Rhetorical Analysis In Night By Elie Wiesel

The Holocaust is an unforgettable event to anyone who had to live through the horrors of a concentration camp. Elie Wiesel is no exception. He was taken to a concentration camp in 1944 and lost his mother and father in the concentration camps. Mr. Wiesel was brave enough to step forward and share his experiences during the Holocaust, which he recorded in his book Night. In his book Night, Elie Wiesel uses irony, foreshadowing, and tone to describe the uncertainty of one’s future before going and while in a concentration camp.

Wiesel does a wonderful job with his use of pathos throughout the speech by making the audience reflect on his words and creates a strong emotional reaction for what is being said. From being a survivor of the Holocaust, one of the darkest parts of history as well as the most shallow times for humanity. Immediate sympathy is drawn from the audience. When he states that himself endured the horrible conditions these people had to live in. He then explains to us that the people there, “No longer felt hunger, pain, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.” With saying this it brings forth feelings of guilt, one of the most negative emotions to accumulate a reaction towards these events. Also numerous people throughout the world long for world peace and to hear the inhumane acts that was once acted upon an innocent man, makes their stomach's sink. Wiesel defines its derivation, as “no difference” and uses numerous comparisons on what may cause indifference, as a “strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur.” Like good and evil, dark and light. Wiesel continues to attract the audience emotionally by stating this he is aware of how tempting it may be to be indifferent and that at times it can be easier to avoid

When responding to situations in life people must consider if doing so will benefit themselves or the people around them. In circumstances that demand quick thinking people often can not form a concrete decision based on how little information and time they have. In life people frequently must try to do so through their daily battles with the people around them as well as themselves.

The world is cruel and harsh; what does it take to prove that you and your experiences are capable of persuasion. In this world, you’d want as many allies as possible, and building emotional bridges with others is a definite way of proving that you matter to others. It’s a matter of philosophy; human nature emphasizes on individual existence; therefore rhetoric is effective to measure one’s importance. Elie Wiesel, a man of age, is a jewish holocaust survivor who has a story to tell and a story to be heard. Does the man have what it takes to prove himself worthy of a rhetoric leader? Elie Wiesel’s speech, The Perils of Indifference, Mr. Wiesel takes advantage of rhetorical questions and the appeals of pathos and logos to persuade and inform the audience about their inner indifference towards the havoc happening around the world.

Night by Elie Wiesel is an autobiography about his experience during the Holocaust when he was fifteen years old. Elie is fifteen when the tragedy begins. He is taken with his family through many trials and then is separated from everyone besides his father. They are left with only each other, of which they are able to confide in and look to for support. The story is told through a series of creative writing practices. Mr. Wiesel uses strong diction, and syntax as well as a combination of stylistic devices. This autobiography allows the readers to understand a personal, first-hand account of the terrible events of the holocaust. The ways that diction is used in Night helps with this understanding.

Rhetorical devices are devices that are used to convey a meaning to the reader and create emotions through different types of language. Elie Wiesel uses rhetorical devices such as personification, metaphors, and rhetorical questions to emphasize and establish the theme of losing faith.

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” (Nietzsche). This quote, said by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, describes the desire to survive that was inside of Elie Wiesel in his story. The book describes Elie’s late teen years when he was sent to a concentration camp by the German government. In the book, he is separated from his whole family except for his old father, and both are put to work inside of the camp. As Elie suffers through the camp, his faith and his life face many tests and trials. There are many instances throughout the book when people die or when somebody loses their faith. The theme of the book Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is survival, as shown by the death of many Jews during the Holocaust, people willing to do anything to survive, and people’s faith not surviving the traumatic experiences of the concentration camps.

There are many vices that are taken up exclusively by Humans. Other animals don’t think about wiping out entire races or species just for kicks, most species don’t have the urge to attempt genocide or even turning on their own kin, but humans do. Elie Wiesel was a holocaust survivor whose ghastly year at the Auschwitz death camp was shared with the world by way of his book, “Night.”

The Book Night By Elie Wiesel demonstrates the evilness and insanity that is found in every human being, and is depicted through rhetorical devices to make the point more clear. At Elie’s arrival to Auschwitz ( a concentration camp) he watches people being burned, telling the reader that, “never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of children whose bodies were transformed into smoke under the silent sky. “ (pg 34) In this moment it is hard to believe that human beings are capable of doing such a thing, ruthlessly murdering thousands of people all at once, without blinking an eye.

In 2006, Elie Wiesel published the memoir “Night,” which focuses on his terrifying experiences in the Nazi extermination camps during the World War ll. Elie, a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, is projected as a dynamic character who experiences overpowering conflicts in his emotions. One of his greatest struggles is the sense helplessness that he feels when all the beliefs and rights, of an entire nation, are reduced to silence. Elie and the Jews are subjected daily to uninterrupted torture and dehumanization. During the time spent in the concentration camp, Elie is engulfed by an uninterrupted roar of pain and despair. Throughout this horrific experience, Elie’s soul perishes as he faces constant psychological abuse, inhuman living conditions, and brutal negation of his humanity.

In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel the theme of self preservation and loss of identity plays a critical role in the development of Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) throughout the book. As Wiesel suffers through the tragic events of the holocaust, self preservation proves to be more difficult to keep and losing one’s character seems easy. Wiesel’s identity, faith, and his will to live start to fade as he begins to forms a new character, a character who remains silent. Losing identity means losing the values that makes up a character.

In the novel “Night”, author, Elie Wiesel uses imagery to share his experiences as a jew during the holocaust. Wiesel’s use of imagery helps demonstrate the tone and purpose of the entire novel. Elie Wiesel’s journey starts off  subtle but in the end leaves the reader heartbroken.    Throughout the story, Wiesel describes his tragic memories during the nazi concentration camps, which establishes a dark and somber tone. His descriptions and use of imagery creates the tone and purpose of “Night”.

At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.

Night, by Elie Wiesel, showed the devastation of Eliezer’s childhood and illustrated the loss of innocence through the evil of others. Elie Wiesel expressed to us that one’s own faith and beliefs can be challenged through torture and ongoing suffering. The novel, Night, allowed the reader to witness the change in Eliezer from one of an innocent child who strongly adhered to his faith in God into a person who questioned not only his faith and God but of himself as well. The cruelty is shown to him while in the concentration camp forced him to wonder if there was a God and if so why would he put him and the others through such torture. Through his suffering, Eliezer’s beliefs dramatically and negatively changed his faith in God and compelled him to experience a transformative relationship with his father.

The early 1940s, an observant, young boy, and his caring father: the start of a story that would become known throughout the world of Eliezer Wiesel. His eye-opening story is one of millions born of the Holocaust. Elie’s identity, for which he is known by, is written out word for word his memoir, Night. Throughout his journey, Elie’s voice drifts from that of an innocent teen intrigued with the teachings of his religion to that of a soul blackened by a theoretical evil consuming the Nazis and Hitler’s Germany. Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, examines the theme of identity through the continuous motifs of losing one’s self in the face of death and fear, labeling innocent people for a single dimension of what defines a human being, and the oppression seen in the Holocaust based on the identities of those specifically targeted and persecuted.