How Does Elie Wiesel Use Dramatic Irony In Night

Irony is “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite typically for humorous or emphatic effect” (dictionary.com). Irony can be found in chapter 1 of Night, on page 38, “Work is liberty” (38). Wiesel includes this to convey the Jews’ disheartened attitude toward their new reality. This quote helps to get the message across because of the tirony that while the sign promises liberty for work, the concentration camp will only cause unbelievable suffering and pain for the Jews. We also see in the beginning of the book how Ellie’s dad says that the yellow star they had

Elie uses few examples of irony in chapter five. An example of situational irony that he used was when Elie and his father decided to escape from the hospital with the others from the unit. In this chapter Elie says, “I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation” (Wiesel 82). This situation is ironic because before they decided to evacuate, Elie had heard that the patients left behind were going to die from the building being blew up. Instead of this happening, those who were left behind ended up getting freed. Elie uses the quote, “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish

Wiesel uses a black irony to emphasize the absence of normality in the concentration camps. As Eliezer marches into Auschwitz he notices a sign with the caption,

Early on in the memoir, Wiesel has a very strong faith for a young boy. He states, “I was twelve. I believed profoundly” (Wiesel 1). His faith is established early on in order to make a great contrast between his faith in the beginning versus the end of the memoir. Before he is deported, Wiesel wants to study the Cabbala and become a master in Jewish mysticism. He finds a master, Moshe the Beadle, to teach him. The teaching does not last long; however, before Moshe is deported and sent to be killed. Moshe’s stories are the first glimpse of the cruelty and dehumanization that is to come later on in the memoir. Wiesel states, “Without passion, without haste, they slaughtered their prisoners” (4). The Gestapo show little to no emotion when killing these deportees, which shows how they view them as inhuman. The people of Sighet do not believe Moshe’s warning, and pass him off as just wanting attention. Their faith in humanity and their God allow them to have hope, and they do not believe that any of his stories are real nor could happen to them. However, their faith is proven wrong and

Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.

In Night, Elie Wiesel descriptively shares his Holocaust experience in each part of his survival. From the ghettos to the Death March and liberation, Elie Wiesel imparts his story of sadness, suffering and struggle. Specifically Wiesel speaks about his short experience in the Sighet ghettos. Ghettos were implemented early on in the Holocaust for the purpose of segregating and concentrating the Jews before deportation to concentration camps and death camps. Depending on the region, ghettoization ranged from several days to multiple years before deportation. All Jews in ghettos across Europe would eventually face the same fate: annihilation (“Ghettos”). Wiesel’s accurate account of the Sighet ghettos illustrates the poor living conditions, the Judenrat and Jewish life in the ghetto as well as the design and purpose of the two Sighet ghettos. Wiesel’s description of the Sighet ghettos demonstrates the similar characteristics between the Sighet ghettos and other ghettos in Germany and in German-occupied territories in addition to the differences between the various ghettos.

Elie Wiesel’s use of diction and syntax are simple and unsophisticated. This should not be thought of in a negative way. He gets his story across in a concise manner that is easy to understand, yet he is able to evoke the horror of that time in his life giving the reader a clear image and vision throughout the story. His writing is not wordy and drawn out, but rather in short sentences. The strength of his language leaves the reader with a keen sense of the pain the Jews felt as the Nazi’s managed to dehumanize them. His diction and syntax leads to numerous examples of figurative language throughout the book. Many similes are shown to show the manner that the Jews were treated during the Holocaust. “They passed me by, like beaten dogs, with never a glance in my direction. They must have envied me.” (Weisel 35) This quote refers to members of Elie’s town when he was 15, and the Hungarian police had rounded up people to leave the ghetto. Elie compares the members of his town to beaten dogs using the term “like.” They most likely wished they could have traded places with Elie. Elie also shows how camps were prisons by saying, “The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear.” (Wiesel 29) Wiesel compares the barbed wire to a wall using the term “like.” Wiesel refers to the emptiness of the Ghettos when being transported as, “ Open rooms everywhere. Gaping doors and windows looked into the void. It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone. It was there for the taking. An open tomb. A summer sun.” (Wiesel 35) He states this because he is comparing the town to an open tomb and a summer sun because everybody who lived in the town had been taken by Nazis. An open tomb is something everyone can look at, while a

Elie Wiesel published the memoir “Night”, in 2006, which extrapolated on his terrifying experiences in the Nazi extermination camps during the World War ll. Elie, a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, is projected as a dynamic character who experiences overpowering conflicts in his emotions. One of his greatest struggles is the sense of helplessness that he feels when all his beliefs and rights as a human are reduced to silence. During the time spent in the concentration camp, Elie is engulfed by an uninterrupted roar of pain and despair. However, what remains uninterrupted is the sheer torture and dehumanization of Elie’s nation, the Jews. Throughout this horrific experience, Elie’s soul perishes repeatedly as he faces constant psychological abuse, inhuman living conditions, and brutal negation of his humanity.

The Holocaust claimed millions of lives, and the survivors witnessed an event incomprehensible to the remainder of humanity. Elie Wiesel, a burdened survivor of the Genocide, describes his own experiences in his autobiographical memoir Night. Throughout the years in the concentration camps, Wiesel and the other Jews witness countless events of Nazis intentionally dehumanizing the Jews. After hearing these brutal remarks for years, Wiesel begins to internalize these thoughts. His writing reflects his internalization as he often compares himself and the others to animals. Elie Wiesel animalizes the Jews while personifying darkness to further dehumanize the Jews and show how the Nazi’s mental warfare continues to affect him.

This occurs frequently throughout “Night,” because generations following World War II are taught in school of the horrors of the holocaust. One example of this is when Madame Schachter has a vision of a furnace while traveling on the car to a concentration camp. She was beaten and gagged by her fellow passengers to shut her up, but little did they know how accurate her predictions were. Another example situational irony was when the prisoners finally arrived at Auschwitz. As they entered the camp, they passed through a gate with the words “Work will set you free” on it and their motto “Work is liberty.” This is an example of situational irony, because readers know that Auschwitz was one of the most famous death camps and the only way to truly obtain freedom from the Nazi’s confinement is through

Corpses – Corpses in the novel is another symbol representing the living dead. Captives in the camp ware frequently referred to as corpses, whose spirits have been crushed by torment and misery. Eliezer at the end of the narrative looks in the mirror and sees a corpse, which symbolizes the death of innocence and childhood. “One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me” (Wiesel, 115)

Its 1944 and young Elie Wiesel is taken from his home in Sighet, Transylvania. After a 12 hour boxcar ride, Elie and the other jew from the town arrive in Oswiecim, Poland. All these innocent people will soon be loaded into the death camp “Auschwitz- Birkenau.” Throughout the Holocaust young Elie has changed from waiting for god to intervene in these horrible times to denying any and all hope from God. Elie says “It was nothing more than chance” (viii) that he survived.

From 1941 to 1945, Hitler was responsible for 3 million Jewish deaths, Elie Wiesel, a prisoner of war at the Auschwitz concentration camp escaped the ironic chances of death. Auschwitz was a death factory, with survival being highly unlikely, any traces of survival would be ironic. Elie’s story is a pure example of this irony. Elie began to escape death the moment he gets to the camp, with help and guidance from fellow prisoners. Escaping death selection, harsh weather and starvation are all ironic features of Elies stay at Auschwitz. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie uses this ironic twist of fate to show the minor difference between life and death in his Holocaust experience.

At the beginning of Night, the main character Elie has a relatively stable life in the Jewish community in 1944. However, the Nazis forced Elie and his community into concentration camps. From then on out, life gets more miserable each day and he starts thinking more and more about himself due to extreme suffering. Before Elie’s internment in the camps, he prioritized family, faith, and community.

In Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, he describes how the Jews of Sighet, his home town, have an illusion of safety up until they reached Auschwitz. In the beginning, they felt safe while the war went on thinking that “the Germans will not come this far”(9) into Hungry as the Jews believed that the Germans “could not harm [them]”(8) thus creating a false sense of safety. They turned a blind eye even when Moshe the Beadle, a Jewish town member who witnessed the reality of Nazi atrocities come back to warn them of the Germans. Yet when the Germans arrived into Sighet, they were kind to the Jews as the Germans brought “a box of chocolates”(10), creating the false illusion of safety. The Germans are “distant but polite”(9) to the Jews which fuels the