When you read, do you ever felt like there is a recording playing in your head, telling the story to you? Have you ever noticed that each writer has a “voice” that is completely their own? Why do all of the great authors have a “sound” exclusive to themselves? Using precise wording and distinctive phrases, writers can manipulate your thoughts and emotions to help the reader understand the content of the literature. This is especially helpful when the subject matter is uncomfortable and harsh, such as the lives of inmates in the Nazi concentration and death camps during World War II.
Relating to this book, Wiesel was imprisoned in Buchenwald and Auschwitz for being a Jew, and in particular uses his style to tell the tale of those two camps’ conditions, and the uncensored account of the monstrosities committed inside. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes a unique writing style to evoke emotion, causing the reader to feel empathy, compassion, indignation, and horror at the treatment of the prisoners during the Holocaust. The first element of style Wiesel uses is figurative language, to garner indignation at the Nazis by frequently comparing the Jews to animals.
One of the first examples of this is in the first chapter of the book, when he writes “They went by, fallen, dragging their packs, dragging their lives, deserting their homes, the years of their childhood, cringing like beaten dogs,” (15). Here, the author is comparing the Jews to dogs using a smilie, and is referring to when the people of Sighet (the Jewish village Wiesel lived in) are ousted from their homes by the Nazis and the Hungarian police. As a reader, the Jews’ misery and mistreatment is painfully apparent.
The fact that the Jews are compared to beaten dogs makes the readers irate, and helps them to realize the depth of the injustice that they were subjected to. The Jews have just been driven out of their homes and are being treated worse than prisoners, and they are being punished for what they believe, not for anything that they have done wrong. Another example of Jews being compared to animals that occurs a little farther into the book happens when the prisoners are on their way to Birkenau, a sub-camp of the infamous Auschwitz. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed,” (22).
This example of likening the Jews to animals, using a metaphor, is a little less direct than much of the other figurative language comparisons in the book. However, it is still apparent that Wiesel and his people are being compared to cattle. This excerpt occurs when the Jews were all being loaded up on the way to their first concentration camp, and they were already being treated awfully. They were all shoved in a car made for cows, an animal most commonly raised for slaughter.
Wiesel compares the Jews to animals throughout the book to show readers how dehumanized they were, and help us realize how terribly they were treated. Again, this makes us furious at the Nazis. These people are completely innocent, and today, not even death row inmates are treated with this injustice. This way, the author uses figurative language to manipulate the reader’s emotions, and cause them to feel indignant because of the atrocities committed in Nazi Germany.
Secondly, the author uses repetition to cause the reader to feel empathy and horror at the management of the victims of the Holocaust under Nazi authority. While Wiesel and his father are imprisoned in Auschwitz, they meet a relative of theirs. Before the camps, everyone was healthy, strong, and hopeful. Now the author writes of his relative, and says, “And he was so thin himself, so dried up, so weak,” (42). Wiesel uses the repetition of the word “so” to emphasize just how frail the relative was, and to amass reader sympathy and dread for the Jews.
He does this to help the reader, most likely a privileged, free person visualize the barbarity that was these people’s everyday life, and make them want to help anyone who is or was treated this way. The word “so” being used augments the imagery and desperation expressed here, to support the tenderness we feel towards the Jews and disgust we feel at the Nazis for subjecting human beings to this abuse. In addition, the author uses repetition at the point in the memoir when he and his family arrive in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
Reflecting on his memories in the present day, Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp… Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. ” (32). In this passage, he repeats the word “never” recurrently, and describes his horrendous experiences as well as the loss of his faith. Making this passage even more effective is the fact that Wiesel has just lost his mother and his sisters, and could have lost his father as well, but he does not even mention these things in this passage.
As well as his reiteration of the word “never” again and again, he also repeatedly laments about the destruction of his faith and the murder of his soul (32). This is important because it shows the reader just how much Wiesel loved his God, and how many cruelties and abuses he endured, not to mention the loss of most of his immediate family. However, he does not repeatedly tell the reader how he regrets losing them. He repeats that he will never forget about his spiritual death as long as he lives. Because he does this, as the reader, we are amazed at the depth of his love for God.
It runs deeper than his love for his immediate family. We pity the Jews while also understanding that as free people who have never experienced prosecution first-hand, we can never comprehend the level of suffering described in these few concise words. These people braved the storm of the Nazis’ wrath to protect their faith and their God. This appeals to our humanity as people. We are shocked that something like this could ever happen, and we pity the poor people in this true, horrendous story, who bear tremendous suffering for what they believe.
Finally, the memoir contains sentence structure and language, unique to Wiesel, that masterfully conjures compassion for all of the victims of the concentration and death camps that were persecuted during World War II. When the Nazis realized that their territory was being invaded, and that they must move the prisoners in the concentration camps if they did not want their furtive atrocities to be discovered, they made the prisoners run. They ran between two subcamps of Auschwitz, in the bitter cold and snow, for upwards of forty miles.
In his book, Wiesel says, “An endless road. Letting oneself be pushed by the mob; letting oneself be dragged along by a blind destiny. When the SS were became tired, they were changed. But no one changed us. ” (83). Wiesel purposely uses short sentences that do not beat around the bush at all. They show the bare bones of the situation. Wiesel does not complain about his circumstances in this excerpt, he only tells the facts. However, as the reader, we comprehend the misery of the victims and our hearts go out to them.
That feeling is magnified because we do not feel as if Wiesel is not telling us a story in order to make us pity him or his people. He just wants to tell us the reality of his situation. One more distinct example of strategic sentence structure and language in this chronicle is when Wiesel and his family have just arrived at Birkenau. Thus far, Wiesel and his father have already been separated from the women and girls in the family.
So now, it is just those two, and they are trying to stay together at all costs. Behind me, an old man fell to the ground. Near him was an SS man, putting his revolver back into its holster… Not to be left alone,” (27). Again, the author uses brief, to the point sentences to get his point to the reader. Due to Wiesel using strong, factual language, and not inserting much emotion into much of his writing, we as readers see the truth of the matter, and nothing more. We understand that he needed to be with his father, and that was that. It was simply truth that they must not be separated.
Since he uses sentences like this, it is impossible to miss Wiesel’s meaning, and we grasp the necessity of the situation. It actually makes us empathize with Wiesel and his family more than if he had used language expressing his thoughts, feelings, and doubts. Instead of lamenting about his lost family and world, or fretting about his future, he simply states what he believes must be done in his new situation. He and his father must stick together. Wiesel says this in the shortest, most terse way possible, to bolster our compassion and heighten our sense of humaneness.
