Essay - Personal Response

Personal Response Elie Wiesel has unlocked the horrors of the Holocaust through his book Night. Shockwaves are sent through every page in his book. Through the use of figurative language he has created a vivid storyline that is embedded in all those who read Night. The figurative language allows the readers to travel back into time living Wiesel’s life besides him. Through his experience we see the true atmosphere of the concentration camps. There is more to the story than the fact that millions have died in the camp. The millions that have died have not died human. They have been forced to break all their morals for survival. Wiesel explains the inexplicable through his metaphors. “Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.” (Wiesel 18) The stars of life that once illuminated this little boy’s life died out as he stepped into his first concentration camp. There is a light to dark contrast as the bright stars are aligned with the dark night and dead stars. This contrast brings out the idea that life is consistently indulged by death. The stars not only represent life, but represent humanity and morality. As he walked into Auschwitz he saw the impossible. He has encountered numerous horrific incidents everywhere. He has seen a father left behind because his son did not want a burden on himself. The comparison of the dead stars to the dead eyes amplifies the feeling of having nothing to live for. As the star represents life and the motivation to live, the dead star represents the loss of motivation. When hope was lost in the camps, the only thing left to see was the corpses. His father gave up hope and his death followed. Wiesel says, “I felt that I was not arguing with him, but with death itself, with the death that he had already chosen.” (Wiesel 100) His father had lost the fire that burned inside of him. The fire of life and hope. “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.” (Wiesel 109) The individuals in the camps gave up everything including their morals. These depraved camps broke into each person and dehumanized them. They were forced to turn into animals. The men are turned savage. Elie Wiesel shows the people’s desperation through the snow scene. He says, “Someone had the idea of appeasing his thirst by eating the snow. Soon the others were imitating him.” This incident creates an image of wild animals eating whatever they can find because they are helpless. These individuals turned helpless. Wiesel brings out the pain of dehumanizing into the readers mind. I cannot fathom the mindset of these individuals. He compares himself to corpse when he is free because that shows how drastically these camps changed him. He is still living but does not have any life in him. He has lost his sense of emotion. He has lost the idea of sympathy. He has lost himself. He says this as he explains his father’s death, “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I had no more tears.” (Wiesel 106) There has been an incredible damage done to a little boy that he can’t heal. He cannot revive the emotions that are stolen from him. He has been ripped away from his whole family and is left alone. As he gazes in the mirror he is not only left as a corpse, but a corpse in isolation. He alone carries the pain he has endured and it has created a permanent spot in his brain. This mirror imagery also never leaves the reader’s mind as they finish the book with these sentences. Night has stirred up the emotions of loss, fear, and desperation and used them to create a print of the lives lost. The intense metaphors and images give a glimpse of the pain these people of felt during the Holocaust. The book is written to keep the dead still alive in any generation. Once someone reads the book they open up the life of someone who has perished. They resurrect the story of the person who died. Elie Wiesel has shocked me with his story because I can’t feel the same pain when I hear about the numbers that have died from the pain given off from his memoir. The stars died out with the dehumanizing and mistreatment of the innocent. The fire was the morality and humanity. “The stars were only sparks of the fire which has devoured us.”