The Endless Night

        In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel reveals his horrific experiences in concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Birkenau during the Holocaust. Wiesel tells of his childhood experiences while in the concentration camps, and how those experiences will forever be engrained in his mind.. Through the use of syntax devices like rhetorical questions and sentence structure, along with dialogue, Wiesel portrays the deterioration in the Holocaust prisoners in both their physical and emotional conditions.

In the beginning chapters of Night, Wiesel uses syntax through rhetorical questions to illustrate the effect the concentration camps have on himself, his father, and the other prisoners physically and emotionally. For instance, in chapters one through five when Wiesel first arrives at Auschwitz, he is unable to comprehend why God, his Savior, is standing by allowing people to be slaughtered: “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent” (32)? Wiesel is struggling and wondering why God is allowing this genocide to happen and not doing anything about the issue; he at least is expecting God to send someone to object to these horrific crimes, but later loses that feeble hope. However, through the harsh, numbing effects of the concentration camps, Wiesel’s questions soon change from asking God to pondering how he and his father will survive. For example, when the prisoners arrive at Gleiwitz and are trapped in the barracks of the camp after an exhausting forty-two mile trek without food or water Wiesel wonders, “And who knew when we would be given another ration” (95)? Their ration of bread given to them in Buna before their departure to Gleiwitz was quickly devoured along the journey, leaving them starving once they arrived at their destination; this portrays the dehumanizing, physical effects the camps have on the prisoners by changing their concerns from God to survival. In these rhetorical questions Wiesel uses, the depiction of the prisoners’ poor treatment is vividly displayed.

Wiesel also uses various sentence structure to exemplify the effect on the prisoner’s physical and emotional conditions throughout his memoir. In chapters one through five, Wiesel uses simple and complex sentences to set the scene of the camps and the prisoner’s early physical conditions before the abuse of camp life numbed them to the point of not acknowledging the true cruelty of their treatment. For instance, when Wiesel is describing Mrs. Schacter’s insanity on the cattle cars in the early stage of their journey to concentration camp life, Wiesel uses simple sentences to describe her emotional shift, “The night seemed endless. By daybreak, Mrs. Schacter had settled down” (26). By using this combination of sentences, Wiesel achieves a child-like effect in describing the emotional toll of the transition to concentration camps and loss of family has on Mrs. Schacter. In comparison to chapters one through five, in chapters six through nine Wiesel also uses simple and complex sentences to illustrate the physical and emotional shifts in the prisoner’s conditions. For instance, Elie and the others are allowed to stop for rest on their journey to Gleiwitz in an abandoned village, and the temptation to fall into an endless sleep eludes them all. Elie’s father warns him not to, thus keeping him from the dangerous, never-ending sleep, “I had neither the desire nor the resolve to get up. Yet I obeyed” (88). The uses of simple and complex sentences depict the physical and emotional toll of exhaustion the Holocaust has on Elie and the others even.

Another type of device Wiesel uses in his memoir to portray the physical and emotional changes the prisoners experience is both snippets of dialogue in the beginning and later full-fledged conversations. For example in chapters one through five, when Wiesel and his father first arrived at Auschwitz and find they have a cousin, Stein of Antwerp, working as an SS officer, he talks to them briefly, “Take care of your son. He is very weak, very dehydrated…” (45). Wiesel uses conversations sparingly in the early chapters of his memoir to keep the focus on the actions of the prisoners, instead of what they were talking about, unless it is an important detail. In comparison to rarely using dialogue in the beginning chapters, Wiesel uses brief conversations in chapters six through nine to describe the physical and emotional changes in the prisoners. For instance, when Elie is running beside Zalman and trying to encourage Zalman to continue running for fear of him being trampled, “Make an effort Zalman… Try” (86). These brief words of encouragement to Zalman show a quick emotional change in Wiesel to his old, more caring self before camp life.

Another way Wiesel uses dialogue to show the emotional and physical changes in the prisoners is through the meaning of their conversations. Such as in chapters one through five, when Wiesel’s father tries to encourage him to eat by saying, “You mustn’t eat all at once. Tomorrow is another day… Me, I’m not hungry” (44). Wiesel’s father is trying to encourage and strengthen him both physically and emotionally by saying and showing that Wiesel needs to keep both his physical and emotional strength up. Conversely to the beginning chapters, chapters six through nine in Wiesel’s memoir depict the dehumanizing words the SS officers used towards the prisoners, such as on the beginning of the forty-two mile trek, “Faster, you flea-ridden dogs… Faster, you filthy dogs” (85). The SS officers using these dehumanizing words to make the prisoners run faster shows how emotionally numb the prisoners have become as a result of the camps.

Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Night, illustrates the physical and emotional trauma Wiesel, his father, and other prisoners experience through the horrific, dehumanizing effects of concentration camps. To paint the picture of these effects have on the prisoners, Wiesel uses many devices such as syntax and dialogue to emphasize the importance, loss, and effect that concentration camps have on people, especially a young child such as Wiesel.