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Examples Of Figurative Language In Night By Elie Wiesel

Decent Essays

Throughout the novel Night, Elie Wiesel takes us on a journey from a quiet Jewish community, Sighet, to the horrors of the concentration camps he was sent to, lastly being Buchenwald. He shows us his life from being with family and friends, to the atrocities that took place in the camps by skillfully using figurative language, imagery, symbolism and denotative and connotative meanings to give the reader an eye-opening glimpse into his life. 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

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