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Silence In Elie Wiesel's Night

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In Night by Elie Wiesel, silence is a reoccurring theme that represents many aspects of Wiesel’s struggle during the most coldblooded massacre in the history of the world. Although silence may seem unimportant, Wiesel’s remarks about this theme symbolizes far more. He believes it is silence that allows the Nazis to takeover and begin the slaughtering. Wiesel emphasizes that silence is the only appropriate response to the Holocaust because the events that took place at Auschwitz have caused language and words to seemingly have lost their meaning; the words people use to describe what happened cannot even compare to the reality of the event. Language no longer has any power to express the truth of what happened to the Jewish people during this inhumane mass execution. Wiesel uses silence to intensify dramatic effect, to suggest the indescribable, and to symbolize the loss of faith. Firstly, Wiesel is bothered by the fact that everyone in the world can remain silent while the Jews and the others in the concentration camps are being put through such terrible torture. Eliezer asks, “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”(32) There were numerous people that eventually found out what was happening at these concentration camps, but chose to turn a blind eye. Although they were not directly involved in the slaughtering of the Jews, they did remain silent during this time and by ignoring it they are encouraging the

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