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Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir recounting the author’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald during the last two years of World War II. The book was published in France in 1958; a shortened English translation was published in the United States in 1960. In 1944, the 15-year old Wiesel, his ...
- Fire
- Night
- Music
Fire appears throughout Nightas a symbol of the Nazis’ cruel power. On the way to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Madame Schächter receives a vision of fire that serves as a premonition of the horror to come. Eliezer also sees the Nazis burning babies in a ditch. Most important, fire is the agent of destruction in the crematoria, where many meet their death at...
The Bible begins with God’s creation of the earth. When God first begins his creation, the earth is “without form, and void; and darkness [is] upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2, King James Version). God’s first act is to create light and dispel this darkness. Darkness and night therefore symbolize a world without God’s presence. In Night,Wies...
During his time in the concentration camps, Eliezer comes into contact with different forms of music, all of which stir his emotions despite his overall sense of emptiness. The prisoners’ music, ranging from hymns to violin concertos, serves as a source of inspiration for Eliezer and uplifts his spirits. As a form of non-verbal expression, music al...
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Get all the key plot points of Elie Wiesel's Night on one page. From the creators of SparkNotes.
Quick answer: In Night, Elie Wiesel uses imagery to describe the horrors of the Holocaust and allows the reader to comprehend the sights, sounds, feelings, and even smells that he senses. For...
Eliezer, his father, and the other prisoners travel through German towns for ten days without being fed and are harassed by German citizens who take joy in watching the Jewish prisoners suffer. The train eventually arrives at Buchenwald, where only twelve of the one hundred passengers survive. Read a full Summary & Analysis of Sections 6 & 7.
The train stops in the middle of a field, and the SS orders all the corpses to be thrown out of the cars. The survivors in the wagon, knowing this means more room for them, rejoice. Volunteers strip clothing from the bodies and toss the corpses out onto the frozen field. Two men approach Eliezer’s father, believing him to be dead.
By naming the novel “night” and pushing themes of religious doubt, it’s important to consider Genesis and the passages regarding God’s creation of the earth. First, the Bile says, there was “darkness upon the face of the deep.” It’s this darkness, with the absence of God, that Eliezer lives through.
