Motifs In Elie Wiesel's Night

The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a story about a boy who endures the horrors of the Holocaust. Throughout the duration of the book, Elie describes his own experiences with deportation, near death experiences, and concentration camps. Elie uses many motifs to further sophisticate his book. The motif, fire, used in Night by Elie Wiesel creates an effect that helps the author further develop the characters and create foreshadowing.

To begin, fire, a motif used in Night, helps deepen characters and further develop them. The first thing the Jewish people saw was the crematory. Many thought they were going to die, as many did. Others, on the other hand, made through the first step of selection. As the Jewish people started to realize what they

were experiencing was not going to get better, they began to feel as if they had been consumed by the fiery inferno. This is demonstrated in, “... the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it” (46). They felt as if their past life had been destroyed by the flames leaving them as body without feeling. Along with this, they began to question the one thing they always leaned on when times got rough; their faith. This is shown when Elie says, “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever” (43). Not only did the flames burn or eat away at their mental state, but also their religious state. They questioned why their god would allow this to happen to a loyal community.
Furthermore, to further development of characters, fire created multiple foreshadowing effects. During the train ride, Madame Schächter was yelling that she could see a furnace (34). This foreshadowed toward many of their deaths; the crematory. In addition to that, Elie Wiesel used more foreshadowing to indicate the burning of people. It is shown by, “In the air that smell of burning flesh” (37). This leads a reader closer to the assumption that many Jewish people will burn.
In conclusion, Elie Wiesel prestigiously uses the motif fire to help her character development and foreshadowing. The motif helps illustrate how brutal Elie’s experience truly was. It paints a vivid picture of the horrific experiences some people had to undergo in the mind of the reader.