the idea was congealed that the holocaust had murdered parts of Eliezer, despite his physical presence. Physical comparison to an animal left Eliezer feeling questioning his physical presence on this Earth. The gruesome acts he witnessed robbed Eliezer of his ability to grieve the death of his father. The Nazis murdered Eliezer’s faith through the actions they take going against Jewish mysticism. Eliezer left Buchenwald fighting for his life, when in fact, he had already lost all that had once constituted his life, which many may argue, is a fate worse than death.