Night Elie Wiesel Identity Analysis

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Elie’s identity changes throughout the story of Night by Elie Wiesel as he loses his childlike naivety and becomes aware of the harshness of the world around him due to the atrocities he faced during the holocaust. Wiesel uses internal monologue to show how from page 32 Elie’s identity is naive and innocent, as he has lived a sheltered life with his family thus far. However, as the book progresses, Elie is forced into dangerous and uncomfortable situations as a result of the Holocaust. On page 61, he becomes wise and conscious of the atrocities around him. When Elie is first taken to the internment camp at Auschwitz, he refuses to believe it’s real: “No. All this could not be real. A nightmare perhaps” (32). Because Elie has been shielded all his life, he has the …show more content…

After witnessing all the atrocities of Auschwitz Elie has learned that the world can be cruel and no longer questions death: “Thousands of people who died daily in Auschwitz and Birkenau, in the crematoria, no longer troubled me” (61). As Elie thinks to himself about the brutalities he’s witnessed, he begins to grow desensitized and numb to the death around him. His identity has changed drastically from pure and naive to desensitized and tragically aware. Wiesel uses metaphoric and symbolic language to convey Elie’s identity change from confused and gullible on page 12 to cognizant and numb on page 52. When Elie is first brought to the ghetto, he along with everyone else as described by Wiesel’s use of metaphors is deluded by the lies of the Germans and lets his naivety befall his better thinking. “The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.” (12) Wiesel uses a metaphor to portray this delusion as he compares the ghetto a very real thing, as being ruled by something intangible, the fantasies of the Jews. The Jews, refusing to believe that anything bad could happen, allow their speculation to overrule the

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