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Symbolism In Elie Wiesel's Night

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What would life be like if you knew that at any second of your day you could die? Elie Wiesel, a first-hand witness of the Holocaust, wrote a book called Night about how he lost his faith while suffering in harsh conditions at Auschwitz. The book illustrates the memories he has of what happened at the camps, his faith journey that turned into a complete rollercoaster, and how he was close to death through it all. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, he uses the symbols of smoke, fire, and the skull with crossbones to foreshadow death or pain.

In the book, the smoke represents death throughout the whole book. On page 6, it states: The train disappeared over the horizon; all that was left was thick, dirty smoke.
This represents death because as the Jews are being crammed into tight cattle cars, they …show more content…
In the air, the smell of burning flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau.

This fire haunted all of the Jews once they saw the great flames through the barred window in the cattle cart; It shows them what a possible future for them can be. The fire is presented throughout the book in many different scenarios. In all of these scenarios, it is used to foreshadow death, pain, or something horrible of the sort.

In books, you can find that colors or objects are used to symbolize something. An example in the book ,Night, is different colors. On page 82, it states how the color red can mean extreme pain:
My wound had reopened and was bleeding: the snow under my feet turned red.
This talks about the time when Eliezer had to run from the infirmary because they were killing the weak. They also describe the sky as: ...this time we saw the flames rising out of the chimney into a black sky.
It continues on throughout the book to describe sky as almost being a monstrous thing, almost like a creature filled with dark smoke. They continue to use those two main colors to symbolize death and/or

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