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Anne Frappier
Dr. Martin Kavka
IFS 3113
04/27/17
Elie Wiesel’s Metaphor of the Word “Night”
Throughout Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, he uses the word “night” as a metaphor to convey
the indescribable experiences of the Holocaust. The metaphor used within the novel
encompasses many different meanings. The all-inclusive message of the word “night”
throughout the novel is to help translate to the reader the personification of darkness which lived
within everyone at Auschwitz. As this novel is of a first-hand experience, Wiesel lays out a
meaningful world and gives structure to the reader as an access to his personal events and
emotions. As a result of this, the reader is then able to resonate with him on a personal level and
create a certain level of empathy which a fictional novel would not be able to. The term “night”
and the rhetoric of night is a tool for speaking silence. The metaphor of night represents a symbol
of collapsed meaning in Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, using family and community, death of faith
and lost identity, and the overall struggle for survival to illustrate this.
A common thread that gives someone meaning and purpose is family and community.
Through family and community, a person can define themselves through the strength of their
relationships. The typical bondage of a family and a person’s community are broken down
within the camps until there is no recollection of belonging. In the beginning, Wiesel shows the
optimistic spirits of the prisoners as they know that to “help each other” is the best, and only
way, to survive the life of the camps (Wiesel). The idea of healing each other brings up a major
conflict within the novel, as well as living within the confines of the concentration camp. The
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collapse of family and community begins with the major battling conflict of self-preservation
verses one’s love and loyalty towards their family. It is hard for the prisoners to distinguish the
morality between choosing their own survival or the survival of their family. The breakdown of
communal relationships forces the prisoners further away from their path of survival because it
causes them more separation than connection. The distance created will then lead to a lack of
inspiration and hope and the overall demolition of their own selfhood. The importance of
maintaining these relationships is important for Elie as he lived his life within the confining
fences of Auschwitz. He fought the overriding feelings of neglecting his father for his own
benefit, but it forced him to reflect on whether that was truly beneficial to the overall well-being
of his father. He made a promise to himself to accompany his father as they moved throughout
the camp. Though the desire to stick together shows promise of hope, the impact has opposite
