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What are some important symbols in the book Night?

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Important symbols in Night by Elie Wiesel include the night, fire, and corpses. The night symbolizes death, the darkness of the human soul, and Wiesel's loss of faith in God. Fire represents the Nazis' destructive power, hatred, and the death of Wiesel’s faith. Corpses symbolize the physical and spiritual deterioration of prisoners, reflecting their hollow and dehumanized state.

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In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, many important symbols are used repeatedly to help solidify the first person account of his experience of the Holocaust.

The major overarching symbol is, of course, the night itself. The night is used by Wiesel to represent death and the potential darkness of the human soul. For him, the acts carried out during the Holocaust represent the fullest of humanity's capacity for evil. These acts have cast a darkness over humanity that will never fully be lifted.

Perhaps more importantly, the night represents Wiesel’s loss of faith in God. While Wiesel does not lose his belief in God, he comes to perhaps a more grim conclusion. He prays:

Master of the Universe, know that the children of Israel are suffering too much; they deserve redemption, they need it. But if, for reasons unknown to me, You are not willing, not yet, then...

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redeem all the other nations, but do it soon!

Wiesel has not lost his belief in God, but in the ultimate justness of God. The night may symbolize a void where the mercy and justice of God are absent.

Fire is another common symbol throughout the book. Fire represents anger, hatred, destruction, and death. It is a destructive force that doesn't discriminate between what it consumes. Fire is present in a very real way in the form of crematories used by the Nazis to dispose of the bodies of dead Jews. The smoke from these crematories creates a blackness that hangs over the prison camp, calling back to the night metaphor.

The hatred the Nazis possessed for the Jews can be seen as a fire that blackened human hearts, destroyed cities, and consumed millions upon millions of innocent lives. These events carried out by the Nazis also, understandably, sparked flames of hatred in their victims. The victim’s hatred towards the people who perpetrated these events are flames that may never be fully extinguished.

Corpses are ever present in a very literal way in the concentration camp, however, the corpse is also used as a metaphor for the physical and spiritual condition of the prisoners. The prisoners are left empty and hollow, robbed of their faith in humanity and in God. The prisoner's physical deterioration due to malnourishment and forced labor also gives them the appearance of living corpses. After his liberation, Wiesel describes a memory that haunts him. He looks in a mirror for the first time in months and sees a corpse staring back at him, not only starved of food but robbed of innocence and belief in God’s goodness.

The book Night features elements such as the night, fire, and corpses that are very real and present in the narrative. These also serve as symbols for the totalitarian horror that the events of the Holocaust represent, such as the potential evil of humanity, gross injustice in the world, and the types of hatred that produce these evils that last to the present day.

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What are three main symbols or motifs in Night?

Let us start off with fire and its significance in the novel. The way in which fire is presented makes it become a symbol of the cruel and evil power of the Nazis. Consider the way in which Madame Schachter has her vision of the fire and the destruction and death it forebodes. Eliezer also sees Nazi soldiers burning Jewish babies. Of course, most significantly, the fire becomes a symbol of what happens to the Jews and how so many of them meet their deaths. However, fire also becomes symbolic of the way that Elie lost his faith. Consider the following line:

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forvever... Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Thus we can see fire also becomes an important symbol of the way in which Elie's experiences killed his faith.

Secondly, as the title signifies, night itself is an incredibly important symbol. Night is used as a symbol without the presence of God, and you might want to analyse the way in which the description of the most intense suffering in this novel normally occurs at night to reinforce the way in which God is absent from this hell-like world with which we are presented.

Lastly, you might want to consider Jewish tradition, and how its importance is symbolised in characters such as Cholmo and his storytelling. Note the way that Elie struggles to maintain his links with Jewish tradition even though he does not believe in God any more. For him, and for many like him, their Jewish tradition is symbolic of unity and togetherness with his fellow prisoners and Jews, and he is faced with a massive conflict when he debates the question of fasting on Yom Kippur or not. Such traditions form a valuable, life-giving link for Jews like Elie to remind them they are part of a people who are bigger than what is being done to them.

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