Metaphors In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Elie Wiesel and his family were forced from their home in Hungary into the concentration camps of the Holocaust. At a young age, Wiesel witnessed unimaginable experiences that scarred him for life. These events greatly affected his life and his writings as he found the need to inform the world about the Holocaust and its connections to the current society. The horrors of the Holocaust changed the life of Elie Wiesel because he was personally connected to the historical event as a Jewish prisoner, greatly influencing his award-winning novel Night. The Holocaust was an extraordinary event that affected the lives of millions of people, including Elie Wiesel, and led to the death of many innocent lives. It all began when Adolf Hitler became Germany’s dictator in 1933. Hitler praised the German population and seemed to ban all other competing races, specifically the Jewish population in Germany. This hatred toward the Jews led to extreme discrimination. Hitler’s main goal was to lead the Jewish race out of the country through the establishment of harsh laws against them (Barrett). After having little effect, Hitler decided to force the Jews into political imprisonment which led to the creation of the first concentration camps in 1933. However, …show more content…

One of the most significant metaphors occurs at the end of the novel. Shortly after Eliezer is rescued from the concentration camp, he sees his reflection for the first time since he has been invaded by the Nazis. Wiesel states in his novel, “He looks in the mirror and sees the face of a corpse staring back at him” (Tackach 3980). This is an extremely powerful message as Wiesel is demonstrating how the soul of every Jew died from what they experienced during the Holocaust. Most Jews could never look at themselves as the same person again. Wiesel uses this metaphor to illustrate the significant change that the concentration camps caused to each victim

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