Symbols:
Fire: Fire symbolizes death and fear. It also represents separation and the crematory. "Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!" (Pg. 24) Mrs. Schachter was panicking and screaming to the top of her lungs. "Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!" (Pg. 25) Mrs. Schachter who seemed to be "mad" was actually telling the truth. "Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere..." (Pg. 26) The crematory was the end of the road for most which also symbolizes freedom. The Jews were set free of their pain instead of suffering.
Night: Night symbolizes loneliness, abandonment, and darkness. The Holocaust was a dark experience, full of terror and suffering. The entire novel is filled with “last nights”. Elie experiences the last night with his father, the last night in Buna, the last night in the ghetto, and several others throughout the book. The term “night” also references to a life without a God. Elie often says that God does not live in the concentration camps and that the Jews who once followed him had been abandoned to a dark existence. "For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. 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?" (Pg. 33). In this quote, Elie begins to feel anger against his God for leaving him in the darkness of night. Night seems to have no end to a never ending nightmare and Elie seems to lose track of time. "So much has happened within such a few hours that I had lost all sense of time. When had we left our houses? And the ghetto? And the train? Was it only a week? One night- one single night" (Pg. 34).
Juliek's Violin: Throughout the novel, Elie talks about how quite, how silent the barracks are at night. Silence of terror, nightmares, and lost hope. One of the main themes of the novel is sounds that break the silence, just like Madame Schachter's hysterical screaming,"fire, fire, I see fire". Similarly, Juliek's violin, his playing disrupted the silence, this time filling the hopeless, dark night filled with beauty and peace: "He played a fragment from Beethoven's concerto. I had never heard sounds so pure. In such a silence."(Pg. 90) Juliek's music is extremely touching because he puts his whole self into his playing. After being denied his life, humanity, and future by the Nazis and after having becoming emotionally destroyed from his time in the concentration camp, Juliek takes everything that has been denied him and puts it into his music: "He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings: his lost hopes, his lost past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again." (Pg. 91) The words "charred" and "extinguished" remind me of the image of the fiery crematory and show how crudely and inhumanely the Nazis destroyed human life in the concentration camps.
Night: Night symbolizes loneliness, abandonment, and darkness. The Holocaust was a dark experience, full of terror and suffering. The entire novel is filled with “last nights”. Elie experiences the last night with his father, the last night in Buna, the last night in the ghetto, and several others throughout the book. The term “night” also references to a life without a God. Elie often says that God does not live in the concentration camps and that the Jews who once followed him had been abandoned to a dark existence. "For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. 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?" (Pg. 33). In this quote, Elie begins to feel anger against his God for leaving him in the darkness of night. Night seems to have no end to a never ending nightmare and Elie seems to lose track of time. "So much has happened within such a few hours that I had lost all sense of time. When had we left our houses? And the ghetto? And the train? Was it only a week? One night- one single night" (Pg. 34).
Juliek's Violin: Throughout the novel, Elie talks about how quite, how silent the barracks are at night. Silence of terror, nightmares, and lost hope. One of the main themes of the novel is sounds that break the silence, just like Madame Schachter's hysterical screaming,"fire, fire, I see fire". Similarly, Juliek's violin, his playing disrupted the silence, this time filling the hopeless, dark night filled with beauty and peace: "He played a fragment from Beethoven's concerto. I had never heard sounds so pure. In such a silence."(Pg. 90) Juliek's music is extremely touching because he puts his whole self into his playing. After being denied his life, humanity, and future by the Nazis and after having becoming emotionally destroyed from his time in the concentration camp, Juliek takes everything that has been denied him and puts it into his music: "He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings: his lost hopes, his lost past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again." (Pg. 91) The words "charred" and "extinguished" remind me of the image of the fiery crematory and show how crudely and inhumanely the Nazis destroyed human life in the concentration camps.
Important Quotes:
1. "The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don't die of it."
- Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 1
2. "Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another?"
- Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 5
3. "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."
- Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 9
- Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 1
2. "Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another?"
- Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 5
3. "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."
- Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 9
- Elie is describing the way he feels when he looks at his transformed face for the first time since he entered the camps. Elie goes through a physical, mental and religious transformation throughout his time in the camps. Physically, he has been beaten, starved, dehumanized, and worked to the bone..."From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gaz[ing] back at me.". Mentally, he has been separated from the female members of his family, and he has watched his father die. Elie is saying that the memory of his family "...has never left me" Religiously, he has question how God could let this horrible event occur. His eyes reveal a transformed, brokendown person. When he enters the camps he is young, healthy, loving and religious. When he leaves the camps he is broken.