Night essay

The memoir 'Night' by Elie Wiesel is a record of his time spent in the Holocaust. Some techniques he used telling his story were repetition, contrast and first person narration. The Holocaust was one of the worst genocides in history as regards to mankind. Wiesel talks a lot about how it was inside of the concentration camps. His writing had a big emotional impact on making me feel distressed, unhappy and down hearted. 

The train stopped at Birkenau, at that moment the air was infused with the dead remains of humans. As quoted from Elie's book, "Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into the smoke under a silent sky." He uses the technique of repetition. He repeats the phrase, "Never shall I forget," seven times, in a way to represent God being with him. This exact moment with this quote made me feel deeply saddened and caused knots in my stomach. The reason why the young children and women were sent to the gas chambers was because Adolf Hitler never wanted another generation of Jewish people.

When there was a hanging in the camp, they were forced to look at the fragile lifeless young boy hanging between life and death, “The two men were no longer alive….But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…” The technique used here is the contrast between the simple sentence which states that the men are dead, compared to the complex sentence which shows the fact that the child was still alive and not heavy enough to have a quick death. I felt shocked because the young boy slowly and painfully died and people had to watch.

During the death march, they were running in the cold snow while getting screamed at, "Faster you filthy pigs!" coming from one of the guards. Near Elie was a young boy from Poland whose name was Zalman. Elie says to his friend who wants to stop and go to the toilet, "Wait a little, Zalman. Soon, we will all come to a halt. We cannot run like this to the end of the world." Elie uses the first person plural pronoun 'we'. This technique of first person narration shows he is trying to encourage his friend to carry on. I felt hopeful because it gave me a feeling of faith, to know what happens next.

In his memoir Elie Wiesel used techniques such as repetition, contrast, first person narration to show what he has been through during the Holocaust. It had a deeply saddening emotional impact on me.  From reading this memoir I learnt there was more to the Holocaust instead of just the gas chambers. In my opinion, this issue will need to be brought up towards the future generation because it is important to learn about this history.