Literary Devices In Night By Elie Wiesel

Everyone deserves the right to live in freedom and safety. History provides many chief examples of the violation of these human rights, such as the Holocaust. The murdering of over 6 million people of the Jewish religion and the extreme mistreatment of them in concentration camps clearly shows these violations. Many of the Jews that survived the dreadful concentration camps, retell their stories through books and interviews. Elie Wiesel, a Buna concentration camp survivor, reveals the violation of his human rights through the literary devices of imagery, conflict, symbolism along with understatement. Wiesel uses these literary devices to emphasize the theme that a prisoner must remain optimistic to overcome oppression in his book, “Night”. To start, Wiesel describes the violation of the right to live in freedom and safety. Wiesel reveals the horrible conditions the Jews lived in at Buna and the horrible way the Nazis treated them. Wiesel reveals this using the literary device of imagery to describe the horrible conditions, “Buna was real hell then no water, no food, less soap and bread. At night we slept almost naked, and it was below thirty
Wiesel describes the object that dictates how everyone in the camp lives,“The bell...everything was regulated by the bell...Whenever I dreamed of a better world, I could only imagine a universe with no bells.” (321). Wiesel incorporates the bell to symbolise control. The bell controls the lifestyle and timing of everyone’s life in the camp. The bell shows the total authority over Wiesel’s actions in the camp. This violates his human right to live in safety and freedom. The Nazis at Buna violated his right to live in freedom because he could not be able to do as he wanted. The bell controlled his every move. However, he remained optimistic so he can combat his oppression and overcome his